Page 4 of Fearlessly Us

“What makes you think you deserve to know me?” she asks, taking another sip of her drink, her eyes never leaving mine.

I shrug, taking the last sip of my beer and sliding the bottle onto the table before I say the truest words. “I probably don’t, but I think I’d like to anyway.”

“Why?” The curiosity in the question, as if she can’t figure out why anyone would want to know her, squeezes my battered heart.

“Because you asked for salt on the rim of your glass even though you really wanted sugar, and you almost struck the asshole bartender dead with your words alone. You’re really good at pretending you’re comfortable in whatever room you’re in even when you’d rather be anywhere else. Princess, you’re badass, brilliant, and stop-my-heart gorgeous, and I think you might be the most interesting woman in the world.”

The very last thing I expect after those words and the accidental nickname spill from me is for Caitlin to laugh. The sound is warmth and sunshine, and I want to grab it from the air and listen to it over and over again, letting it light up all my darkest spaces.

“Who even are you?” she asks, gray eyes dancing.

I shrug, getting an idea that’s either the worst or best one I’ve ever had. “I’m the guy who would really like to take you to dinner.”

Caitlin snorts. “Dinner?”

I grin at the sound. “Dinner. When we’re back in Pittsburgh. Wherever you want to go. Come out with me. Please.”

This is a terrible idea. I know it in my bones. But then Caitlin’s eyes narrow. Her expression turns sharp, and the little glimpse of lawyer Caitlin is so fucking sexy, every reservation I have flies straight out the window. “Did you just…beg?”

“Depends,” I say with a lazy smirk. “Are you into it? If you are, I think begging could definitely be arranged. But food first. I do my best begging when I’m well fed.”

She drags her tongue over her bottom lip again, and all the blood in my body races to my dick. I’m thirty seconds away from getting on my knees right here on this floor, my sad past and our intertwined friends be damned, and I think she knows it because she smirks at me, taking another sexy sip of her drink. “Okay, Pretty Boy, take me to dinner.”

CAITLIN

“What the fuck was I thinking?” I mutter to myself, shaking three ibuprofens out of the bottle and tossing them into my mouth, washing them down with the last sip of the iced latte I made an hour ago in a futile attempt to feel anything except achy and so exhausted I could sleep for a year.

Okay, Pretty Boy, take me to dinner.

My brain involuntarily serves me up a soundtrack of my words from the bar two weeks ago. The low voice barely even sounds like me, and I think it’s possible that, for those twenty minutes with Drew, I became someone else entirely. Someone who wasn’t thinking at all. Someone who says yes to dates with an almost-stranger. A hot almost-stranger. A hot, much older, football playing almost-stranger who has just enough ties to my friend group to make keeping this little excursion a secret almost impossible and has fucked his way through Pittsburgh and every other city with a professional football team.

This was definitely a mistake.

A big fat fucking mistake I’ve almost cancelled twelve times in the last two days but I’m now stuck with because of my stupid, almost pathological need to do the things I say I’m going to do, even if right now what I want to do more than anything is pull the covers over my head and hug a heating pad for the rest of my life.

Turning to the full-length mirror on the back of my closet door, I study the loose-fitting sweater dress I chose for the night. I eye the short hem and low V-neck, hoping they balance out the fact that in all other ways, this dress is basically a brown paper bag.

The opposite of sexy. Extremely not date-like.

With a groan, I turn to the side, smoothing a hand over the front of the dress, wincing when I feel the firm roundness of my belly and yanking my hand away as quickly as it settles there. It’s an unnerving feeling, to be so disconnected from a part of your own body you don’t even want to touch it. To have so little control over it that it feels like it doesn’t even belong to you.

Welcome to my fucking life, once a month in the months I’m lucky, or as often as every two weeks in the months I’m not.

This is one of the not lucky months, but I didn’t know that two weeks ago when I agreed to this ill-advised date. Two weeks ago, I was feeling great. The kind of great that happens every other month or so and tricks me into thinking I’ll never feel bad again. You would think after dealing with this for the last thirteen years of my life, I would learn great never lasts. I shouldn’t make decisions based on great.

But I never do.

Which is how I ended up saying yes to dinner with Drew. The football player with the beaming smile who stood in such stark contrast to his haunted eyes that I couldn’t help but wonder what was under his surface. The man who figured out how I like my margaritas and somehow knew I needed a break from the crowds and the noise and made me laugh, even though I tried my hardest not to be amused by him. The man who seemed lonely, even when there were people everywhere, and that’s a feeling I understand because it’s one that lives in my bones.

He told me he wanted to know me, and I was putty in his metaphorical hands.

Fucking pathetic, honestly. I’m a grown-ass woman with amazing hair. A successful lawyer. A good daughter and an excellent friend. The troubleshooter and the problem solver and the maker of plans. The ride or die, bury the body, will help with anything, anytime and anywhere kind of girl.

One hot-ass man looks at me like he doesn’t just see me but sees me, and suddenly I’m agreeing to dates I don’t want and putting on tights and a dress and praying to the goddesses of women with problematic periods that I don’t bleed all over the restaurant chair.

I have regrets.

With a wince at the cramp that tears through my lower abdomen, I sit down on my bed and gingerly shove my feet into boots, bending over carefully to zip them up. I stand slowly, and with one final look in the mirror, I snatch my coat off the bed and head downstairs exactly five minutes before Drew said he would pick me up.