“On the contrary. I know you’ve been waiting years to pull this off. An opportunity to finally have two of your restaurants on the Vegas stripandget back at that fucker, Ross. I just want to make sure you’re all in.”
I nodded and took another sip of my drink. “I’m all in. Don’t worry about me,” I assured him. “Now, tell me about the permits.”
We spent the remainder of our dinner discussing the necessary permits to open my restaurants on the Vegas strip and where they were in the process for approval. There was nothing that was going to stop me from getting these restaurants off the ground. However, even as I tried to focus on my conversation with Isaac, my thoughts continued to stray to the image of Chanel’s face the day I’d walked out of her condo. That, and the look on her face out in the dining area of the restaurant. I tried to search her out again once Isaac and I parted ways, but she’d already left.
As I drove home, thoughts of Chanel held my attention. The dull yearning I’d been able to push to the background while I was away came back to grip me tenfold, now that I’d seen her in person.
Chapter Three
Xavier
I sighed as I pushed the door to the luxury gym open. I’d been avoiding this moment for weeks. I hadn’t seen my best friend, Jason, in over a month since I was traveling for work. I figured he’d have questions about what happened between his sister and me, and I had no answers for him. Hell, I didn’t even know what happened between us. It was like one moment, we were golden, waking up to one another in bed, and the next I was storming out of her place, angry as hell.
To be honest, I still couldn’t even pinpoint what it was that made me so angry at Chanel. All I knew was, seeing her face bruised like that by her ex made me want to do things I’d never considered before. Not even when my ex-girlfriend cheated on me with a friend had I felt the urge to murder anyone. But Chanel brought out every protective instinct I had, and that shit scared the hell out of me. Maybe that’s why I left. Who knows?
“What up? Long time no see,” Jason greeted me as I entered the weight room of the two-story gym.
“What up?” I responded, as we gave the one-arm handshake and pulled one another into a side hug.
“How you been?” Jay asked cautiously.
I ran my hand down the side of my face, feeling the scruffiness of the beard I’d been growing in. “Busy as hell.”
“So I see.”
We made small talk as we warmed up and stretched a little before our intense workout. I could feel the tension, though. I knew it was inevitable that the elephant in the room was brought up. It didn’t slip past my memory that this was the same room where, about five months ago, I’d spoken to Jason about wanting to take his sister out.
“How was Vegas?” he asked as I spotted him on the bench press machine.
“Vegas was cool. Got a lot of shit done that I needed to handle. If all goes well, the restaurants should be ready to open at the end of this year.”
“Wow, that fast, huh?”
“Yeah, you know I’ve been working on this for a while now.”
“True, true,” Jason nodded.
We switched positions and he stood over me, spotting while I took my turn at bench presses. For a long while, the only conversation between us was my grunting and Jason’s counting.
“Let’s go, one more rep,” he encouraged.
I grunted hard, pushing the bar up on my final rep. The clicking of metal as it lowered onto the stand that held it was like music to my ears. I blew out a deep breath at the instant physical relief and sat up on the bench. I wiped the sweat from around my face and neck as Jay came from behind the bar and sat on the bench across from me.
“You know Chanel came storming into our father’s office?” Jason started, out of nowhere.
I peered up at him. “Oh, yeah? When?”
“About a week and a half ago. She’d been avoiding us for weeks after everything went down. Then outta nowhere, she appears in Pop’s office, asking him if he was the one behind that article.”
My head tilted in surprise. “She didn’t believe that, did she?”
Jay inclined his head. “She seemed to. I walked in on her yelling at Pops in his office.”
“Shit. How ugly did it get?”
“Not too bad, once I explained it was Robert’s ass who’d gone off the deep end and had her followed by a PI. Pops explained that Robert had been fired as a result. She calmed down a little after that.”
“There’s a lot of shit between your pops and Chanel.”
