Chapter 15

PRESENT DAY

It smells like sex in here.

“Twenty-five hundred!”

Alec slides across the stage, pulling a maneuver I never expected from him. I’m so turned on and surprised and turned on and shocked and turned on that all I can do is stand here with my tongue hanging out of my mouth, only slightly aware that the bidding has gone up and up and up and I haven’t even shouted out my highest number.

Liz told me this would work. That no one pays over three grand for bachelors at a bar auction. But she isn’t here. She’s not here to see the panty-dripping, sweaty, oh my holy hell sweet abs carved by angels and unicorns, and he’s dancing in front of not just me but a roomful of hormone-crazed women ready to jump on that stage and lick his…well, lick his anything.

And then, right there in the middle of his magic thrusting, he looks at me dead on. He looks at me and dances for me. He grins teasingly, like it’s some kind of joke, like we’re having a laugh at his expense, that I’m somehow going to be punished later for making him do this. But I’m not laughing. All I can feel is the moisture building along my hairline, neckline, and panty line.

Three thousand. It’s there on the tip of my very salty tongue in this sweat-filled room while he basically has air sex with me. It’s all the money I have; the money I saved for this moment. This is my grand gesture, the big sign that says I’M READY FOR YOU, ALEC TUCKER!

“Four thousand!”

The voice comes from the way back, and both Alec and I rip our gazes from each other to figure out who it belongs to. I see her right away. Purple hair, tattoos up and down her arms and across her neck, short—a punk pixie.

The dreaded four-letter word echoes through the room through the microphone.

“Sold!”

He’s sold.

My entire vision for the evening—professing my love for my best friend, redoing all the things I did wrong the first time around—shatters in front of me.

People clap for the winner. I don’t.

Hell no I don’t. That bitch with the perfect smile and hipster style stole my grand gesture. The anticlimactic end to a week’s worth of preparation slams down on me, and I have to find the strength to pluck up my feet and let them carry me out of here.

I get through the crowd in a haze, telling Katrina I need air and asking if she can finish up the auction without me. She nods, gesturing toward an employee exit door that I can use.

The air outside isn’t any better. I feel like I’m suffocating on the visual of him kissing another girl at the end of the night. Or even before the end of the night. Oh God, what if they do way more by the end of the night and they get a morning after? We didn’t even get a morning after, and I never got to ask him why.

I yank my phone out and mad-text Liz. Got outbid! Tell me how to fix it!

Then I pace the sidewalk, pulling at my earrings and checking my phone, but there’s no answer from her. Maybe I go tell him right now. Barge into the backstage dressing room and say, Damn it, Alec, I love you and I’m ready. Then what? Go on your date, because it’s for charity, but don’t you dare touch her.

That’s reasonable, isn’t it?

The alleyway stinks like hangover and weed, and I trip in my hurry to get out into more breathable air. I feel my thoughts tangling with each other, desperate to find a solution to my conundrum. I seriously question my intellect in this moment, because I should’ve prepared for this. Alec’s a delectable specimen that even a blind woman could appreciate. Top dollar in my head was severely under what people were evidently willing to pay. Spirit-crushing replays of what just happened play on a loop in my head, and I mad-call my best friend.

“Pick up, pick up, pick—Liz, what do I do?”

“Hang on a second,” she says, and I hear the distinct noise of a toilet flushing in the background. You know someone’s a good friend when they take your call no matter where they are. “ ’Kay, sorry. How much did he go for?”

“Four grand, Liz. Four grand. I don’t have that kind of money!”

“Try to find the winner and talk her into giving him up. Offer her forty-five hundred; see if she takes it. I’ll be down there as soon as I can.”

“You can’t give me fifteen hundred dollars.” I shake my head. Even if I take the money, asking someone to give up her bid on the man capable of Magic Mike dancing would be spitting into the wind.

“I can too. I’m sure you’ve given me that much money over the course of our friendship in the form of laundry quarters, rent coverage, and groceries, and that doesn’t even count the time we lived together.”

I push my hair back and turn toward the loud cheers that just sounded through the bar behind me. Seems the last bachelor has sold, and Katrina is telling all the winners to pay. If I’m going to do this, it’s got to be now.

“Get down here, quick.”

“Already heading over to you.”

We click off, and I run back inside. I’m sure I’ll come up with a way to pay Liz back for this, if it works.

The winner’s not as easy to spot as I would’ve thought, given her eccentric appearance. I swim through the sea of sweaty bodies, the music in the room back to thumping through the floor. My boss waves at me from the middle of the stage, purple lights hitting her wide smile. I have one of the world’s coolest bosses, and when she does a happy dance I almost do one too. Tonight was supposed to be a night for celebration.

Damn it, it still can be. Just have to find that bidder.

