“Molly.”
“She’s a good girl.”
Tanner rolls his eyes, but his humor is short-lived. “She told me you helped her out last night.”
“Already?”
“She texted me last night. I didn’t want to bother you with it so late, but I wanted to say thanks.”
“You don’t have to do that. She needs me, I’m there.”
“I figured you’d say that.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re everything Jax said you were.”
I cringe into my tea mug. “You shouldn’t trust Jax. He helped me throw a wheelbarrow off a cliff once.”
“What were you throwing it at?”
“Some cunt.”
“Some cunt.” Tanner repeats the words and shakes his head. “All right. Forget I asked. Back to the menus. I don’t really give a shit, but Harrison does, and he’s too busy to figure it out. You have any ideas?”
I flip through the stack of cheesy yuck again, then dump them on the counter. “Maybe you don’t need an idea. You’re not selling graphic design. Let the food do the talking.”
“Works for me.” Tanner makes a note because he’s an organized motherfucker. Then he hands me a budget sheet, and I revoke the backhanded compliment.
I hate numbers. The more I stare at them, the more they scramble. It’s not that I can’t count, more that I can’t remember why I’m doing it. Or why it matters that I can find twelve answers to the same fucking sums. “Did I fuck it up already?”
Tanner’s brows twitch again. “You’re thirty percent under.”
“Oh. Want me to spend more?”
“I’m just letting you know that you can.”
“I don’t need to. Produce is cheap around here. It’s only the fish from that place I can’t remember that costs a bomb.”
“Maine?”
“No idea, mate.”
Bemusement clouds Tanner’s face. He doesn’t know me like Jax does, and he’s not as used to me as Kai has become. He opens his mouth to speak, but my motor tics choose that exact moment to run through their morning cycle and I chuck my empty mug at him.
It misses, thank the fucking lord, smashing on the floor at his socked feet.
“Shit. Sorry.”
“It’s fine, Joss. I got it.”
He crouches and two things happen. One, Kai’s bedroom door bangs open. Two, Tanner jumps and cuts himself with the fragments of broken mug I’ve dumped at his feet.
I’m such a treat. Honestly, they’re lucky to know me.
I move to help Tanner, but I’m distracted before I even get there by Kai stumbling into the kitchen. He’s asleep enough still that he walks into the doorframe, but the raw panic in his gaze is sharper than the death shards Tanner’s grappling with.
Fuck it. I step over Tanner and go to Kai instead. I grip his elbows with enough force that he looks at me. That heseesme. “I chucked a mug by accident. Everything’s okay.”
