Page 13 of Something Like Sugar (Pine Forest Something #2)

SHANA

I ’m sweaty. Worst of all, there’s giant paddle fans here. It’s part of the Cowboy’s Paradise aesthetic…the one Dustin helped create. These are his handcrafted tables we’re sitting at, after all. The very bench my butt rests on right now was once sanded by his own two hands.

Oh my God, why did I think that, get ahold of yourself, Shana! “You’re on a date!”

“Huh? Yeah. We are.” My date raises an eyebrow, because I’m freaking weird , talking out loud when I don’t mean to, but in about twenty minutes with the wind percolating above me, I’ll probably be a popsicle in a tiny red dress that I never should have let Lemon and Jeremy talk me into.

I tug at the hem to stretch to cover my nether regions, and I wonder how Lemon doesn’t have an entire harem by now with these outfits.

I glance over my shoulder, certain I feel someone watching me, but there’s nobody there, and it’s not healthy the way my heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach as I scan the crowd and see nothing.

I like you in red.

The words float across my brain.

Airy and light, everything they shouldn’t be since they come from a self-pronounced watcher. That should scare me, but nothing scares me anymore like the idea of Dad leaving me.

And here I am, back to the thought I can never strike from my brain no matter what deranged situation I may be in.

Like a date. I smooth out my dress as I try to focus on what Lawrence is saying.

He’s handsome. In a Kentucky Derby, goes-tochurch-but-might-still-have-a-couple-DUIs-his-daddypaid-to-cover kind of way.

If you like that sort of handsome.

Which I don’t.

There’s a certain familiarity in the way he bounces his knee when he speaks, as if his excitement drives his every move. I can’t place where I’ve seen that sort of energy before.

His mouth moves as he speaks about something legal and boring, and I imagine a sliver ring right where his teeth scrape his bottom lip.

Damn it.

“You know what I mean?” Lawrence takes a long swig of his overpriced chardonnay, a drink I hate but let him order for me anyway because he seemed like he really wanted to show off his platinum card.

But shoot…what was he saying?

“Yeah, that’s crazy,” I lie, offering a half laugh incase that’s appropriate for whatever he just said. I’m not even sure if it was funny or serious.

“Right!” He nods his head in agreement, so I must have hit the mark conversationally, but holy moly I’m bad at socializing with people I don’t know. When did listening and staying in the present become so hard for me?

Probably when the present became about Dad dying.

“I’m sorry…did I say something wrong?” Lawrence sits back in his chair, the sparkle in his eyes just a moment ago replaced with a desperate despondency I feel an immediate need to remedy.

“No, I’m sorry. I just…remembered something. I’ll deal with it later.” Second lie.

How many times will I lie to this man I might sleep with?

I shiver as he inspects me, and I hate that there’s nothing there when his eyes are on me.

I want there to be.

But there’s no thrill like Dustin.

My watcher.

My insides heat replaying how I touched myself in the window.

Knowing he was there. Knowing he wanted it.

I was so mad at him for rejecting me at the studio, it felt powerful to be the one in control up on my balcony, the moon lighting me like a wanton Juliette in the sassy red dress I wear right now.

At least Romeo had the balls to show his face when he came in the night.

My phone goes off, a loud twinkling chime that makes me jump. Lawrence looks annoyed. “Sorry, I forgot to turn this on silent. I like, never get messages, so it could be… I just need to check this.”

He fake-laughs, barely masking the manufactured sound of it and eyeing me with something that feels a lot like regret.

Regret going out with someone like me, when he could have Miranda , or whoever Dustin was with the other night? Girls who don’t blank out half the dinner conversation because they’re thinking about men they’ll never have?

Probably.

“Sorry, it’ll just be a minute.” I begin to worry it’s about Dad and my heartbeat picks up, my hands sweaty as my fingers slide across the lock screen. Relief fills me when I see it’s not Lemon or any of the health team.

It’s a number I don’t recognize, though.

If it’s not spam, they’ll leave a message, so I tuck the phone back in my purse and return my attention to my date, who has resorted to stacking the Stevia packets in tiny rows to keep himself occupied, humming a tune I faintly recognize.

I’m boring him, too. I sigh. “I’ve been a terrible date,” I tell him, sliding the Stevia by the ketchup.

His eyes flick to the movement and back to me before he finally offers a smile, one that doesn’t seem to do anything for me, unfortunately, but here we are.

“I’ve had a lot going on, but I want to be here.

I promise. Tell me more about your work. ”

“Right, where was I?” He bites his lip as he muses, and I’m not even annoyed there’s no sparkling ring between his teeth when he lets it pop free.

