“Good thing, ‘cause her pop was just here looking for her.”
“What.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure what he wanted, but I set him straight.”
Colt stands from his desk, ready to tear out of here like a bat out of hell. “Itoldhim not to come around her.”
“Oh heel, Fido, he’s gone already,” I tell him with a chuckle. “Besides, I want in on it if you do go after him.”
“Rowan asked me not to,” he says, lowering himself back into his chair with a breath, “but…”
“She didn’t askme,” I shrug. “You did. She doesn’t know that. I could make a quick visit.”
“No, don’t.” A hand scrubs down his face; he’s torn, and I get it. He wants to kill the guy as much as I do, but his wife still thinks there’s a chance at rebuilding something with her dad. Can’t really fuck with that without risking his entire marriage. “We’ll bring Logan in and ramp up security measures; I want his picture in the security booth so he can be stopped at the door before he tries to come in again. Jesus, Maciejuststopped wetting the bed.”
“Wanna hit somethin’?”
“I want to get this call over with so that I can go home and get eyes on my wife.”
“We both know it ain’t youreyesyou want on her, old bastard,” I cackle, pulling my mug to my lips for a drink. “I wanna hear about your one-sided angry fuck in the mornin’.”
“Do you remember all of the other times I’ve talked to you about Rowan and I’s sex life?”
“You haven’t.”
“Exactly,” he laughs.
It doesn’t happen often, maybe once every six months or so, but sometimes I get curious and wonder what it would be like to feel that way about another person. I spent a year watching my best friend chase and fall in love with a woman he would do goddamn anything for, and two years watching them be so sickeningly in love with each other it’s like they would stop existing if they were separated. Poof – they’d vaporize. I just can’t imagine loving someone so much that I could only think about getting home to her. To be willing to risk everything to protect her – or to get revenge on the people who hurt her.
This is one of those times where I wanna know what that might feel like.
•
As soon as I’m through my front door, I kick off my shoes and strip off my suit jacket, tossing it over the sideboard next to me which houses nothing but my keys when I’m not using them.
I trek back to my room, unbuttoning my shirt and peeling it off of me as I walk, because I fucking hate dress shirts. They’re too stiff and restrictive. I toss the shirt over my dresser, opening the top drawer of it. I dig through the dresser to pull out a pair of jeans and a navy blue t-shirt to change into, shoving the discarded options back into place next to a crumpled piece of paper and a purple bottle of perfume. I slide the drawer shut again, heading back out of the apartment and down to my truck.
I had planned to stop by the club and check on development earlier, but Colt and I didn’t get out of the damn office until almost nine, so it’ll just be me tonight. Logan and his crew would have cleared out just after six, and Colt had to go home to be the family man that he is.
It’s not that I mind being alone so much – even though I don’t care for it, it’s the quiet. I fucking hate the quiet. Out of all of the places I spent time in growing up, only one of them was ever quiet. My brain had adjusted to the chaos and noise constantly around me, so when I was shoved into a quiet house where noise meant punishment, it was overwhelming, and that shit stuck with me.
When there’s no sound or chaos around me, I can hear fucking everything; my blood pumping, my eyes blinking, my fucking bones moving. Drives me nuts.
Throw me into a space full of shouting and destruction – or a loud nightclub – and you’ve got me in my element. I can work with that.
The building isn’t necessarily a building yet, just a maze of walls and wires, which I carefully step over as I walk through, so as to not fuck up the work that’s been put in on it.
My phone’s flash doesn’t do a great job at lighting up the space, but it does enough for the quick video I take as I maneuver through what I’m pretty sure are going to be the main doorways. Since Colt couldn’t come out tonight, I want to have something to show him in case he wants to make changes; even though I’ll pull my veto card on him if he does, because I’m absolutely fucking thrilled with how it looks so far. The layout is exactly what I wanted, and I can see the final product taking shape when I shut my eyes.
After one more quick walkthrough, I pull up Colt’s contact page, OLD BASTARD, and send him the clips I grabbed, along with a few ideas I came up with for our opening night.
I want that shit to be so wild it wakes the fucking dead.
TEN
Sophia
“Just a small frozen white chocolate latte, please,” I tell the barista in front of me, standing behind a cash register. I reach into my wallet for my card, stopped short by someone else reaching in front of me with their own.
