Page 14 of Necessary Time

God, he made me feel old.

“Where did you want to go for dinner?” he asked.

“I haven’t quite made up my mind.”

“Have you narrowed it down?” Wes dropped his cell phone into my cup holder and unrolled the window, throwing his arm out and waving his fingers through the air.

“I have some ideas.”

“Are any of them the kind of place that will make a big to-do about it being your birthday?” Wes grinned at me, dropping his head against the headrest.

“God, I hope not.”

“Why? It’s your birthday. We should celebrate.”

“I don’t want all that attention,” I said, cheeks flushing with embarrassment justthinkingabout it.

“Well,Iwant free dessert.”

“I’ll buy you dessert.”

“This isn’t a date,” he said.

I choked on my spit, putting the car into drive and pulling away from the curb. “I know it’s not.”

“So, birthday dessert it is.”

“Wesley.” I sighed.

“Wesley. You sound like my dad when you say my name like that.”

My next breath was loud, even to my own ears. I realized quickly that it was easier to give Wesley his way than try to fight for my own. Especially when I didn’t necessarily care one way or the other.

“Fine. We can go to an annoying dessert place,” I conceded. “But we’re telling them it’syourbirthday, not mine.”

“That’s fine.” He sat up straighter in his seat, proud, with his arm still dancing out the window like he was weaving something in the breeze. “I don’t mind the attention anyway.”

CHAPTERFIVE

Wesley

If I didn’t know better…

If Colin hadn’t been the one to call me—of all things—and ask me to come out and eat with him, on hisbirthdayno less, I would have sworn the man hated me. Out of the car and in the restaurant, he’d done nothing but regard me with the most focused and intense levels of scrutiny I’d been under in a long time. And that was saying a lot, considering the third degree from my parents when I’d told them I wanted to move to California.

“Are you nervous about the singing bit?” I asked, picking at the last of my burger and drawing out the meal time.

“I just don’t know why you are so dead set on it.”

Colin had barely touched his club sandwich.

Over the course of our meal, I’d learned he was an only child and still very close with his parents. He’d never been married, never been engaged, and had been…well, it sounded like he’d been single forever. Not like I was one to talk in that department, because my longest relationship had been with my best friend and that was only friends, and now it was nothing at all.

Without thinking about it, I touched my lower lip with the pads of my fingers.

“I hear we have a birthday!”

I dropped my hand away from my mouth as quickly as I’d shoved David off of me the night he’d kissed me, and the look on Colin’s face confirmed my own was as flushed as it had been back then. He arched a brow, which felt like a reminder that everything coming our way was my fault and I’d have to bear the brunt of it.