Page 11 of Knot Your Bridezilla (High Fructose Corn Syrup Verse #2)

AVRIL

As soon as I stopped literally running like my life depended on it, I sort of felt stupid.

Okay, so at the time I felt like I needed to run for my life. But now that I was out of sight and away from the smell of the traumatizing hand towel, I awkwardly stood in the middle of the sidewalk catching my breath.

So… now what?

I kind of had already set out to have some fun tonight… and wasn’t ready to go home. Emotionally, I’d just ridden the highs of a good date, before everything crashed hard.

I swear that hand towel was traumatizing. Technically, I don’t know if hand towels could officially be considered a form of trauma… but then again, none of the psychologists studying the causes of complex trauma had probably ever been inside a bathroom like that.

I needed a drink.

I didn’t want to think. Didn’t want to look up a new place and hope that they knew how to make my favorite drink. All I wanted right now was to be someplace familiar where I could drown my feelings a bit.

I whipped out my phone, logging into a ride-sharing app.

Luckily, I knew just where to go, where at the very least, there was one handsome face I’d be happy to see.

By the time I got back to the Pearl, I felt a little more composed. My driver did give me a concerned look when he’d first picked me up, but I was a lot less pale now. Nothing that a little bit of alcohol couldn’t cure.

The moment I stepped back into the Pearl, Sexy David did a double-take.

There was something in his expression… he was looking at me like he was seeing a ghost. Which, oddly enough, made me kinda spiral for a second as I considered whether it was possible that I had died.

Maybe I was still back in the bathroom of horrors and all the accumulated toxins and mold spores or whatever killed me—I just hadn’t realized it yet.

Okay, now I was really being stupid.

I strode over to the bar, and took a seat at one of the stools directly in front of David.

“Hey,” I smiled sheepishly.

Oh, damn. Was this going to be awkward? I was just here less than half an hour ago with some other guy, who I’d obviously left with. Was David going to make this weird?

“Hey.” The smile on his face was steamy as sin—clearly pleased that I was back.

Obviously, David wouldn’t do that to me. He wasn’t going to make me feel anything other than amazing.

Those cool blue eyes stared at me with burning heat, so hot that I could feel it all the way down to my core—gazing deep into my eyes, like I was something that he clearly wanted to see.

The way that he was looking at me made me want to drop all my reservations, drop my panties… or maybe just drop to my knees.

“How are you doing?” Okay. Wow. The first words that came out of my mouth were that boring? It was like none of the dates I’d gone on meant a damn thing. Off to a great start.

“Better now you’re here.” His voice was a purr.

God. Damn. It.

The guy barely said four words to me, and I was already wet.

Shit. Was my face turning red? This was embarrassing. “Sorry, to be barging back like this, but after that last date I could use a drink.”

“That bad, huh?” David reached up to grab me the good stuff, but not before I saw a little smirk on his face—was he happy that my last date didn’t go well?

Wait… was that a good thing or a bad thing that he was hoping that my date didn’t go well? What did that mean?

As David seamlessly tipped Grey Goose into a cocktail shaker along with my grapefruit juice, I couldn’t look away from his biceps as he expertly shook the drink and poured it into my martini glass.

When I went to get the drink out of his hand, his thumb stroked lightly across my wrist, making butterflies erupt deep in my stomach.

I could feel the heat of his touch as he traced a slight path, as if it were etched across my skin. His warm caress sank deep into me, so I’d never be able to forget how good he could make me feel.

God, I wanted him to keep touching me.

How was it fair that the sexiest man I’d ever met in my life was off-limits?

David grabbed himself a glass, poured himself a shot and leaned closer to me.

He was so close, and so not close enough. Close enough for me to get lost in dreamy blue eyes—the color of a clear, cloudless day—while here I was feeling like I was skydiving. If I wasn’t careful I could easily see myself falling for him.

I’m not sure exactly what it was; maybe it was because this was the first time that I was talking to him when I wasn’t on a date with some other guy, but the vibe between us was totally different—almost as if I was on a date with him.

He asked me if my last date was that bad…

I could have told him that the date was literally trash—heaps of it all across the floor.

But really it felt like what really went wrong with the last date wasn’t the mountain of garbage that served as a cockroach breeding ground…

the bigger problem was that the date was with the wrong guy.

“So you seem happy to see me back here.” I smiled coyly at him.

Maybe it was the fumes of the alcohol that had gotten me bold, because I certainly hadn’t taken a single sip yet.

