The Fire We Started | Wildfire Series Book 2

TWENTY-SEVEN

"Nessa," I said, nudging her to get her attention. "I don't think Bren is the only guy in the room imagining things."

"No, I'm sure there are a lot of horny ass men in—"

Her voice faded as she looked up from her plate and followed my line of sight.

A man sat behind a grand piano, his fingers dancing across the keys. But he wasn't watching them. It was like his hands were on autopilot, leeching beautiful music from the instrument without even having to think about it. No, he wasn't thinking about the keys, and he wasn't looking at them.

All of his dark, smoldering attention was on Nessa.

"Is that—?"

"I think so," I said with a smirk.

It was hard to tell with the mask, but I was nearly certain that our music man was Grayson Everett.

And that thought was confirmed when he saw us looking and flashed a shy smile before putting his attention back on his hands.

Nessa ducked her head.

"Do you guys know him?"

Ah, fuck. I forgot about this Jonathon guy.

Nessa turned to her date, peering around me to answer him. And because of that, she didn't see what happened next. She didn't see how Grayson lifted his head again. She didn't see how his lips tightened, how his eyes flicked between her and Jonathon, who was now leaning across the table in front of me to try to get closer to Nessa.

Don't get me wrong, Jonathon seemed nice enough. He had this wavy blonde hair that seemed perfectly situated on his head with no chance of moving out of place. He was tall, broad-shouldered. Classically handsome, if you will. Not to mention, he'd been nothing but polite and kind.

But there was absolutely no chemistry between these two. I would know. I was sitting between them, and nothing was passing through. Not even when he awkwardly picked up Nessa's hand and gave the back of it a playful kiss before leaving to find the bathroom.

"Did he really just do that?" I hissed at her when he was out of earshot.

"What?" Nessa said with a shrug. "Come on, it was cute."

"It could be cute. But I don't know. That...that was just weird."

She rolled her eyes at me. "Okay, spoon girl."

Ignoring her, I said, "You should go talk to Grayson. You know, after he's done playing performing his masterpiece."

Nessa gave me a sharp look. "Why the hell would I do that?"

I pretended to deliberate, tilting my head back and forth. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe because he likes you."

She rolled her eyes again. "I'm here with Jonathon. And I don't do football players. You know that's not my type. Grayson was friends with Quinton, for crying out loud. No, thank you."

"He wasn't," I insisted.

"What?"

"He really wasn't friends with Quinton. And he doesn't seem like the others. I mean, look at him. He's playing the piano." Nessa just shook her head, so I leaned in to whisper, "I bet he's good with his hands."

She snorted into her water glass at that and gave me a little shove. "Go back to staring at your boyfriend."

Jonathon came back then, and I decided I should probably give them some space. Or, more accurately, get some space away from Bren.