I claimed my rum glass and tipped it back in one swallow while Embry sipped his, still eyeing me as if I’d offered him a three-course dinner and only showed up with a bowl of shit soup. Whatever. I couldn’t do anything about that. I wasn’t gonna divulge my night with Teddy to the club. Didn’t need to. He’d already made it clear it was a one-time thing.
Still. The prospect of seeing him again, business or otherwise, was consuming enough that even Embry lost his unending patience with me and wandered off.
He left the rum behind. With no one chewing my ear off for the first time in hours, I enjoyed a solitary drink, chain-smoking my way through the cigarettes I hadn’t touched while I’d been with Teddy. Embry had been right: I was tired, and I thought about going home, but as much as I enjoyed the sanctuary of my house, I didn’t feel like riding the coastal roads with two prospects at my back. I wanted to escape for real. Metaphorically or literally, it didn’t fucking matter. On any other night, I’d grab myself a girl from the bar and take her upstairs to the residence where I had a room with a king-size bed and an en-suite bathroom. I’d lock the door and fuck her all night long.
But it didn’t feel like any other night. The restlessness that plagued me was as present as ever, but the urge to silence it with a faceless bang was absent, as if I’d misplaced that part of my personality. The thought of touching someone right now made me want to puke, and I didn’t have a clue what to do with it.
So I drank instead, alone and brooding. No one bothered me, they wouldn’t dare, and it was three in the morning by the time I realised I’d never sent Teddy an address to meet me.
Rubbing my face, I staggered to my feet, squinting at my phone as I retrieved the number I’d punched in the evening before. I typed out a message that made no sense, hit delete, and replaced it with the postcode and street address for the yard.
I sent it and stuffed my phone in my back pocket when there was no immediate reply. It was arse o’clock in the morning. Maybe I’d misjudged him and he was asleep after all.
An answering buzz caught me off guard.
I fished my phone out again and my cracked old heart flared to life. Teddy had replied, though I didn’t open it until I’d passed through the bar and made it to the relative safety of my compound bedroom.
Heart thumping—that’s what you get for a skinful of rum—I sat on the edge of my bed and swiped at the phone with clumsy fingers, opening the message on my second attempt.
Teddy:Don’t be late.
It was hardly laced with warmth and affection, but somehow, those three words ignited something inside me I knew wouldn’t quit until I saw him again. What the hell was it? Anticipation? Desire? I couldn’t quite tell. It felt a lot like fear, but I wasn’t afraid. Fuck my life, where was my head at these days?
I had no answer to that, and I put my phone down before I did something ridiculous and sent him a picture of my dick. Because I was hard now. Apparently even banal messages from Teddy Jones gave me a boner.
Awesome. At least I was too drunk to do much about it. I fucked my way through life with little abandon, but I drew the line at a lonely wank in my compound quarters. I took that shit home, or at least I would when I was sober enough to ride.
With Teddy on the brain, I passed out, face down in my clothes, even my boots. I slept like a drunk man who deserved it and woke sometime later without relief to the sharp-edged fatigue scratching my brain.
I blinked. It was still dark, unless I’d done the impossible and slept through to the evening.Unlikely. It had been years since I’d managed more than a few hours at a time. Club life was like that. Someone always wanted a piece of me, and even if they didn’t, my head was a loud place to be. The decisions I made kept people alive or got them killed, and it was a heavy cross to bear.
A cross you chose.
As if I needed the reminder. I shut my brother’s sardonic voice out of my head and belatedly scanned the room for whatever had woken me. Nothing obvious came to light. On autopilot, I reached for my phone and checked the time. It was a little after five—too early to do anything meaningful and too late to go back to sleep. Were drunk power naps a thing? I hoped so. I had a long day ahead of me when the rest of the world woke.
I lit a cigarette. Changed my mind as it made my rum-soaked head spin and flicked it out of the open window. I watched it bounce to the pavement below as I tugged my boots off, shrugged out of my club cut, then flopped back on the bed.
Teddy’s message taunted me. I opened it and read the words again, all three of them.Don’t be late. Okay, first up, what made him think I’d be a tardy motherfucker? Second, how the hell did he manage to be like that in a text message? Was I losing my damn mind, or had this prick connected a live wire to my nerves when I’d been in his bed?
Cos that’s how I felt right now. Fucking nervous, for no reason at all.
Nonplussed, I tapped out of the message and opened another, this one from Nash, confirming in even fewer words that he’d done the dozen things I’d asked him to do and made it home for the night. It should’ve been enough to settle me, but it wasn’t.
I opened Teddy’s message again. Stared at it. Pictured him stretched out like a fucking lion on his bed, typing it with his elegant fingers.Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Cam:Or what?
Dickhead.I cringed so hard I made my jaw crack, adding to the headache I’d woken up with, but my phone buzzed before I died a complete and horrible death.
Teddy:Or I’ll leave. Why are you awake?
Cam:Why are you?
Teddy:Habit.
Cam:Same.
Teddy:Interesting.