Or maybe it was that I was starting to feel sick of chasing after all these subpar men, some of them couldn’t even be bothered to give half a shit about me, when this HAWT specimen of raw male perfection was watching me with desire written all over his face.

“I am. You’re too good for him.” David let his eyes drag slowly up and down my body, making it clear exactly why I was too good for my last date.

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

David thought that I was hot. This delicious man in front of me thought that I was hot. This was not a drill.

I was all ready to shove our drinks onto the floor and leap up into his arms… I wanted to pull my dress off right here at the bar—didn’t even give a shit about the one other guy tucking into dinner at the far table. He looked bored, like he wouldn’t mind a little bit of a show.

Because… like that was normal. There was like no way that public nudity could backfire on me or anything like that.

Yeah, this wasn’t like me. It felt like David had gotten me under his spell, made me forget myself.

“So, you’ve been on a lot of dates.” David swirled his drink around in his cup. He hadn’t even had a sip—instead, he was just sort of holding it as if it were emotional support alcohol.

He said it as if it were a question and he was hoping that he could be the answer.

A part of me wanted to straight up just forget about everything and just ask David for a date.

Just screw it. Forget about the dating app, the matches I’ve already written down and highlighted in a notebook somewhere—a huge part of me wanted to forget about all of it and just go after the man I secretly wanted.

The man who was the real reason I kept crawling back to the Thirsty Pearl, night after night, with my next horrible date in tow.

Right.

As much as I might like to jump David’s bones, I couldn’t let myself forget.

My entire dream wedding was on the line.

My life savings were at stake.

I’d poured months of planning into each and every detail until it was utter perfection—this was the wedding of my dreams.

As much as I wanted to throw all of that away for David…

I couldn’t start a relationship with him with that hanging over me.

Alphas just didn’t see beta women as marriage material.

How could I ask him to marry me, when he was probably waiting for his scent match to come along and have her pheromones or whatever come to sweep him off his feet?

How could I deny him what nature—what biology, what the demands of his own body required?

No matter how much I wanted him, I would never be an omega. I would never be what he really needed.

So, as much as I wanted to throw all the social norms to the wind and just do what my heart was begging me to do… I couldn’t.

It wouldn’t be fair to either of us.

“Right,” then I did take a sip… as if the alcohol in my glass had the power to change reality. If it could wash away all the reasons this just couldn’t work and let me just shoot my shot with him. “About two months ago, I walked in on my fiancé when he was having sex with some random woman.”

David put his glasses down sharply, as if he were ready to go find my cheating ex and make him pay for what he’d done to me. “Damn. I am so sorry. You did not deserve that.” Then under his breath David muttered, “What the hell was he thinking?”

“At that point, I had been planning the wedding for over a year.” I took a deep breath as I revealed my truth. “I put so much money into this wedding… and all the planning. It is… everything I have ever wanted. I’ve planned it out exactly how I’ve always imagined it.”

“You are still planning on getting married.” David saw how the dots fit together and connected them.

“I am. It has just been a struggle to find a replacement.”

“When’s the wedding?” David’s voice was no longer that delicious purr.

It sounded strangled, like someone had squeezed all the sexy out of it…

perhaps by mentioning their totally sane plan to get hitched A.S.A.P.

rather than doing all the cancellations and losing a shit ton of money and planning—like a normal mature adult.

I don’t know what made this worse. Hearing all my hopes out loud, stated to someone who wasn’t family… thinking about how strange he must find all of it… or seeing the pained look on his face, as he realized I was looking for a man to marry.

Right from the look on his face, I already knew—this was all too crazy for him.

Suddenly, I didn’t want to be here anymore.

“Right.” I gently placed the glass back on the table.

I reached into my purse for a crisp twenty, dropping it on the table.

The whole time refusing to meet his gaze—right now, I couldn’t look at him.

“Thank you for the drink.” I tried and failed to smile, hoping it didn’t look as pained and awkward as it felt hanging there on my face.

As my heart raced and every fiber of my being screamed at me to take back the words, to go after him.

No. I couldn’t do that. It didn’t matter how much I wanted him. From birth, my genetic code or whatever it was that determined designation made that choice for me.

Why did I think that any of this was a good idea? David and I… we weren’t anything. We were bartender and customer. Today was the first day that we had even flirted .

But when I walked out the door of The Thirsty Pearl… why did I feel worse than when I dropped the ring on my cheating fiancé’s table? David and I were never even together, so why did it feel like I was breaking up with him?