“I dealt with that asshole a couple weeks ago,” she said. “He flashed his gun at me. It was a little scary. But it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“You say that as if you could kill them if you had to.”
That got Katie quiet.
“The only way you’re going to ‘handle’ the Bandits is to kill them,” I said. “You want to know why I’ve pushed you away? That’s part of it. You get near me; you get near the Bandits by proxy. And trust me, your pretty life in the city will turn into a rural, horror-movie nightmare if you get entangled with those assholes. Let the fucked-up ones like us deal with them.”
“Tara and Elizabeth don’t seem to mind it.”
I had no response to that. OK, I had no response that didn’t also insult the Rogers girls for that. I thought they were foolish, although not in any way or degree because I thought Brock or Steele were bad for them.
“Look, even if I could have handled it, I think you took care of that asshole better than I ever could,” Katie said. “You at least have to let me thank you with drinks.”
Exhausted, my head bowed. I laughed. What else could I fucking do in response to someone this persistent? I’d been on the other side of the coin, many years ago in my pussy teenage time, and I knew what it felt like to get rejected. It fucking sucked.
“You just won’t quit, will you?” I said. “Fuck it; fine. If you’re this persistent, I might as well give you a shot.”
“That’s the most enthusiastic I have ever heard someone say yes to a date to,” Katie said, but a smile was starting to form on her face. “How does Friday sound?”
I shrugged. The days had a way of running together. Yeah, construction was Monday to Friday, but it wasn’t like I had this wildly different life on Saturday and Sunday. The club was my life, and that was a Sunday to Saturday deal.
“Whatever works for you,” I said. “Give me alcohol and give me space and I’ll be a happy man.”
“Alcohol and space?”
“Don’t take me to some fucking crowded theater or sports game,” I said. “I don’t do well in groups. And I don’t do well in places where I can’t have a line of escape.”
If my request to Katie had disturbed her, she didn’t show it in the slightest.
“You got a deal,” she said. “Meet me here on Friday around six p.m. and we’ll go from there. I look forward to seeing you, Connor.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Now, can I get ten bucks on pump six?”
But a funny thing happened as we went back to just a business transaction and as I went back out to the pump. Now that I had let my guard down enough to have a date, now that I was willing to take a risk by going out with someone like her…
I was starting to feelsomethingfor her.
I wasn’t going to say attraction for her. I mean, fuck, she was hot; that had never been in question. But she was also blunt to a fault, and that type of personality usually defaulted to being a bitch.
Maybe she just was really fucking good at communication, and I needed to get used to hearing it from a woman. Fuck if I knew; someone smarter than me, some psychologist or therapist or fucking other person could figure out if that was the case. I just knew that when I looked at Katie in the store, I wasn’t just looking at the girl who badgered me to the point of agreeing to the date.
I was looking at someone that I found myselfwantingto hang out with. I was thinking about what it would be like to bed her, and not just in a hate-fuck scenario. Sure, I’d been burned before, and sure, my guard was still up.
But it was exhausting keeping my guard up this much. It was starting to get old being so defensive around hot women to reduce them to fuck toys and nothing more. Even if I would never be the sappy, romantic guy like Garrett had magically turned out to be, I at least wanted to not have to be on the defensive twenty-four-seven.
Fuck.
What in the hell had I gotten myself into?
And why was I starting to like it?
