“A good one.” She set down the empty flute. “And for the record, it’s both.” She took a deeper look and saw the stress in his eyes even though he’d done a damn good job at keeping it to himself. He was just as unhappy at this party as she was. “How about you?”

“I’m perfectly fine.”

He was lying, but who was she to press? Besides, at that moment, she caught Chloe’s baleful stare from across the room. Oops. She was talking to Chloe’s property, wasn’t she. She lifted her hands and wriggled her fingers, showing her territorial cousin she was still hands off.

But when she turned back to Braden, he was gone. Without him standing in front of her, buffering her view of everyone milling around her, her breathing hitched again. It seemed as if the number of people had doubled in the past few minutes. Tripled. Her chest hurt, the spots were back, and she again staggered for the door. Fairy lights decorated the entire front façade, and the helium balloons she’d tied to the canopy were floating in the light breeze. She saw all this in her peripheral vision as she finally burst out.

And crashed directly into a hard chest.

Joe’s hands came up to grip her shoulders, probably because she’d just about knocked him flat on his ass. He stood there holding her upright, a faint five o’clock shadow shading his jaw, hair weeks past needing a haircut, smelling like soap and man. An involuntary pained sound escaped her and she slapped a hand to her mouth to keep the next one in.

Hands still on her shoulders, he bent and peered into her face. “What’s the matter, Red?”

Oh, God. His eyes. The haunting sadness was back in the swirling whiskey depths tonight, and it reached her. He’d always been able to reach her with a look. “N-n-nothing.”

He lifted her chin with a finger. “Don’t add lying to your sins. You okay?”

His voice was low, and somehow devastatingly sexy. And the way he asked her what was wrong, as if he really cared, as if maybe, at least for a moment, he’d forgotten to hold back with her. Her throat simply closed up, and all she could do was shake her head. No. No, she wasn’t okay. She might never be again.

His hand, big and warm, came up, tracing her hairline with a long finger, pushing her hair behind her ear. The gesture was an old one, and she nearly lost it right then. She was holding on by a thread here, and if anyone could break her, he could. But she knew that while she needed a connection tonight, any connection, he did not. At least not from her.