The bar was a mix of mismatched furniture and odd décor. I imagined that they’d just picked up whatever other people threw out, and adorned the walls with the weirdest combinations that they could find.
It was definitely the most interesting bar we’d been in yet, and if this had been the first week of our trip, I might have entertained myself studying it all, but at this point, I could care less about seeing another bar.
All my attention was on Kelsey.
I didn’t want her to crash. I thought back to that night in Belgrade, the way she’d just crumpled after that phone call. If that happened again . . . I would do something. I had to, right?
From my perch across the room, I watched her dancing with two of the guys she’d come with. When one of them went back to the bar, she wrapped her arms around the other guy’s neck. When he leaned down to kiss her, I shifted uncomfortably.
Somewhere along the way, I’d given up trying to convince myself to treat this like a mission. It wasn’t possible. She reminded me too much of myself before my fallout. And in letting go of that distinction, I had to embrace the one thing it had kept at bay.
Guilt.
Was protecting her a good enough excuse for prying into her life? For witnessing things that should have remained private?
I felt sick down to my bones, but I kept watching all the same, which is why I had a front-row seat for what should go down in the Guinness World Records book as the best way not to seduce a girl.
She tried to pull back from the kiss, and the guy sucked on her bottom lip like it was a lollypop. She made an expression of horror, and I couldn’t help the laughter that ripped out of my mouth. She was always so calm and put-together and seductive, even when she was sad or drunk, but now her eyes bulged and her expression twisted in disgust.
It was f**king hilarious.
And when her eyes seemed to stick on me, while her bottom lip was stuck between his teeth, it was déjà vu. Like when I thought she’d seen me in Belgrade. I just assumed I was imagining it again. She finally managed to tug her lip free only for the guy to lick across her cheek. I held my abdomen, my muscles cramping from the first good laugh I’d had in ages. If every night were like this, I could handle her nightly bar crawls a lot easier.
Though those bar crawls would probably stop happening if every guy were like him. Her look of horror shifted from the guy in front of her to me, her eyes swooping down to scan me from head to toe.
Again, I told myself I was imagining it.
She made an excuse to get away, shouting “Toilet!” at the top of her lungs to be heard over the music. Almost as if it were choreographed, every head in the vicinity turned to look at her, but she turned to look at me. The laugh curled up and caught at the base of my throat.
I looked around, and with my back to the wall, there wasn’t anyone else in the vicinity she could have been looking at.
I wasn’t imagining anything.
She saw me. Really saw me.
She threw her hands up in the ultimate f**k-it-all gesture, and I found myself stepping forward as she exited the dance floor. I told myself it was because of the slight sway on her feet, that I was staying close because she was drunk.
The building was partially demolished in places, including the wall that had been knocked down between the bar area and the dance floor. In dangerously high heels, Kelsey tried to walk over the rubble that had been left behind. Her foot slid in her shoes, and her ankle turned sideways.
I thought she was going to do a face-plant directly on the rubble, so I rushed forward. At the last second, she balanced herself with a hand and then slumped into a sitting position.
I should have backed away.
But then she’d already seen me. And maybe this was my shot. To get some answers. To know her. To help her.
“What?” I asked, fully prepared to see her pouting up at me. “No more locals around to carry you?” Did that make me sound creepy, that I’d seen one of those Hungarian guys pick her up and carry her over the rubble earlier? Or did I just sound like an ass**le?
Both. Probably both.
She looked up at me, and her eyes were dilated in the dim room, that ring of green barely perceptible even though I stood only a few feet away.
She straightened her shoulders and tipped up her chin. “I don’t need anyone to carry me.” Her hands roved over the rocks until she found purchase and started to push herself up. “I’m perfectly—whoa.” She tilted sideways, her ankle rolling over again and she plopped down on her ass, harder this time. She held her hands up close to her face like she’d hurt them, and I had an indistinct urge, like a tugging at my middle, to do something.
Before she could really hurt herself, I stepped closer, finding a steady place to plant my boot. I hooked an arm underneath her knees, slipped the other around her back, and pulled her up into my arms. Her head lolled back, bumping against my bicep, and then I could feel her breath grazing my neck.
I clenched my jaw and focused on getting through the opening into the room with the bar. She gripped the back of my shirt near my shoulder blade, and the light touch coupled with the way she was staring at me, made a storm of curses rise in my mind.
You’re one stupid man. Fucking stupid.
“You remind me of God,” she said.
I laughed. Is that how she ended up with a different guy falling all over himself every night? Playing upon their God complexes?
“Well, that’s a new one for me.”
Unless you count—Jesus Christ, get a job. Jesus Christ, grow up. Jesus Christ, you’re a disappointment. Those were familiar sentiments from my past.