Piper
On a Thursday night, one would have thought it would be easy to enjoy a drink in a bar in peace.
One would have thought wrong.
“The seat is taken,” I said for about the hundredth time in the past half hour. The bar stool in question was home to my purse for the evening. Couldn’t these guys see that?
Across the bar, the bartender winked and tipped his chin up. Whether his expressions were in solidarity with me or hitting on me too didn’t matter. Either way, I couldn’t care. As long as he let me nurse my lemon drop without hassling me to order another before I was ready, his opinions were none of my concern.
The big guy standing near the pool tables who kept catching my eye in the mirror behind the bar was a different story entirely. Tall, built, and sexy with a knowing upturn of the corner of his mouth, he struggled to keep his opinions to himself. Furrowed brow, a ghost of a wink, that hint of a grin told me all about what he thought of some of the guys coming onto me—and my responses to them. Something in the way he watched me hold that empty bar stool in the unexpectedly crowded bar both irritated and intrigued me. Especially since he seemed to be the only man in the place who hadn’t made a run at it.
Until two months ago, it never occurred to me I’d have to endure the bar scene as a single person. On any other evening since the afternoon of The Fuckery, I’d have called Saylor or Chessly to come out with me. But after the day I’d had, all I wanted to do was have a quiet drink without the social pressure of checking out men and “putting myself back out there” as my friends had been harping on me to do since that awful day.
I wanted to unwind, process my failed stats quiz—a first for me that I had no idea how I’d let happen—and figure out next steps for salvaging my GPA. While Stromboli’s would have been the obvious choice, I’d deliberately chosen an off-campus bar I never frequented to be sure I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. About two sips into my drink, that plan shot straight to hell when out of nowhere Charlie showed up and assumed he could park his ass on the seat beside me. I thought I’d sent him packing on his first attempt, but for some stupid reason, he was persistent.
“I’ve been watching since I tried to talk to you twenty minutes ago. At least six guys have asked to sit here, and you’ve waved them all off. Admit it, Pipes. You don’t have a date tonight,” Charlie said when he approached me again.
“My name is Piper, and I never said I had a date. I said the seat is taken.” I stared straight ahead. “I would have thought the fact that I blocked your number and unfriended and unfollowed you everywhere on social media would have been your first clue that I have nothing to say to you.”
“Piper,” he whined. “Don’t be like this. If you’d talk to me, let me explain, I know we could make things right again.” When I wouldn’t look directly at him, he transferred his attention to our reflections in the mirror behind the bar.
The glare I slanted him would have singed a normal person to a crisp. Apparently, Charlie had some superpower shamelessness as he stared back at me with his best wounded puppy eyes. Experience had taught me never to believe that expression again.
“Hey, babe. Sorry I’m late. Thanks for waiting for me,” came the deep voice of the sexy giant who materialized beside me as if by magic. Casually picking up my purse, he handed it to me as he slid onto the empty bar stool. Glancing at my drink, now mostly ice cubes, he added, “Looks like you need a refill. Barkeep.” He signaled the bartender and pointed at my glass. “While you’re at it, grab me a stout. Thanks.”
“Piper?” Surprise and something like worry sounded in Charlie’s voice.
It was that plaintive note in his tone that did it. “Like I’ve been telling people since I arrived, this seat was taken.”
Swinging his attention to my ex, the giant stuck out his beautifully formed yet weirdly scraped up and massive hand. “I’m Bax.”
I hid a grin at the trepidation in Charlie’s movements as he gingerly raised his hand to shake “Bax’s.”
“Charlie.” They shook. “How do you know Piper?”
With satisfaction, I noted the way Charlie flexed his hand when he dropped it to his side.
“That stopped being your business when you did what you did.” Resting my elbow on the back of my bar stool, I looked my former boyfriend full in the face for the first time since he’d started bothering me. “Goodbye, Charlie.”
“But Piper,” he whined again.
“This the one you were telling me about?” the big guy chimed in.
Playing along, I nodded.
“Dude, you blew it.” Bax, if that truly was his name, casually rested his salad-plate-size palm on my thigh below the hem of my skirt. Tingles rippled over my skin, gathering at my center, pulsing and building pressure low in my belly. With super-human force of will, I managed to keep from clamping my thighs together at the unexpected onslaught of sensation from his touch. “Lucky for me.” His nostrils flared as he swung a glance in my direction.
