The bar was still bubbling under. This whole party thing for Rook was helpful, sure, but unless he was getting ready to get married twice a month for the rest of our lives, it wouldn’t be enough.
I exhaled and looked at the numbers again, my cigarette resting in my mouth. I took a long draft and rubbed my temples. Even with the changes I’d made it wouldn’t be enough.
My phone vibrated and I glanced at it then back at the computer.
It was Bishop. I knew that he was wondering where I was. I knew that we had brunch with his family in a few hours.
Brunch with his family.
Something about that was off putting. I’d been dealing with Bishop for a year and wasn’t sure I’d ever had a real conversation with King or Knight. The fact that they wanted me to attend a family event had alarm bells going off in my head.
I wasn’t sure what to expect but I knew without a doubt that if I was going to be at a Barron event I needed to be prepared for anything.
The only member of Bishop’s family I’d spent significant time with was Rook. If King and Knight were anything like him shit could go left real quick. I didn’t want to be at war with Bishop’s family. I knew that no matter what he said, he loved them and he wanted their approval. I’d never try to intentionally get between him and them.
However, I also wasn’t a bitch. I liked to keep shit cool, calm and collected, but if King and Knight tried to hoe me, they’d have to put me down. I was already one bad night from crashing out on them anyway the more I thought about how time was slipping away from me.
I’d do what Bishop needed, throw a smile on my face and endure but every time I thought about his upcoming wedding I felt less inclined to be welcoming to his fucking family.
He’d told me that they knew about us and had taken it well, but shit had a way of changing quickly and from the way Bishop and Rook spoke about their older siblings, it was obvious they put tradition and how their family was viewed before a lot of shit.
There was a chance that reality had set in after their conversation with Bishop. There was a chance they’d give him an ultimatum.
I cursed and dropped my cigarette in the ashtray when the ashes fell into my lap. I hadn’t even noticed I’d just been sitting at my desk lost in thought. I put the cigarette out and sighed deeply.
There was a good chance that in the next year I’d lose both the club and Bishop if I didn’t do something. Quick.
I did my best not to focus on that though. I grabbed up all my papers, locked them in my top drawer and headed out for the night.
There was only so much I could do right now.
I exhaledas I buttoned the top button of my shirt. I turned one way then the other then yanked the tie I was wearing off and threw it on the bed behind me.
“Stealing a tie,” I announced and trailed into Bishop’s closet.
It was about the size of my entire bedroom and broken down into sections that were then broken down into smaller color coded sections. It was overkill and a testament to how anal hewas about shit being where he thought it belonged, something he’d had to start unlearning when we’d started cohabiting.
The far side of the room held his ties and shoes, each of them taking up half the wall. I stood in front of it, my head tilted back as I let my eyes drift over ever row slowly until a tie caught my eyes.
I stood up on my toes slightly to grab one down and exhaled as I stared at it.
“You look fine,” Bishop reached around me and grabbed the tie from my hand. “Nobody is going to be looking at your fucking tie anyway though, Asante.” He snickered as he walked around me.
“Yeah well if they’re not calling me in to judge me, why are they calling me in?”
“To get to know you.” Bishop threw the tie up and around my neck so he could start to tie it. “They know how I feel about you and they know you’re important to me so they want to integrate you into our lives.”
“And they know that we’re hoping for you to get a wife that’s cool with me staying around?”
“Yeah.” Bishop finished up the tie, took half a step back and ran his hand down the length of it. He looked up at me and smiled. “They know.”
“Explicitly?”
“Yeah, baby. I told them explicitly that I’m in love with you and you’re not going anywhere. You’re a big part of my life and they get that now.”
“Alright.” I exhaled. “Cool.”
I reached for Bishop and he grinned as my hands went to his hips. I pulled him into me. I let my eyes trail up and down his body, from his handsome face to his muscular arms and chest down to the towel he had wrapped around his waist.
