Edge of Chaos (Love on the Edge #1) (6 page)

Lindsay touched her perfectly wavy blonde locks. “No, but some of my best friends are Sisters. Luckily one of them invited Dash to the party.” She hugged his arm. “How did you and John meet?” she asked, her eyes jumping from me to John.

“Just officially met him tonight.”

“Oh, well, then how did you and Paul meet?”

I shook my head. “Met him tonight, too.”

Lindsay cut her eyes to Dash.

“Uh oh! Busted!” Paul said, drowning his laughter with the rest of his beer.

“Blake is in our atmosphere class,” Dash said.

“I see.” Her voice was a pitch higher than a moment ago.

A young waitress with long black hair picked the perfect moment to sashay up to our table.

“Finally, I’m starved,” Dash said, eyeing the girl. “Seriously, Diana, could you have taken any longer?”

“Don’t start with me, Dash. I’m the only server tonight. Stacey called in sick.” The waitress took a grease-stained pad from her apron and pulled a pen from behind her ear. “Ladies first,” she said, her eyes landing on Lindsay.

“Salad, with Italian dressing on the side.”

Diana glanced at me. I quickly grabbed the tiny menu smashed between the napkin holder and the ketchup in the center of our table and scanned it. “I’ll do the BBQ burger with everything and fries.” I slid the menu back in its place.

Dash stared at me with his mouth hanging open.

“What? I worked all night; I’m starved.”

He grinned. “You just made the perfect order—my favorite actually—but you made one big mistake.”

“And that was?”

“You didn’t order a beer with it.” He turned to the waitress. “I’ll have exactly what she’s having, plus a Native Amber. Bottle, not tap.
Bring her one, too, will you, Diana?”

“Whatever you say.” She trotted off, quickly disappearing among the crowded tables.

I eyed him. “First-name basis with the staff?”

“I come here a lot.”

“I figured.”

Our food and beers came not long after, and I devoured every bit of it. The beer complimented my burger perfectly. Dash wasn’t joking when he said this dive had great food. No wonder it was packed.

We talked supercells and Blue October between bites while Lindsay pecked at her bowl of lettuce and pouted. She wasn’t obsessed with storms like the rest of us, but she was clearly obsessed with Dash. She hung on every word he said and desperately sought his attention—grabbing at his hand even if he was using it to eat or rubbing his back while he told a chase story. I only noticed because I knew the gestures all too well. I used to paw at Justin that way, desperate for any kind of confirmation that he loved me as much as I loved him. That desire faded after time, natural after being together as long as Justin and I had been.

The thought of him returned the simmer in my gut. My earlier anger had been blissfully forgotten, lost among my new friends and their endless stories about storms I’d kill to see. I reached in my purse and checked my phone. No missed calls. He was really being an ass. I huffed and finished the last of my second beer.

“You all right?” Dash asked, leaning closer to me.

He smelled like Irish Spring soap and pure man. Heat from his body so close to mine landed on my skin. I backed away slightly before noticing Lindsay’s absence. She must have snuck off to the bathroom while I revived my anger.

“I’m fine,” I said, glancing around for Diana. Once she locked eyes with me, I held up my bottle. She gave me a nod from across the room.

Dash raised his eyebrows.

“It’s nothing.”

Diana set my third beer down in front of me, and I quickly took a long swig. My head was already fuzzy and my tongue was thick. I really needed to build up a tolerance to this stuff, but it wasn’t like I got a ton of opportunities to drink. The disconnected sensation was extremely welcome.

“Want to talk about it?” Dash asked, his green eyes never straying from mine. He put his hand on my back and tension I didn’t know I held uncoiled under his touch. He seemed like someone I could trust.

Maybe it was the beer.

I took another gulp. “It’s my boyfriend, Justin.”

He nodded, allowing me to continue at my own pace.

“He’s just so . . .” Where to begin? “Well, he’s super pissed I came out tonight.”

“He wanted you to be with him instead?”

“He said he did, but I know better. I’d be nothing but an extra body in the place.” I took another drink. It was probably a bad idea to talk to Dash about Justin, but I needed to talk to someone, anyone. And he was here, willing to listen. “He’s having an all-boys COD party.”

“Call of Duty, nice.” Dash smiled, but the grin dropped when I gave him a stern look. “Anyway,” he continued, “I’m confused; why is he pissed?”

“Because he’d rather me be at home alone than out with friends.” I went ahead and used the word, hoping that after tonight I really would be able to consider them all friends.

“That seems unfair.”

I shrugged. “He’ll find some way to apologize for everything tomorrow.”

“And you’ll let him off the hook?”

“It’s what I do. After eight years, there isn’t anything else to do.” Every time I even mentioned taking a break he threatened to kill himself—the last time he’d grabbed a bottle of pain pills he’d recently been prescribed after a small hand injury on the job, and said he’d swallow them all. My chest tightened at the thought, the rope he held me with constricting around my heart.

“Holy shit, eight years. You’re practically married.”

“Oh no I’m not,” I said, my words dragging slightly. Justin had brought up the idea of marriage more times than I could count, but I’d constantly squashed the idea. I always blamed my parents’ divorce, but really I couldn’t see myself walking down the aisle with him. I already felt bound enough. “It has been a long time,” I said and looked around the room for Diana. She handed Paul and John two more frosty mugs where they played shuffleboard. She saw me and nodded. “All my life really,” I continued, twirling my third empty in front of me. “It’s hard to remember anything before him.”

