“Yeah,” I say, voice breathless for no fucking reason.
Spencer snickers behind his hand.
“Cut it the fuck out,” I mutter.
The bright orange car that set Isla and me off on the wrong foot pulls up to the curb, mercifully ending this painful goodbye. Isla waves to us, then jogs to it. Brooks Covington wears shades even as the sun begins to set, and gives us a salute in greeting. He embodies everything I hated growing up: someone with money, privilege, and not a care in the world.
Sometimes I wonder how different I’d be if I hadn’t had the responsibilities I did. Maybe I’d be the guy someone like Isla Covington would want instead of the “curmudgeon-y” pain in the ass she’s forced to deal with.
There’s no point thinking about it, but it doesn’t stop me from fixating on it the entire drive home.
Chapter 10
Isla
Aninsistentbuzzingyanksme out of the best sleep I’ve had in months.
I fumble around on the side table for my phone, a difficult feat when my eyes remain shut, my face buried in a pillow. Before I can find my phone, the buzzing stops. I let out a sigh of relief, ready to slip back under, but then my phone starts again.
“Fucking hell,” I groan.
This time, I force myself to roll over and use my eyes to find the phone. The name flashing on the screen sobers me up quickly, and I push into a sitting position on the bed.Parking lot terrorist.
“Hello?” I croak, my voice coated in grogginess.
“Oh, thank God,” the voice on the other end says through a relieved sigh. It’s not a sound I’d ever thought I’d associate with Wes as it pertains to me. “We’ve been calling you for the last fifteen minutes.”
We? I put the phone on speaker and scroll through my missed calls, a mix of Spencer and Wes’s phone numbers. Still, his impatient tone grates. Wes Davidson has no place in my life. Okay, sure, technically, he’s a boss of sorts, but I’m not working today.
“I was sleeping. What’s going on?”
“Hey Isla,” Spencer’s voice comes through the phone clearly like he snatched Wes’s phone from him. “Wes and I are out of town, and Thea got into a fight at hockey camp. She needs to be picked up, and you’re one of the few people she knows in town. I wouldn’t bother you with this if I could reach someone else.”
With Spencer not available to train today, I planned to relax, settle in, and work out at the condo gym later. But if Spencer needs me, I won’t turn him down.
“I’ll head out now and text you once I’m with her.”
“You’re the best,” Spencer says, relief in his voice. “Thanks, Isla.”
I throw on some clothes and brush my teeth and hair quickly. I grab the keys off the table, about to leave, when Brooks strides out of the kitchen, disheveled from sleep. His floppy blond hair falls into his eyes, and he brushes it away only for it to fall back again.
“Hey, I,” Brooks says through a yawn, rubbing a fist into one eye. “Everything all right?”
“With me, yes, but Spencer needs my help with his niece, so I’ve gotta run. Not sure when I’ll be back.” It dawns on me that I have his keys. “Shit, do you need your car?”
Brooks’s eyes narrow. “Since when are you the person that he calls for help?”
“She doesn’t know that many people in town, but we’ve met before, and I guess Spencer trusts me enough to ask. I don’t know. I didn’t ask many questions. They seemed panicked.”
“They?”
“Yeah, Spencer and his brother.”
“His brother.”
“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”
“The one who damaged my car,” Brooks clarifies. He wasn’t bothered about the damage to his car, which, in hindsight, wasn’t as big as I originally thought.
