Page 67 of She's Like the Wind

And for one long, breathless moment…I let him.

I let myself feelhim. Let him feel me.

Then I blinked, broke the trance, and turned back to my carefully constructed reality.

Gage was a fantasy, and like all good fantasies, the reality would never measure up.

At least, that’s what I was telling myself.

CHAPTER 23

Gage

The Marigny Opera House smelled like glitter and sweat and candle wax—almost like it probably did when it was an honest-to-God church.

Someone had spilled champagne on a velvet drape near the stage. I’d already wiped down two pews, stacked twenty folding chairs, and gathered so many lipstick-smeared coupe glasses that my hands were starting to smell like citrus and sugar.

“Well, this was a whole different kind of hot,” one of the performers, Tess Ticular, said, their tone wry.

They nodded toward the stage where two of the organizers whom I’d been introduced to earlier, were dressed up like burlesque dancers in feathered robes and were spinning like dervishes, sequins catching every last flicker of light.

“It was wild,” I agreed.

Tess offered me a drink—Pimm’s, garnished with cucumber and an overachieving sprig of mint. I shook my head. “I’m good.”

They shrugged and took a long sip of the Pimm’s through a straw. “Now, handsome, I was wondering if you’d like to come have a spliff and a dinner with me,” they offered suggestively.

This was New Orleans, and it wasn’t the first time I’d been propositioned by someone whose team I didn’t play on.

“I’m still on duty.” I stacked a folded chair against the wall.

“What do you do, doll?”

“Construction.”

“No wonder you look good in a toolbelt.”

“He’s Naomi’s, Tess.” Aurelie clapped my could-have-been-dinner-date on their back.

Tess frowned. “She gets all the good ones.”

That’s when we all turned and saw Naomi and Jonah on the other side of the room. They stood close, not touching, but his body leaned toward hers, hers slightly tilted away.

A conversation that looked more like a maybe than a yes, I told myself. But it didn’t make me feel better. My stomach twisted—not in anger or even jealousy—just an ache that she’d been mine,all mine, and I’d squandered it.

I wanted to be beside her again—not just in body, but in that space where people go soft with each other.

But that wasn’t mine tonight.

And maybe not ever again.

Scary fucking thought.

“Is she into him?” Tess spoke with the pink straw of their drink close to their lips.

“Wouldn’t you be into him?” Aurelie asked, amused.

Tess shrugged. “Not when Mr. Toolbelt is here with hisbig…hammer.”