I rolled my eyes, trying to ignore the rapid beating in my chest. If she came home? Hell, if she came home, I was just going to tie her to my bed so she never left again.

I fired off a quick text to Blake, asking her where she was and letting her know that if she didn’t get her cute ass downtown, I was going to sing drunken opera outside her window until four in the morning.

And when she still didn’t respond, I lied and told her I needed a ride and asked if it was normal to see Pinocchio after doing ’shrooms.

My phone lit up within a minute.

And just like that.

I was back in the game.

“You don’t look high as a kite.” Blake scowled, slamming the car door behind her and pulling down the gray knit dress so it covered her ass. It barely did, by the way, and I offered up a prayer of thanks. I tried to appear inebriated, which was difficult, considering I wanted to kiss her and actually hit her lips, not pretend to miss and make love to the damn telephone pole.

“I’m high.” I nodded. “Superhigh. Hey, want a drink?”

“No,” she said, seething, and slapped my hand. “I don’t want a drink. I’m not your girlfriend anymore, remember? And the only girl you’re friends with tried to kill you in your sleep.”

“Gabs exaggerates that story every time she tells it. I wasn’t asleep, I was faking it.”

“So the knife wound was faked too? And the blood?”

I winced, remembering the time Gabi accidently stabbed me in the arm after trying to scare me on Halloween. “We’re getting off-topic.”

Blake scowled. “Just get in the car so I can drive your drunk, high ass home. I can’t believe I actually came. What’s wrong with me?” She was doing that cute talking-to-herself thing, and chewing on her thumbnail like it would answer her question.

“Nothing.” I checked her out, my eyes homing in on her legs. “Seriously, nothing at all. It’s a problem.”

“Excuse me?” She thrust out her hips, placing her hands on them. I held my groan in, which was difficult. Just about as difficult as not kissing her, then tossing her over my shoulder.

“Cute. Did Gabs teach you that head-swivel thing?” I laughed.

“Geez, you are drunk. Last time we talked, you nearly killed David and managed to simultaneously break my heart in the process. I hate you right now, but thankfully you won’t remember it in the morning.”

“Not drunk.” I steered her toward the bar while she tried to drag me back to the car. “But I do have a confession to make.”

“Oh?” She stopped fighting.

“And I realize this isn’t romantic, but”—I shrugged—“I love you.”

Blake stilled. “Did you just toss out an ‘I love you’? While high?”

“I lied about being high,” I offered lamely. “And yeah, I tossed it out, because it’s true. Because in a complicated world, where an ex-NFL player decided to change the map of the dating scene, he somehow lost his way and fell ass-over-heels in love with one of his clients.”

Blake didn’t look convinced.

I wouldn’t be either. Shit, here I’d been handing out relationship advice for the last year, and I couldn’t even make a convincing speech!

“The stats told me we weren’t a match. Lex messed with them, but only by five percent. We still have only like a fifty-five percent chance of working. And you want the truth?”

She nodded. “If you’re able to come up with such a thing.”

“I desperately”—I tugged her against my body—“want you. Need you. Crave you.” I grasped her by the back of the head and jerked her toward me. Our lips met forcefully, my tongue sliding against hers before retreating. “But I was scared.”

“Ian Hunter? Scared?” Her lower lip trembled. “I don’t believe it.” She clung to me now, her hands gripping my shirt.

“David was in the eightieth percentile,” I admitted, feeling the need to come clean. “And the numbers don’t lie—they never have. I was scared that you’d be settling if you stayed with me when he was the one you’ve wanted all along.” I felt my body tightening with the wrongness of the situation. “There, I said it, my insecure confession is done now. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get drunk off my ass and forget I just told you I can experience fear when it comes to relationships.”

She caught me by the shirt and tugged me back. “Oh no you don’t. You can’t just make epic speeches and stomp off.”

“Wasn’t epic,” I said. “And I never stomp. I swagger, but I never stomp. Sometimes I’ve been known to tiptoe, but only when sneaking out of a girl’s bedroom, and I don’t think I have to explain the why behind that.”

Blake’s eyes were still filled with tears. “Prove it.”

“You want me to swagger?”

“Prove your love.” Her eyebrows arched in challenge. “I want you to prove it to me. You made an epic speech, you told me you loved me back, and I can maybe, sort of, understand the method to your madness. But as far as I know, you just don’t want David to have me. How do I know I belong to you?”

I thought about it for a minute. “Honestly?”

She nodded.

“You don’t. You never will. Just like the stats failed me”—I sighed, struggling not to frown—“words fail me too. Hell, I think they fail everyone sometimes, especially when you need them the most. It’s like, the one time I want to be eloquent, my tongue decides to stay glued to the roof of my mouth.”