“Turns out not all the firefighters are assholes,” she says with a tiny smile that shouldn’t bother me.That’s mine.I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth.You are out of your fucking mind, Brighton Black.
“I’m not picking you up if this date goes bad,” I warn, trying to ignore every other thought in my brain.
“I promise to charge my phone this time,” she brushes it off, and I find myself wishing she didn’t.Grow up. You’re friends. That’s what you do, you let your friends date people. Rhea wouldn’t give a shit if you dated someone.“What?” she says, and I stare at her for a moment, praying that I didn’t say any of that out loud.
“Quit chasing my best drinkers away,” I tease, and she laughs, the sound vibrating through me.
“It’s not my fault they can’t handle me,” she argues playfully.You don’t need to be handled.
“Go watch the stage,” I tell her, and she doesn’t hesitate to find her way back into the chaos.
When I turn back to the kitchen, Kaia is standing by the exit door with her eyes on me and her jaw strung tight as her fingers rotate a small, shiny hunting knife between them.This womanenjoysjail.
“Tread lightly,” she warns.
Sunday said that same thing.
At least now I have an idea of why they’re all so careful with my sad girl.
“Get out, Kaia.” I snap at her, and she narrows her eyes but pushes out of the door with her back and disappears into the night-soaked parking lot. With her busy outside, doing God only knows to the idiot's truck, I wade back into the busy section of the bar. Boone is waiting tables with some of the girls, and Judd is manning the bar by himself, completely drowning in orders.
I wander back around and start to help, watching Boone swipe the nearly full beer off the table in front of Miles as he starts to rub himself down with oil. These firefighters are full of themselves, but the female presence in the bar is blossoming more than on dance nights. When he turns back, he throws his hands up and starts accusing his friends of stealing it as they all get ready for their turn on stage.
Some radio personality with a stupid name is hosting, and before long, the Hollow’s main floor is packed with drunk women screaming overshirtless men that parade around on the stage to horrible mainstream pop music.
Rhea’s laughing with a few of the women who are around the front, and she says something to Judd as he passes by to collect drinks off the long, standing tables piled with dirty glasses. The firefighter she had been flirting with all night stomps across the stage, stripping from his damp uniform and kneeling across from her. She’s standing just close enough for him to wrap it around her neck and pull her in tight to whisper something in her ear that makes her cheeks turn pink.
I’m going to break both his hands.
He kisses her cheek and straightens out as the host introduces him, and he flexes his muscles under the warm yellow lights for all the girls scream his name.Never again. The glass in my hand creeks uncomfortably as my fingers close around it tightly. Whatever Kaia is doing to Miles’s truck better be worth the heart attack I'm having watching Rhea flirt with these assholes.
“Can I get some vodka shots to the back table?” one of them asks from my left, and I turn to see what table he’s talking about with a nod. I fill nine glasses with vodka and then rim the other with it, but fill it with water. Just enough to smell like booze but give no buzz. I carry them over, tray high, to avoid spilling as the crowd parked around me.
I hand out the shots to them, personally giving Miles the water with a deadpan face. He lifts it to his lips without a word and takes back the water as it burns. I laugh to myself as I swing away back into the crowd.
Intermission has started, and the judges are being introduced on stage as ballots get passed around to outstretched hands to choose the people’s favorite. I grab a water bottle and slip through the tightly packed bodies toward where she towers over a circle of women. They’re looking at the extensive list on the ballot, and Rhea is pointing out certain names with a smile on her face.
“Hellcat,” I call out and chuck the bottle as she looks up at me. She catches it without flinching, popping the top with a tiny thank you from her lips before she takes a drink.Just a moment of her attention— to remind me none of these douchebags matter. She comes home with me when the doors get locked.
She lives with you, asshole.
I can hear my brother in my head, reminding me about how stupid I’m being. But ever since she told me about her past, I can’t help but buffer her from other men. Like she’s triggered some possessive idiot that lives inside of me, the one I haven’t met since my early years with feisty, loud-mouthed Riona Cody.
I grind my teeth together, calling her that.She was Riona Black for so long until you ran her into the ground.Every once in a while, I can still hear that laugh, see that girlish smile on her face, and I forget how badly it had gone wrong. I met Riona at a party that Boone had dragged me to. She was all blonde hair and glassy, predatory eyes, those long, sharp lashes fluttering at anyone who would look at her.
She was quick with her tongue and even faster with her insults, and I knew I needed to feel how good those sharp teeth felt in my skin. It was one night. One party. And she was mine forever. Her heart and everything that came next in the weeks that followed. Never leaving each other’s side, the fear of finding out she was pregnant with Daisy, the fights, the worry, the sex, and the laughter.
She had years of school left, and I had no education and even less money.
So I joined the Marines with some stupid notion that they’d train me for real life, but instead I got a blood-stained soul, divorce, a daughter that hates me, and an aura void of any light.“You’re not very bright.”Her drunken words repeat in my head as my eyes catch Rhea, laughing brightly at something as the music grows louder again, and they prepare for the next round of contestants.
Maybe I could be.
“He’s starting to get pissy,” Kaia says, appearing at my side. I flinch. She's one of the only people that can sneak up on me.
“You’re too quiet,” I mutter with a scowl. She shrugs as I whip her up a whiskey sour and she settles onto the stool as Sunday and Cosy findtheir way to the bar. Boone is quick to steal three more beers right out from under Miles’s nose, and Kaia is right, the more drunk his buddies get, the more he realizes what’s happening.
“What the fuck is this?” He storms up to the bar. “My drinks have been weak or missing all night? Is this how you run a fucking business?”