“That must get difficult. Not experiencing anything outside of him,” Dash said, his words terribly close to the ones my mother had lectured me with last week.

“Yep.” I nearly launched into the University of Tulsa fiasco. Maybe I’d had too much to drink, or maybe it was just Dash, but talking to him made me want to confess all my life’s wrong turns and have him tell me they were just detours. I tried to sharpen my fuzzy focus and grinned at Diana’s perfect timing as I took my fourth beer from her. “Thanks, this is helping loads.”

She eyed Dash. “She isn’t driving is she?”

“No. I’ll get her home.”

My eyelids were heavy, and it took me forever to lock on to him. “Where’d your tiny friend go?” I asked, happy to change the subject from my relationship to his.

He chuckled, the throaty rumble quickly becoming a sound that soothed my insides. “She already left. Never stays here long. Isn’t really her scene.”

“I get that,” I said. “You’re so nice. To her . . . you’re so nice to her.”

“How do you figure?”

“Just a thing a girl can tell.”

“A thing a girl can tell when she isn’t used to it,” he said, his voice growing softer.

“You could say that.”

Two more beers later and the crowded bar was on a permanent tilt. The floor swayed underneath my feet as I walked toward the exit, but luckily I had the strength of Dash to lean on. In the back of my mind I knew I’d regret this all tomorrow and be terribly embarrassed, but those things were hard to focus on—especially with the edges of my vision blurring.

I heard Dash say, “Whoa,” before I blacked out completely.

GRAVEL FILLED MY
head—tiny pebbles that rolled around and caused sharp pains to burst throughout my brain. The smell of hot coffee hit me, and in the back of my mind I figured Justin had come over with it as a peace offering for acting like such a jerk last night. He had a spare key and could easily have let himself in.

The thought triggered my curiosity. I let go of the heavy blanket of sleep, and peeled apart my eyelids.

I saw blond hair instead of black.

The guy leaned over my nightstand only inches away. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. Sleep totally forgotten, I leaped up and hurled a right hook at his face.

He caught my fist a second before it hit him square in the nose.

“Whoa! Easy, woman!” he yelled and let go of my fist, backing up a few feet.

His voice and a clear picture of his face had me instantly sighing in relief.

“Dash?”

He held his hands up in the air as if I pointed a loaded gun at him. I glanced down. I still had my work clothes on from last night. I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten home.

Looking at Dash I made an easy guess.

My relief was followed quickly by sheer embarrassment. My very unsexy beige bra hung off my bedroom doorknob, and I had other equally unappealing clothes strung across my floor, plus an array of stuffed animals with their insides spewing out of their eye sockets and earholes, courtesy of Hail.

Between classes, work, and Justin, cleaning was always the last thing on my mind. Of course, if I’d known Dash Lexington would be standing in my bedroom right now, I might’ve made an attempt.

I relaxed my attack stance—which had to look absolutely ridiculous standing barefoot on my queen bed—and hopped to the floor. Had he taken off my shoes and socks?

Blood rushed to my cheeks, and I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“Sorry,” I said.

Dash smiled and dropped his hands. He eyed a tall white paper cup on my nightstand. “Coffee. Figured you’d need it. Hope you like it black.”

“Only way I drink it,” I said, scooping up the cup and taking a careful sip. The richness soothed the pulsing ache between my eyes.

“Me, too.” He put his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight.

I took another drink, swallowing hard. “Can you give me a minute to change?” I decided it’d be easier to ask him about last night in a fresh pair of sweats.

He nodded and turned out of my door. I shut it behind him and quickly ripped off the smokey clothes. I tossed them in the corner next to my small black desk and kicked the other clothes littering my floor toward it.

After slipping on my softest gray sweats and a maroon T-shirt, I yanked my hair into a ponytail and walked down the hallway.

Dash sat on my couch, Hail practically in his lap. She leaned her massive white head into his chest as he rubbed under her neck. Her long pink tongue dangled out of her mouth, and I swear the bulldog smiled.

“What?” he asked, noting my open-mouthed stare.

Hail spared me a glance, her butt wiggling.

I took a seat next to them. “She’s never reacted like that to a guy before.” Technically Dash was only the second male to enter my apartment, but she’d never once acted like that toward Justin. She barely tolerated his presence. “Are you a dog whisperer or something?”

Dash leaned down and planted a kiss on top of Hail’s head. “Nope, but obviously I’m good with the ladies.”

I licked my lips, unable to stop my eyes from trailing his body. He looked unbelievably good, despite his slightly wrinkled clothes. I noticed he only had socks on and glanced around, spotting his shoes near the door.

“Did you sleep here last night?” I blurted out. My heart pounded in my chest. How much had I forgotten?

He tilted his head. “Wow, you really are a lightweight. You don’t remember me bringing you home?”

I shook my head.

“You were a challenge.”

Heat swept across my skin. Like, hard to get me into bed challenge? Had I been that drunk? I mentally searched my body for any sensations that would let me know if we’d had sex.

“You had a hard time giving me directions. Luckily you live so close to the bar. That is a sweet perk. You could walk if you wanted to.”

I sighed. Of course. I was terrible with directions—even sober. That
would
be a challenge.

Hail sighed and dropped across Dash’s lap. Apparently she decided he was staying for a while.

He rested his hand on top of her back. “I crashed out here since it was so late. I went out and grabbed us some coffee and came back. Didn’t want you to wake up alone and confused. Sorry, was that crossing a line?”