Without taking his eyes or hand from me he shouted, “Driver! Order Toots and me the works!”

And it was then when I realized I’d read the situation very wrong.

I wasn’t on shaky ground.

I was in the middle of an earthquake.

2

Clean

“Toots, have you paid attention to anything I’ve taught you?”

I looked up, leaned in, put a hand on the wall of a very muscled chest and grinned up at West “Buck” Hardy.

“You asked me if I knew how to play pool,” I reminded him. “You didn’t ask me if I was capable of learning how to play pool.”

I was drunk.

Way drunk.

Unbelievably drunk.

In fact, I’d never been this drunk before in my life.

We’d had huge burgers, cheesy curly fries, and we’d chased them with beers, and that was more food than I’d had to eat in a long time. So I kind of sobered up a little when the food hit my stomach.

But then I shot more pool (sort of) while I shot more tequila and drank more beer, and I passed the drunk I was before like a rocket.

Now, I was smashed.

His hand hit my waist and slid around to the small of my back as he grinned down at me.

“All right, darlin’, are you capable of learnin’ how to play pool?”

I shook my head and gave him more of my weight.

“Nope,” I replied. “I’m not very dexterous. Never have been. Always picked last for teams in gym, and when I dissected my frog in biology class…” I trailed off and scrunched my nose before I finished, “It was seriously icky.”

His hand at the small of my back put on pressure and he fitted my body to his.

“Then maybe we should give up,” he suggested.

“This would be wise,” I told him, nodding, and suggested back, “We could go back to twenty questions.”

His face changed, and I liked the change, whatever it was. I was just too drunk to figure out what it was.

“Clara, honey, you didn’t find that fun,” he reminded me softly.

“Well, if you don’t ask mean questions, West, maybe it’ll be fun,” I replied.

His eyes moved over my face as he murmured, “Mean questions.”

I pulled away, grabbed his hand and dragged him to a couch. I moved in front of him, put both my hands on his chest, put pressure on my hands, and he went down. I collapsed beside him, curled my feet up under me so my bent legs were resting against his thigh, but I twisted my neck toward the bar.

“Driver!” I called. “Would you be a love and get us more beer?”

I heard Buck chuckle, and I turned to see his eyes were aimed beyond me and he was tipping up his chin which meant Driver was going to bring us more beer.

Excellent!

His gaze came to me, upon which I declared, “I’m smashed.”

Buck smiled and asked, “No shit?”

“I’ve never been this drunk,” I added.

His smile didn’t leave his face as his brows went up. “Really?”

I shook my head and answered, “Nope.”

“Babe, you gotta live more,” he advised.

I smiled at him and noticed when I did, his attention dropped to my mouth, which made my belly feel warm, but I ignored this and drunkenly blathered.

“No way.” I shook my head, then bragged outrageously, “I learned early to make all the right moves.”

His gaze left my mouth, caught mine, and I realized in a vague way he looked kind of surprised.

“Come again?”

“Well,” I started, felt Driver’s presence, turned, gave him a huge smile as I took a beer from him and turned back as Buck took the other one and then Driver moved away. “You learn that in foster care.”

Buck had started to lift the bottle to his mouth, but he stopped when his head jerked around, and his narrowed, lovely, rich, dark-brown eyes hit me.

“What?” he asked so quietly, I barely heard him.

But I heard him.

I was sucking back beer, staring at him and nodding all at the same time. I dropped my chin and my beer hand and looked at him.

“I mean, I messed up with Rogan, but I didn’t know that. He was handsome and he wore suits and he drove a nice car and he acted from the beginning like he really liked me. Not to mention he had a seriously cool name. I mean Rogan Kirk. Great name,” I stated.

I took another pull on my beer, swallowed it, and kept right on blathering.

“My birth mother gave me up for adoption then my adoptive father took off on my new mom when I was five, and she handled it for a while then, when I was seven, she killed herself, so I went to her sister. But she had four kids already, her husband had left her too, and things were tough. I wasn’t blood anyway, so she called social services and they put me into foster care. That’s how I met Tia. We were in a home together. I met her when I was twelve. We were thick as thieves. She was great. Like having a sister. She liked Rogan too. Neither of us expected to get something like that. We both expected to get something like…something like…” I trailed off and then stated, “Well, obviously, something like Esposito.”

When I shut up, I saw he was staring at me.

He kept doing this for a bit, before he said, “Jesus, Clara.”

“I know.” I threw out my hand with the bottle in it. “No one knows that, right? No one knows why I believed in Rogan. Or why I wanted to believe.” I sucked back more beer and went on, “In those articles, they didn’t talk about how I worked my ass off at school to get academic scholarships to go to college. Which didn’t cover it all, by the way. I had to get student loans and I paid those off. No one knows that.”

I threw back more beer.

And kept blabbing.

“They also didn’t talk about the student loans I took out to get my masters which I also paid off with my money. Money I earned. Rogan offered, but I said no. I didn’t think it was fair. They didn’t ask me questions about that. They didn’t try to investigate why I was blind to what Rogan was doing. He treated me great. He traveled a lot, but when he was home, our marriage was awesome.”

I leaned into Buck on the last word then leaned back and slugged more beer before continuing.

“I’d worked hard to get what I had. I thought Rogan was my reward. I thought, finally, finally,” I leaned in again and stayed there, “it was my turn to have a taste of the good life.”

“Baby,” he whispered.

“But I was wrong,” I went on like he said not a word and sat back. “And that’s what I learned. You make all the right moves. You don’t get into trouble, and Buck,” I aimed a look at him, though not entirely successfully, “drinking until you’re smashed is the wrong move. That’ll piss off foster parents, get you kicked to a new place, or worse. So you be good. You do what you’re told. You study and get good grades and be where they tell you to be or where you say you’re going to be. You don’t make trouble. You don’t ask questions. You don’t have expectations. You just wake up and get through each day doing the best you can and putting every foot right.”

I threw back another swallow of beer.