I swallowed roughly before I spoke again.
“And you’re a man to keep his promises, are you not?” I repeated my previous question, my voice as uneven as my heartbeat.
He gave me a long intense look that did not belong between two strangers. Something tugged at the bottom of my stomach with that stare, with my hands pressed into his chest, with the nearness of his body, and the energy around it.
I was in tune with energy. I studied it. And I’d always believed that people gave off certain vibrations when two souls recognized each other, for good or for bad, those vibrations became more intense.
Of course, every single member of my family thought this was “new age bullshit”— it was just Lucy that said that, but the sentiment was echoed by everyone else.
But I believed in it. Because it happened with people. People who would become important to me in the future sparked something.
This was different than that.
This was an inferno.
Not entirely unpleasant. But not as nice as any kind of ‘love at first sight’ was communicated in any movie.
“Yeah, Sunshine,” he murmured, somehow getting himself heard above the music. “I’m a man who keeps promises.”
Something about that sentence was so final. So ominous.
And I wanted more.
“You want to make a promise to buy me a beer?” I asked, deciding that I could not possibly leave this bar now.
I would stay in this place, for as long as this man was going to be in it.
And I was going to be leaving with him, I decided.
He glanced down to my hands, which were still fisting his tee. I probably should’ve let go, it wasn’t exactly socially acceptable to be fondling a man’s pecs when you didn’t even know his last name. Or first name for that matter.
I should’ve let go.
I did not.
“I shouldn’t,” he said, moving his gaze upward at the same time my heart sank.
Another intense look.
“But I will,” he added.
I exhaled a breath I didn’t even know I was holding.
“You know, I don’t even know your name,” I said after taking the beer he handed me.
He had first directed us to a miraculously quiet corner of the bar that did not need yelling or require the dodging of drunk teenagers.
“And what does a name change about this situation?”
“Well, not much,” I pondered. “But it does mean I can stop calling you ‘that guy who almost punched another guy’s teeth out for me.’” I paused, arching my brow. “It’s a little long.”
His smirk widened, though his eyes hardened at the mention of the circumstances of our meeting. He was that guy. The protective, alpha guy. Usually I didn’t go for instincts left around from a bygone era where women were encouraged—no, forced to be helpless and men were the ‘protectors.’
But I was going for him.
In a big way.
“Heath,” he said, watching me drink my beer.
I swallowed the liquid self-consciously. Another abnormal thing.
Nerves.
I was not a girl that got nervous, in any situation, but especially in front of guys. Maybe I hadn’t cared enough in order to be nervous? Because wasn’t that what nerves were? A fear that you’re not going to live up to someone’s expectations?
I didn’t want to live up to anyone’s expectations because I didn’t believe in them.
Of course until about ten minutes ago.
“Heath,” I repeated, tasting the name and mixing it in with the beer. “It suits you.”
“Do names really suit people?”
I shrugged. “Well, if it was Chester then I don’t think it would.”
He smirked and took a long pull of his beer while he watched me. He didn’t rush to fill the silence between us.
It was an unusual thing to do with someone you just met. Usually long and comfortable silences were reserved for the most intimate of relationships. Girlfriends you’ve known forever and who could say everything with a raised brow. In my case, it was my older sister who blew up cars for fun.
And Rosie.
She also blew up cars for fun.
Normally those cars belonged to guys I’d dated.
But I didn’t do silence with anyone else. Mostly because everyone I spent time with was loud. And I was loud when I was with them. Always searching for a new adventure, a new experience.
Now I was learning that silence with an attractive stranger staring at you was the best kind of adventure.
“You got a name?” he asked finally. “I can keep callin’ you ‘that girl that lights up a piece of shit bar and makes me make promises that I shouldn’t be makin’, and not breaking ones I itch to make’...but it’s a little long too.”
My breath left me in a whoosh.
He thought I lit up a bar?
Not exactly poetry, but I thought poetry was pretentious and I didn’t get it anyway.
“Polly,” I said on little more than a whisper.
His eyes flared, something passed over his face.
“Does it suit me?” I asked, finding my normal flirty persona from where his stare had made me fumble and drop it on the sticky floor.
“Nah,” he said after a long pause. “I don’t think anything as simple as a name can suit you, especially not one word. But it does the best it can.”
Holy. Shit.
That was poetry.
“I totally wouldn’t have flunked English if you were around,” I said.
He was taking a pull of his beer when I spoke, and he made a choking sound as he tried to laugh while swallowing.
I smirked.
It was strange to see a man like him, a man who looked like he could conquer anything with his muscles and general air of alpha, be taken down by a smart comment and a badly timed sip of beer.
He made a throat clearing sound that I felt right in between my legs.
How a throat clearing could turn me on I had no idea.
But it did.
“You okay?” I asked innocently.
He glared at me in response. But a friendly glare. One that I definitely felt in between my legs.
“I would ask what you do, little girl, but I’d say you’re barely in college,” he said, his voice smoother than whisky.
Wait, whisky wasn’t smooth, I’d tried it once and it was horrible and unpleasant. There was nothing unpleasant about his voice. It was like the way you imagined whisky would taste. Sharp. Deep. Filling.
“What do you do?” I said instead of acknowledging the question. Because if I did that, then I’d have to correct him to say that I wasn’t even in college yet.
You had to graduate high school for that.
College was a big farce invented by the powers that be to put parents in debt and children on Adderall while they got rich and we thought that to succeed in life you somehow needed a hundred-thousand-dollar piece of paper. But I’d go. Because of my parents.
“I’m a Marine,” he said, voice losing that teasing glint in a matter of seconds.
I regarded him, unsure of how I didn’t see it before. Well, I totally knew why I didn’t see it before because I was totally distracted about how effing hot he was. I’d never seen a guy that hot up close.
But he looked military. His hair was close cut, his muscles bulged out of his olive tee—that was expertly pressed—and oh, there were dog tags dangling from his fricking neck.