Reclaim Me: The New Haven Series (Book #4) by JL Seegars

Author:JL Seegars [Seegars, JL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

21

HUNTER

Then

“Four years is such a big deal!” Indigo squeals. “We should be doing more than just going out to dinner. We should go dancing or get⁠—”

She stops, catching herself before she suggests that I celebrate four years of sobriety by taking a trip to a bar, club, speakeasy, or whatever the fuck kind of haven for vices she frequents with her friends. I’m not judging. I know everyone doesn’t have the same issues with self-control as I do, but I am tired of having to remind Indigo of my limits. I’m even more tired of her looking disappointed every time she remembers them.

“Never mind,” she says, reaching up to fix the collar of my shirt even though it’s fine. Her posture reeks of self-consciousness with an undercurrent of annoyance, and I wish I felt compelled to comfort her, but I don’t.

I don’t feel anything when I look at her but confused about why I’m still doing this thing with her, especially after knowing what it’s like to kiss Rae. To hold her body in my hands and hear the sounds of her pleasure, her desire, in my ears.

“You look handsome,” Indigo tells me, her smile too wide as she runs a hand down my chest.

“Thanks. You—” She looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to finish my sentence, but the compliment I was about to pay her gets all tangled up in my throat as Rae walks into the kitchen. She’s wearing a sky-blue baby doll dress that matches the stripes in my shirt, and her hair is down around her shoulders. Recently, sometime after the kiss that we still haven’t spoken of, she had Dee give her face-framing bangs that make her almond eyes look wider and even more brown.

And now those eyes are on me and Indigo, taking in our closeness while the scent of her perfume—an expensive formula with notes of pear and vanilla that I got her for her twenty-third birthday just last week—floats into the room around us.

“Oh, Indigo, you’re here.”

The snark in her tone isn’t evident to Indigo, but I hear it.

“Yeah, Hunter asked me to come to his ceremony, and I thought it was important for me to be here to support him.”

I can’t read Rae at all. Her expression is flat, her eyes emotionless. It’s the way she looks when she’s got a million different things going through her mind, but it’s not safe to let them out. She told me once that she mastered the skill when she first started dance, and her teacher, Ms. Alice, told her she needed thicker skin if she was going to make it as a Black ballerina. I’ve never, not once in the four years of us knowing each other, seen her deploy the skill. That she’s doing it now means I’ve fucked up tremendously, and I don’t even have to dig deep to know how because the answer to that question is standing right beside me, her arms wrapped around my waist possessively.

“Well, isn’t that nice,” Rae says finally, moving further into the kitchen.

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