“You can’t be serious,” Charlie said as his eyes ping-ponged between Bax and me. “This guy isn’t your type at all.”
The striking contrast between Charlie’s long, sinewy runner’s body and the mounded muscles Bax’s T-shirt could barely contain might have given him that impression. But it had never been about his body. Charlie’s charm had drawn me to him, kept me around, convinced me my instincts were off when things started going south between us before The Fuckery.
Flicking my eyes between his pouty scowl and Bax’s square-jawed hotness, I said, “You never truly knew me. If you had, you’d have known you were the anomaly. The guys I dated in high school were more like Bax.”
At that comment, the smile Bax gifted me momentarily stopped my heart in a way Charlie’s wounded expression couldn’t touch.
Something in my face must have told him as much. Hunching his shoulders, he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his khakis. “If you’re lucky, I’ll still be around when you come back to your senses.”
“I came to my senses at the beginning of the semester. That’s why you’re my past.”
The bartender set a fresh drink in front of me and a beer in front of Bax, drawing my attention away from my ex’s drama.
Bax lifted his beer to his lips, tipped some back, and gestured the bottle toward Charlie. “See you around, man.” Though his tone was cordial, his dismissive demeanor had my ex backing up. Bax eyed him all the way to the door of the bar before he returned his attention to me.
“Bad breakup, huh?”
I nodded.
“His fault.”
Not a question.
I nodded again.
“Dumbass. How the hell did he let a hottie like you get away?” That smile again. It did funny things to my insides. Offering his hand, he said, “Wyatt Baxter, but most people call me Bax.”
“I’m Piper Maxwell—Wyatt.” His warm hand swallowed mine in a way I weirdly liked.
“Darlin’, you can call me anything you like as long as you call me.” With a tiny squeeze, he let my hand go.
That cheesy line should have put me off. Instead, I heard myself laughing. Glancing over the rim of my glass, I said, “For the record, I was handling him fine.” Wyatt’s brow went up. “But your timely intervention speeded up the process. Thanks.”
He held his beer up for a toast. “Nice to meet you.”
I clinked my glass to his. “Nice to meet you, too.”
We smiled at each other and drank.
“Do I detect a bit of the South in the way you talk?” I asked.
Turning his stool a quarter turn, he rested his elbow on the bar while his jeans-clad knee lightly brushed my bare one. “We moved around some as I was growing up, but I graduated high school in Kentucky.”
“So how did you end up in the Great Northwest?”
The corners of his eyes crinkled in a way that said he laughed often. “Football.”
With a nod, I said, “Of course.”
“What’s your story, Piper Maxwell? Why have you chosen to sit at the bar alone tonight?”
Super-hot and insightful proved an irresistible combination. Before I knew it, I’d shared my bad day with him. “There you have it. I’m a nerd who’s never failed a test before. A quiet drink in a room full of strangers seemed like a good way to forget about screwing up for an evening.” I sipped some vodka and lemon deliciousness. “I chose this bar because I’d never come here before. I didn’t expect to see Charlie here.” Wrinkling my nose in disgust, I said, “His appearance only reminded me this entire semester has been one massive screw-up.”
“You have to let it sit with you for a minute, feel it, and know you never want to feel it again.” For a second, his expression darkened. “Then you let it go.”
“Sage advice from a man wearing a T-shirt that says ‘For people who are bad at identifying things, there are a lot of UFOs out there.’” I laughed.
He glanced down at his shirt as though he’d forgotten about it, glanced back up, and grinned. “The thing is, I know how you feel. I fucking hate to lose. On the few occasions where we’ve done that, Coach has made us sit with it, feel that failure. The next time we go out on the field, we tear it up. Dump all that pent up frustration, anger, and disappointment on the next game.” Tipping his beer up, he downed a long pull. “We play about a thousand times better then.” He tapped his finger on my glass, encouraging me to take a sip. “Tonight, you feel your failure. Tomorrow, you kick some ass.”
A warm glow radiated through me, his words instilling a confidence I’d let falter after The Fuckery.
Fingering my glass around the rim, I rolled it around, letting the ice clink and crash around the cherry on the bottom. “I take it you play for the Wildcats. What position?”