Just me over here, super interested in men with frosted tips who wear blue suits and brown shoes, and…ew, is that a golf tattoo on his wrist?

I’m not even gagging.

“So, have you ever heard of split-liability? I won this massive suit in Valley a couple years back between a tractor trailer and a circus train, and you would not believe the amount of property damage you have to claim for a herd of baby elephants. It was…”

Lawrence drones on about assets and mediations, and the rather extreme length his poor paralegals went to securing statistics from seventeen zoos across the country on the average life expectancy of a rare, white Bengal tiger…

and I want to stab my ears out. Dramatic, I know, but like, holy actual moly, I was a dance major. And he is…a money maker.

Everything he’s talked about this entire night has been a dollar sign, assessing values and risks at every corner.

“This is worse than my root canal.”

My eyes widen as it slips out, and Lawrence draws back, disgust and surprise etched across his features.

“I’m sorry, am I boring you, Miss Dancer Sixty-Nine ?” He spits the words at me, and even with sticks and stones, they sting. “I thought you were a sophisticated ballerina. I got us tickets to Swan Lake and everything. I thought I matched for a classy date.”

“At the Sugar Stable? Cowboy’s Paradise?

” I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but like, it’s Flinger.

We all know what we’re here for. And Swan Lake performed by the regional ballet is literally the direct competition to my own studio’s classes, plus I’ve already seen it twice to scout dancers for next invitational, something he may have learned if he’d asked me a single thing about myself the entire hour we’ve been here.

“You know, I had higher hopes for you.”

If I had the confidence to hit someone, this entitled asshole would be my first choice. Instead, I clench my chair, unable to move as each insult he hurls becomes a weight crushing the air from my lungs.

“If you just wanted sex, you should have told me you were that kind of dancer.” He spits, raking his gaze to the apex of my thighs. “A lap dance would have cost me less.”

What did he just say?

I want to speak, but I come up with nothing. My lips are dry, my throat is dust, my hands are the only thing that seem to be leaking sweat from my body like I’m a witch and water is my chosen element, and worst of all, I can’t think .

I can’t think because I can’t be here.

I shouldn’t be here.

I should be at home with Dad.

With my dying father.

My breathing quickens and it feels even tighter in my chest. “I…I’m—” The words are ragged. And I want to cry, but it burns as I inhale.

Doubt floods my mind as I think of how I put myself here, and I hate it. I want to go back to my studio, under my hoodie, to a dark room where I can spin and spin and spin and forget the world around me exists apart from the gravity holding me down.

If it weren’t for spinning, I’d float away.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Lawrence snaps his fingers in my face, but before I know what’s happening a flash in the corner catches my notice, an arm reaches over me and a large hand wraps around Lawrence’s golden-glad wrist. The man squeezes, until Lawrence screams, turning red in the face and arching his body, pinned to the table.

“What the fuck! I wasn’t going to touch her! Let me go!”

I whip my head around, my body sizzling with an energy I wish I could say was fear for my date being assaulted—even if he was a jerk. But it isn’t. It’s a feeling I can’t describe. One I only feel when…

“Dustin?” I shove from the table, watching as he swings his gaze to me for a split second, green eyes angry and penetrating, like I’ve seen them only one other time in my life.

“I wasn’t…to touch…touch her!” Lawrence gasps between a smushed windpipe, still writhing on the table as locals gather around. Nobody questions Dustin.

Not in this town.

“You’re damn right you weren’t.” Dustin’s grip tightens around my date’s hand until actual tears spring from his eyes, spilling down his reddened cheeks. “Leave.”

“Okkk- Okay!”

Dustin looks my way as he lowers to my date’s ear, his voice a whisper I’m not sure was meant for Lawrence at all. I open my mouth to stop him, say something, but I’m not sure what.

Because the truth is, I like Dustin Campbell’s crazed green eyes on me far too much to say a single thing that would ever break his stare.

So, I let it happen.

I watch as he slays my dragons.

I listen as he climbs towers.

“She hates Swan Lake.”

It takes a lot to make your body do the opposite of what it wants, but I do.

As tears fall down my face that came from God knows where, a place inside of me that will never stop wanting him, I suppose.

A place that holds years of flames we’ve kindled and refused to let die for the fuel we continue to feed them, I swipe them away on the backs of my hands, and I defy my body’s desires.

I run.

Because I’ll never have this man who fights for me, who knows me like no other, not in the way I want. And it’s not the first time I’ve faced that fact.