Free Plus One by Brighton Walsh Page B

want you screaming my name by the end of it.”
    * * *
    This had to be the longest wedding Ian had ever attended. True, they’d only been there for two hours, but the thought of what he planned to do to Olivia once the evening came to a close was almost too much for him. He’d been sporting a hard-on for the majority of the night, simply watching her move around the room.
    He wanted her in his arms, under him in her bed. He wanted her, period. Though he knew he needed to be patient. Olivia was having a good time catching up with her friends, some of whom she hadn’t seen since college. She was in her element, floating from person to person as she took up easy conversations with most everyone. He watched from his perch at their table, taking a pull from his beer.
    “Hi, um, Ian, right?” The deep voice came from Ian’s right, and he turned, noticing one of his table mates from earlier at dinner.
    “Yeah, hi.” Ian extended his hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name earlier.”
    “Chad,” he supplied, shaking Ian’s hand. He leaned back in his chair, looking in the direction Ian had been before he’d been interrupted. “You’re here with Olivia, right?”
    Ian nodded, smiling. “Yeah.”
    “You are a lucky bastard,” Chad said with a chuckle. “We graduated from U of M the same year. How long have you guys been together?”
    “Oh...” Ian cleared his throat, looking over to where Olivia was standing. “We’re not...” He shook his head, turning his attention back to Chad. “Olivia and I aren’t in a relationship.”
    “Ah. Sorry, I just assumed...”
    Chad continued rambling, but Ian was no longer listening. His focus was now across the room on Olivia. She was surrounded by a group of her friends, leaning in to give hugs to a few of them. As he looked at the people who were around her, several of them men, he couldn’t help but feel the sharp sting of jealousy. He wanted to be there with her, by her side, being introduced to her friends as someone more than just some guy she brought with to the wedding because she had bad luck in dating.
    As he stared at the vast space separating them now, he couldn’t help but see the parallels to the space separating what each of them wanted from this...whatever this was between them. Olivia was content with being sometimes fuck buddies, and he had no interest in that—never had.
    He wondered how he’d ever talked himself into that, because he knew—even though he’d tried to convince himself otherwise—he could never be something less than with her. As much as he’d tried to deny it while he’d been living in Rochester, he knew she’d always been the one. The only one.
    And he knew now, it had to be all or nothing.

Chapter Seventeen
    “You’ve been quiet,” Olivia remarked from the passenger’s seat. She looked at Ian, watching the play of streetlights over the sharp planes of his face as they drove toward her condo.
    He shrugged. “Just tired, I guess.”
    Pursing her lips, she studied him closely. His jaw was set tight, his hands gripping the steering wheel. He sure didn’t look tired. He looked frustrated...upset. Though why, she had no idea. While the evening hadn’t gone exactly as she’d hoped it would have, she didn’t think anything had happened to cause distress for him.
    It had started out well enough, but sometime after dinner, it seemed like Ian had pulled away from her. There hadn’t been the touches, kisses, general intimacy she’d hoped there would be on their first real date after crossing that invisible physical line.
    She hoped that once they got up to her place, he’d let her know what was bothering him. Maybe he was having second thoughts about the whole thing between them. Though after what he’d said just before leaving for the wedding, she couldn’t understand what could possibly have caused a complete one-eighty in him.
    Maybe it was something else entirely, like the interview he’d had last week. It was