The crowded place elevates my panic, and every second I spend on the floor feels like it’s ticking down to an eternal state of singlehood. Shoving through a group of women who weren’t so lucky in the bidding and are drinking themselves into a blissful stupor, I just start screaming at random.

“Winners!” I shout, making the girl on my right jump so high she spills her pink drink. “Where are you?”

A few laughs erupt from the bar right in front of my face, and girls who heard me hold up their bachelor name cards. I smooth down my dress and laugh off my complete blindness, following the line of women down until I find the one who isn’t deep in conversation with the winner next to her. Her purple bangs dangle in front of her face as she takes a long sip of Sam Adams. A beer girl; I’m already in trouble.

I’m in such a rush that I don’t even take a breath to calm myself or talk through what I plan to say before I step over and set my hand on the bar next to her.

“Hiya!”

“Taken,” she mutters, holding up the card for bachelor nineteen—the card that should’ve been mine. I nearly grab it and run off in a minuscule moment of insanity. She looks up from her drink to give me a once-over. “I’m sure you’ll find someone, though.”

I blink. “Oh, I’m not hitting on you. I, uh…I help run the auction.”

“Check or cash?”

“Huh?”

She raises a thin eyebrow, taking another swig of her beer. For someone who just won the highlight bachelor of the night, she could be a little more enthusiastic.

“I take it you want to collect my bid.”

“No.” She’s quite the assumer. “I actually want to take your bachelor.”

“Get in line.” She laughs, shaking her head at the other women at the bar. “Like I told the girls who wanted a trade, piss off.”

Whoa, okay. If that’s how she wants to play it…She has no idea what I’ve done to get to tonight, how much restraint I’ve had to use. It’s been a very long three weeks since I was in Alec’s bed, and every day from then till now I’ve been biting my tongue and orchestrating this night so that there will be absolutely no question in his mind that I have fallen madly in love. No smart-mouthed, beer-drinking assumer is going to take him from me now.

My spine straightens, and I cross my arms. “I’ll give you five hundred bucks.”

“You expect to pay my bid too?” She sets her beer on the bar. “Is he worth two months of your salary?”

I’m going to punch those assumptions right back into her mouth.

“Yes,” I say. “And then some.”

She gives me a slow smile, pushing away her drink. “Looks like I got him for a steal.”

“Five hundred and twenty,” I say with a lot more threat than the amount deserves, but I’ve already gone all in, and I can probably scrounge up a twenty from somewhere.

She flips her purple hair from her face, laughing at me again. “Seriously, go away.”

“I’m not leaving. I need tonight.”

Her amused expression turns hard so fast I almost believe it was the sudden green light drifting over our heads that gave her a very unflattering, villainess quality. But the light disappears and the straight line of her mouth remains.

“What makes you think I don’t need tonight? Why the hell would I come to a place like this unless I was desperate, hm? I won him; I’m not trading him for another guy or for money. Tonight is for me, and you can either scamper off or I’ll make you.”

I eye her hand for rings. My fingers are naked and have been for a year now, the only piece of hand jewelry I used to own now in a pawnshop somewhere. Just want to make sure that if punches are thrown I’m not going to get sliced by a rock.

She has a single band on her right thumb that chains to her forefinger. I can handle that.

“You’ll have to make me.”

Her hand shoots up, and I pull my arms in front to block her, but she just snaps into the air and whistles. Next thing I know there’s a giant man-of-the-universe torso in my face.

“Step back,” he says in a voice so deep it rumbles through my feet. My heart dubsteps in my chest, and I slowly raise my eyes to meet his.

“Hiya,” I say weakly. “I’m in charge of the auction tonight. Just running over some rules with our bidders.”

The winner sighs behind the massive amount of man, clearly no longer amused by my presence.

“Take her outside, please. I don’t feel safe around her.”

I’m about to plead my case—they can’t kick me out when I’m part of this whole charity shindig—but he starts caging me toward the door.

“Wait, no. I’m not done here!” I shout like a crazy person. “Alec! Tell them to stop! Where the hell are you? Don’t go with that woman; she’s psycho!”

Laughs erupt around me, and I know I’m a big hypocrite but I don’t care. I lunge forward, trying to duck under He-Man’s arm, but he blocks me again, causing people to cheer and my cheeks to rush with warmth. My feet hit the pavement outside, and the cool air pinches at my skin.

“You’ll be invited back in momentarily,” he says, standing in front of the entrance. “Rian does not plan on staying.”

I try to wriggle around him, to no avail. I wonder if he’d understand if I explained that Alec is my soulmate and it is a crime against love to not let me proclaim myself…and yeah, I sound crazy even in my head.

“Let me back in right n—” I blink and catch my breath. Wait…“Rian?” Who the hell is this Rian?