Free Here & Now by Melyssa Winchester, Joey Winchester Page B

tell him how wrong he is but also thank him for trying to make me feel better, the waiter makes his appearance, first by putting two full glasses of water down in front of us and then following it up by asking if we’re ready to order.
    “Are you ready?” Dillon asks, his voice quiet, his eyes never once leaving mine and my own gaze unable to break away from the way his lips move, something that even with all the time that’s passed never gets old.
    Nodding, he slips the open menu out of my hand and seeing the page I stayed on, turns to the waiter and proves again why I’m so glad he’s the one I fell in love with. He orders for me and then for himself.
    There are times when I’ve spoken aloud where people haven’t judged, but when put next to the amount of times they have, it still makes it hard for me to take a chance. People can say I’m tough all they want, but in a lot of ways, that toughness is only skin deep. It doesn’t go all the way through.
    This is definitely one of those times.
    “So where were we?” he asks before grinning again. “Oh yeah! I was telling my breathtaking girlfriend how amazing she looks.”
    Blushing what I’m sure is ten different shades of red, I lower my head and that’s when I feel the table shake, as his body leans across it and his hand comes out over mine, comfortably squeezing it before slipping it back and quietly signing.
    Thank you for doing this. I know how hard it is for you.
    It isn’t as hard as I thought, I just don’t like the staring.
    When my head lifts again, he reaches out to stroke my face before resting his hand on top of mine.
    “They’re staring because they’re seeing what I see. What I’ve always seen from the first day you flicked me in class.”
    What’s that?
    “You’re sexy, Caddy. Like heart stopping, body melting sexy. Even a blind person would see it.”
    I definitely don’t agree with him about the blind thing, but I understand the point he’s trying to make. He wants me to see myself the way he does, but just like it never works when it’s in reverse and I think the same about him, it’s not working now. I think it’s supposed to be that way.
    We’re never going to truly understand what someone else sees because we aren’t them, but when Dillon looks at me, his eyes all soft even in the low lighting of the restaurant, I get to experience it as close as I ever will.
    Dillon really does believe I’m beautiful and when I’m with him, it’s hard not to feel the same.
    “Will you do something for me?”
    I might be willing to negotiate something.
    “Funny.”
    What do you want me to do?
    I could easily speak the words, but with the feeling of eyes still on me, my lips remain firmly clamped shut and I just let my hands and my eyes do the talking that I can’t.
    “Dance with me?”
    There’s one thing I know about Dillon. He loathes dancing. I questioned him about it once because he let it slip how much he hated it and I wanted to know why. With the way he has to hustle on the field, what he’s told me about his position, I would have thought his response would be different. Seems to me dancing comes easily to him, so hating it makes no sense.
    Since when do you dance?
    “Since I got here and noticed a wide open dance floor over there.” He points and as my eyes follow, I see two lone couples moving back and forth to what I can only assume is a slow song. “And my girlfriend came out her front door looking like she walked out of a fairytale.”
    Can I do this? I love to dance even though I can’t hear the music, and the way Dillon held me at the prom, even though he was injured at the time, it’s made me long for a do-over, but the way it happens in my mind, it’s always private. There is nothing private about this at all.
    Okay.
    Slipping his hand off mine long enough to slide himself out and away from the table, he comes around until he’s standing directly behind me, and placing a small tender kiss at the baseline of my