“Yup. When the itty-bitty smoker arrived.”
“What else did she tell you?”
A frown pleats the skin between Tanner’s dark brows.
I match it. Not on purpose, it just fuckin’ happens. My grandma says I’m an empath like her. I say she’s cray-cray with a side of too much blow in the seventies, but still. Tanner is an emotive guy. It’s hard not to absorb his moods. “Something I should know about this dude?”
“Only good things.” Jax straightens and slides into Tanner’s orbit, nudging him. “Tanner’s freaking out because Joss is gonna need somewhere to live while he’s here and I kinda told him he could live with you.”
“You did?”
Jax winces a little. “Remember that night a couple of weeks ago when Molly cracked the IPA keg and we had to drink it all before it went bad?”
“Your wedding party?”
“It wasn’t a party,” Tanner gruffs. “You guys have no fucking chill.”
“Anyway,” Jax continues before Tanner can get pissy that his staff went on a bender to celebrate the fact that he eloped on the other side of the world. And that a whole keg of craft IPA paid a price that Jax enjoyed a little too much. “I was talking with Harrison that night about the remodeling, and I had a world-changing idea. I called an old mate and blurted out that he could be your roomie before Tanner had a chance to talk to you about it.”
“So it’s a done deal?” My voice sounds distant, and it’s my turn to cringe. I’m not upset that they made a decision without pandering to me. Me living here…it was a favor from Tanner in the first place. A fuckin’ lifeline. I can’t be mad that the earth keeps turning.
“It’s not a done deal.” Tanner rounds the counter and gets all up in my space. “It’s an idea that makes sense on a practical level since the renovations gave your place an extra bedroom. It doesn’t have to happen. He can live with us for the summer.”
“The summer?”
“It’s not permanent,” Jax says. “Joss never stays in one place longer than a couple months. Gets itchy feet and fucks off into the sunset.”
Joss. I file that away and try to catch up with everything else they’re saying. Match it to the reality of how we all live.
I focus on Tanner. “You only have one bedroom, bro. You’re gonna make this guy sleep on your couch?”
“It’s not the worst place to kip,” Jax says. “I spent a few weeks on it before Tanner cast his spell on me.”
He doesn’t need to tell me how the lumpy couch in the undecorated living room is a sanctuary. I know it. I slept on itlast night.And that’s why Tanner’s staring a hole into the side of my head. He knows wherever this arrangement lands it’s gonna fuck with me, because I’m such a messy human that my bullshit stretches over two apartments. “It’s fine.” The words rush out. “He can sleep wherever he wants. It’s not like I don’t have other options if it doesn’t work out.”
Tanner shakes his head. “You aren’t ready to hole up in your fucking wilderness shack, Kai. If you and Joss don’t mesh, we’ll figure it out. This is your home as long as you need it to be, and that isn’t going to change.”
Sweet of him to say, but the cheap apartment above V&V isn’t my home. It’s a care package he pulled together when he caught my mental-health implosion before I did. “It’s fine, dude. Honest. Maybe we’ll become BFFs enough that you don’t have to babysit me anymore.”
“Kai—”
“It’sfine.” I’m not a snappy kind of guy. Call me lazy, but I’ve never seen the point when a smile is so much easier. But I haven’t been myself for a while and the Fletcher growl falls out of me before I can stop it.Fuck, I sound like my dad.Ergo, I sound like an asshole. “Sorry. I mean, it’s fine. Of course it is. It’s your apartment.”
“It’s Harrison’s, technically,” Tanner says. “But itisyour home as long as you want it to be. How you feel is important.”
“I—”
“Tome, Kai. I’m aware you don’t give enough of a shit about yourself.”
Ouch. I sink onto a nearby stool and dump my elbows on Tanner’s breakfast bar.
Jax rubs my back. “You know he’s trying to be nice when he rips you a new one, right?”
“Yeah.” Underneath the gruff, Tanner is the sweetest dude in the world. “But it’s okay, really. I don’t like being alone, and maybe having someone else around will stop me barging into your place every night.”
“You don’t barge, mate. I never know you’re here till I fall over your feet in the morning, and I’d take that a thousand times before I could live with you being on your own when you’re upset.”
“Yeah, but I must be on, like, seven hundred and forty-two times by now.”
