Maybe. But I silence that nagging monster. Vanquish it with the flutter in my blood Joss’s mere company gives me.
He’s not here for forever, but this? What we share?
Somehow I know it will stay with me long after he’s gone.
18
JOSS
“Maybe you should eat something.” Jax eyes Tanner as he stomps around the bar, fucking with silverware and crockery, growling at anyone who gets in his way.
Which is everyone. I’ve never seen so many staff in V&V, and Tanner hates chaos. He’s not a man who rides out the storm. He grouches at it until it goes away, a fact that his Cornish shithead of a husband finds hilarious. Of course he does. Jax is a different man to the one I once knew, but he’s still a wind-up merchant.
I leave them to their bickering and go back to the kitchen. I’m teaching college students how to make burgers, and I’m terrible at it. I have no patience for this one kid who needs to be told everything seventeen times, and the irony of that is criminal.
Be a better person.
Be like Kai.
He’d never shout at a gormless hockey player for handing him a beef-flavored bowling ball they’ve made with their fucking elbows.
I don’t shout either, but it’s a close-run thing, and an hour before service, I find myself ducking out the back door wishing I still smoked cigarettes. Weed. Fuck, anything would do right now.
Lucky me, I found my favorite mini fidget spinner in my bag this morning. The one I’d been so sure I’d left in Hackney. It’s great being a grownup,insert sarcasm.
I slide down the wall into a crouch. The sun is high and hot in the sky, and the warmth of it makes me miss Kai and regret the weird morning we shared. I wanted to wake him with a smile and the normality that seems to come from level-ten intimacy. But whatever happened, I don’t really remember it. My mind is too busy, it’s blurred, and I can only see the here and now with its giant misshaped burgers and other irritating things.
Tanner joins me outside. He shifts me a look that reminds me of what took Kai from his bed in the first place.He knows.But what does that even mean? Me and Kai have grown so close I feel like half a person when he’s not around, but it’s not a tangible thing I can explain.
Except kissing him.
Blowing him.
Him blowing me.
Fuck. I shiver and flick the spinner dangling from my fingers. Tanner eyes the light spots that dance from the hologram stickers. He’s a hard man to read, and he’s stressed, but he likes simple things, I can tell.
And I’m simple as fuck right now. No brain power required.
“I brought you a drink.” He produces a bottle of artisan apple juice from his back pocket and sits beside me on the sun-warmed concrete. “Sorry I’ve been a dick today. I hate the unknown.”
“You’re not the worst arsehole I’ve ever worked with.”
“No?”
“Nah. You’re all bark.”
Tanner rolls his eyes. “Nice.”
“Never said I was.”
That earns me a grin and it changes Tanner’s gruff face into something I reckon Jax dreams of when they’re apart. “Can I ask you something?”
I pocket my spinner and open the juice bottle. “If you like.”
“It’s kinda personal.”
Here we go.If Kai hadn’t woken me up with his Detective Tanner rant, I’d be caught off guard, but I’m ready for this shit. Been waiting on it all day. “Hit me, boss.”