“Middle linebacker.”
“Makes sense.”
He snorted. “Because of the way I’m built?”
“No. Because of the way you sized up my situation and waited until I’d had enough before you stepped in. That and the scraped up state of your hands.” At his wide-eyed blink, I said, “Isn’t that the job of the quarterback of the defense? To assess the formation, signal the other players on the line, and execute a play that stops the offense’s progress?”
My breath caught at the way his face lit up. “You like football?”
I shrugged. “I’ve watched a game or two.”
“You sure have.” A slow sexy wink accompanied his words.
With someone else that move might have come off as kind of silly. Instead, that wink left me hot.
He signaled the bartender for another beer. “You want another—what are you drinking?”
“A lemon drop but I’m done. Two’s my limit so I can drive myself home.”
“The lady here will have a water please,” he said when the bartender delivered his beer.
“Thank you.” By not pushing me to keep drinking, the man scored major points and made me want to know more about him. With a tilt of my head, I studied him from beneath my brows. “What are you majoring in?”
“Art and graphic design.”
The way he straightened his shoulders when he said that made me think someone had given him a hard time about his major. I had to admit, I’d expected something like kinesthetics or personal training, which was wildly stereotypical considering my punk rock style might have given someone the wrong idea about how seriously I took my business major.
Touring his sculpted arms with my eyes, I noted the absence of tats. “I thought art majors liked to decorate themselves.”
“We do.” His wolfish grin drew me closer. “But mine are private.”
“Is that right? How private?”
It had been a while since I’d flirted with a stranger in a bar, but from the minute we locked gazes in the mirror not long after I sat down, I’d sensed a connection with this man.
His unusually light green eyes darkened to a mossy color that sent an arrow of sensation straight to my core. “Too private to show you in here.”
“That’s a bummer.” Crunching on a cube of ice to cool myself off, I clocked his disappointment. “Maybe you can describe yours then.”
He shifted, his inner thigh lightly brushing my outer thigh, subtly caging me in. The move sent a shiver through me in direct opposition to the expression of pure innocence on his handsome face. “I have two below the waistband of my boxers.”
Blinking hard I asked, “Why?”
Deep velvety laughter enveloped me. “Not there, Piper. Jeez. Give me a little credit for a sense of self-preservation.”
The corner of my mouth tipped up. “You play football and talk about self-preservation.”
“I take very good care of myself.” Those arresting eyes twinkled. “Certain parts most especially.”
Delicately tracing the scrapes on his hand, I said, “I can see that.”
I could also see how the hairs on his forearm stood to attention when I touched his skin. Interesting.
Glancing down at where I continued to explore his battle wounds, he grinned. “I’ve been told I have nice—hands.”
“You’re a funny guy, Wyatt Baxter.” Signaling the bartender, I reached for my purse. “Thanks again for making my otherwise shitty day better.”
“Wait. You’re leaving?” The crestfallen expression on his face cracked me up. Pulling his phone from his back pocket, he checked the time. “It’s only ten.” Waggling his brows, he said, “You have hours before you turn into a pumpkin, Cinderella.”
“Ha. Ha,” I wrinkled my nose at him. “I have a nine o’clock lab, and I don’t want to repeat today’s fiasco.”
Covering my hand holding my debit card, he sobered. “Hey, I got this.” When I raised a brow, he added, “No strings. No expectations.”
He fished his wallet from the front pocket of his jeans. Beneath his touch, I relaxed, the gentle pressure of his hand more reassuring than commanding. The bartender’s eyes darted between us, then he offered his card reader to Wyatt who paid our tab.
“Entertaining and generous.” I smiled as I slid off my stool and held out my hand. “It truly was nice to meet you.”
His eyes held mine even closer than our palms touching as we shook hands, and a frission of heat arced through me to throb between my thighs.
Slowly, reluctantly, he let me go. “How ’bout I walk you to your car?”
“Sure. Thanks,” popped out of my mouth before I had time to think about it.
Of course, if I thought about it, I’d have to admit my intense attraction to this guy. The heat radiating from his hand on the small of my back puckered my nipples and pulsed my core as we walked out to the parking lot. After The Fuckery, I had no intention of becoming involved with anyone any time soon, but as we neared my car, I decided I wouldn’t be opposed to a hook up with superhot football player.