Fuck. These women have ganged up together.
And I can feel Cal’s eyes on the side of my head like a fucking laser.
“That was fucking epic, love,” King laughs from where he’s seated. Grabbing hold of one of her belt loops and hauling her over to him, he wraps one arm around her waist. She’s still glaring daggers at me, but her arm loops around his neck, tucking his head against her side.
“You stink,” she mutters, wrinkling her nose. He chuckles again, unfazed as she ruffles his hair before bending low to kiss him. It’s not a quick, chaste kiss, either. I pretend not to see the way his hand curves around her ass before she pecks one last kiss to his mouth and straightens. He watches her walk away, his gaze on her backside as she makes her way back toward the bar. He adjusts himself in his pants and I roll my eyes.
“Do you two need to disappear into the back for a few minutes?” Cal mumbles over to King, who raises a hand and flips him off without taking his eyes off Violette. Cal chuckles into his beer.
I shift in my seat, bracing my elbows on the tabletop in front of me, hands clasped tight around the bottle. I stare down at the floor between my dirty work boots.
“Fucking pain in the ass women,” I grumble under mybreath. I know she’s right. Fuck, I know I was a dick to Teddy. But I did it to protect her. To protect her kids.
“Watch it,” King mutters sharply, all levity leaving his face as he turns to glare at me, too. I sigh, nodding. Fucking hell, I’m just making a mess of everything it seems.
I hunch my shoulders in, continuing to pick at the label on the beer bottle clasped between my hands, and then Cal is leaning forward, too, so that his shoulders are only about six inches away from mine.
“I know you’ve been waiting for me to kick your ass all week, but I think you’re doing that enough on your own,” he mutters low, just between me and him. I huff out a breath and nod solemnly.
King claps me on the shoulder from my other side. “That why you’ve been a grumpy motherfucker this week? Trouble in paradise?”
I shoot him a glower from beneath lowered brows. Cal leans back in his chair again, taking a drink of his beer. He stretches his legs out beneath the table, balancing his beer on his belt buckle at his waist.
“Sup’s always a grumpy motherfucker,” Opp mutters, grinning over at us. “It’s like his factory default setting.”
“There’s nothing for there to be trouble with, because there’s nothing going on,” I mumble, tipping my beer back. I down half of it, then nod to Violette when she raises an eyebrow at me from across the bar, a silent signal for ‘ready for another one?’. She’s back a minute later with another round, placing not one, but two PBR bottles in front of me. Like she knows how much I’m fucking beating myself up over this thing with Teddy. Even if I’ll never allow myself to say it out loud. Especially around these goons.
They don’t need to know that I’d almost come in my fucking shorts with Teddy grinding over me, or how incredibly soft she is beneath my hands. They definitely don’t need to know I’vethought of nothing but the way her mouth tastes and the way her fingers feel twining through my hair. Pretty sure Cal would gladly throat punch me if he knew how filthy my thoughts are where his sister is involved. He doesn’t need to know that. None of them do.
Or how badly I want to be the man that comes home to her every fucking night.
How I’ve made sure that’s never going to happen. My chest tightens again, like it always does, when I think about the way she’d stared at me like I’d just kicked her puppy.
The door opens and Cal’s head swivels, a smile breaking out across his face, and I know without turning that Scottie has just walked in. Placing his beer on the table in front of us, he rises from his seat and takes several steps toward her. I glance over my shoulder at them just as he wraps one arm around her waist and lifts her clear off the floor, their mouths meeting.
She’s still wearing her EMT uniform, like she came straight over after her shift ended without taking the time to change. Like she couldn’t bear to be away from him a second longer than necessary. My chest tightens painfully. Why now, after all this time, do I want that?
“Glad to see you in one piece,” she whispers as he sets her back down on her feet. She runs her hands over his chest as if assessing for any hidden injuries. He grins and kisses her once more.
“There’s this lady, she’s kinda scary. She made me promise I had to, so I try to do my best,” he teases lightly, quietly. Then, his voice dips lower, softer. “Still with me?”
She smiles up at him. “Always.”
His fingers flit over a faint scar at her hairline above her right eye, his eyes going soft for a heartbeat before dropping his hand and turning back toward the table. He shoves Roycie’s booted feet off an empty chair at the table next to us and pulls it over to our table, then sits down. Scottie takes the seat Cal hadpreviously been sitting in as Violette shows back up with a highball tumbler of brown liquor for her.
“Thank you, Vi,” Scottie says, smiling up at her. Violette smiles back and I grit my teeth until my jaw aches. Everyone else gets a friendly hello but me, apparently.
Cal’s arm settles across the back of Scottie’s chair, his fingers trailing along her neck beneath her hair that’s pulled up into a sleek bun, and her hand finds its way to Cal’s thigh.
Those little, mindless touches between lovers that speak volumes. Not wanting to be apart, even just for a moment.
I finish the second beer and reach for the third. Before she can walk away, I ask Violette, “Can I get a whisky? Make it a double, please.”
Fuck it. I might just get drunk tonight.
“Come on, you heavy bastard,” Cal mutters, slinging my arm over his shoulder and heaving me out of the passenger seat of his truck. “Let’s get you into bed.”
My feet are moving along the dark walkway that leads to my side of the duplex in stumbling, unsteady steps. Fuck, I haven’t been drunk like this in years. Possibly since my dad died. That was a rough night. This might turn out to be a rough night, too. I’m already dreading the morning. I don’t bounce back from hangovers the way I used to in my twenties.
