"Thanks for being my plus one. It would have been weird coming alone." Reagan commented as she turned to Austin, who was sitting beside her at the reception.

He was watching the groom and bride, dancing around with the rest of the wedding party, "What are friends for, if not to keep you from shameless groomsmen looking to prey on you while you're vulnerable." She chuckled at his comment, knowing he was trying to cheer her up.

"And I'm here to keep all the vulnerable girls safe from you." She teased.

His hands went to his heart as if he had been shot, "How could you think I would ever take advantage of these poor females in times like these? Wedding season is not the time to get mixed up with girls. It's dangerous out there for single guys like myself. You ladies throwing yourselves at us-"

Reagan rolled her eyes, pushing him away playfully. Austin had become a good friend to her over the past couple of months. She found that he was the one thing in her life that she was immensely thankful for. Somedays he was the only person that seemed capable of keeping her sane.

The scraping of his chair against the tiled floor burned in ears,"Come on, Red. We're going to dance."

"No way." She waved her hand dismissively at him, not interested in making a spectacle of herself in front of friends and family, "Why don't you go ask someone else? There's a cute blonde over at table three that looks free."

"Because I want to dance with you. Now, I agreed to come with you to your cousin Sarah's wedding. I didn't ask for anything in return, but I'm asking now." He was trying to guilt trip her into it and as much as she wanted to say she was above falling for such things, that wasn't the case.

Reagan gave him a pointed look, "That's not fair. You could have said no."

"Yes, but I didn't." He lifted his brows, rocking back on his heels with a teasing smirk on his lips. Austin was a manipulator. She shouldn't have expected any less from him.

"You don't fight fair." Reagan whined as she got up from her seat, knowing that this was the only way to get him to drop the issue.

"Never have, never will." He led her towards the dance floor, hand brushing over the small of her back but not touching it. It was a maddening sensation, part of her wanted to tell him just to touch her and another part of her wondered why he was trying to avoid touching that part of her.

They stopped at the edge of the floor, turning to face each other, "I'm going to dance with you but I will not enjoy it." Reagan proclaimed as he positioned her in the way he wanted. It felt like this was something he had done a hundred times before, which had her narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

Austin gave her a look that said he 'begged to differ', "We'll see about that, Red." He began to move them slowly at first, just rocking their bodies back and forth as if growing accustomed to the rhythm of the music.

Once he had his footing he began to move them around in big sweeping gestures, that had her stomach somersaulting. He would let them drift apart before pulling her in close, letting her feel the closeness of their bodies. It was a shock to her system that took a moment to adjust to.

"You know, I didn't think very well of you when we first met." She needed to fill up the silence with words to keep her mind from wandering places she didn't want it to go, "but I was wrong about you."

He smiled down at her, "I know." Reagan rolled her eyes, letting him lead her around the floor. Austin was a surprisingly good dancer. She was going to have to add it to the list of things she had learned about him that didn't fit into the image she'd first made of him.

"Where did you learn to dance so well?" She couldn't help but want to know his secrets, he was such an enigma.

Austin twirled her away from him, before reeling her back in, catching her against his body, "Casey insisted that we take dance classes. She didn't want me to embarrass myself at our reception by stepping all over her feet." He laughed as if recalling a memory from times past, "In the end, I turned out to be the better dancer, which really pissed her off."

It was nice to listen to him talk about Casey. Whenever he spoke about her, which wasn't often, but when he did he glowed. Reagan hoped sincerely that someday she met a man that would love her that way that Austin loved Casey.

Reagan let out a small shriek as he dipped her backward, taking her by surprise. He stared down at her with a playful smirk, wiggling his eyebrows before he placed her back on her feet and twirling her.

"You should warn your partner before you go doing things like that." She snapped as he pulled her back into his arms.

He dropped his lips to her ear, "And you need to learn to let go and trust your dancing partner." She tried to ignore the flutter of her hummingbird heart, "Relax, Red. I would never drop you."