Just survive this night. One day at a time.
“No uniform!” Mickey snapped. “I’ve got two hundred, going once, going twice—”
“One thousand,” a steel voice cut through the space. Silence descended on the bar.
I didn’t recognize that voice, but…
“One thousand dollars! Done! Hailey please go enjoy a beer with Ethan King,” Mickey announced, and my gaze snapped up and locked with the winner.
Ethan King.
In that moment I wanted to run away from here, from him. I wasn’t looking for a new guy—I’d barely survived my last. I knew it was just one drink, but the look in those blue eyes said that it could be so much more.
OceanofPDF.com
Two
Iwalked on wobbly legs towards the four-top where Ethan sat. The entire time he held my gaze, piercing into me with a deep and serious look that scared the shit out of me. I’d smashed my fucking tits against this guy’s chest five minutes ago. What the hell did he think of me?
He probably didn’t even remember me.
That sunny day in March when I’d been crying on the bridge between the middle school and high school. Some kids snuck out there in the middle of class to smoke or make out, but I was there to lose my shit over my mom. I’d never forget what he’d said to me.
“Family isn’t always blood. It’s who we decide them to be. So go out and make your own family.”At just fourteen years old, I remembered thinking he was a fucking Yoda or something. A hot-ass Yoda that I totally wanted to make out with at the time. Ethan had been the one bright spot that day. A cool and sexy seventeen-year-old talking to me in the darkest moment of my life? I’d never forgotten it.
Walking across the bar to him now, I felt like I was walking into my past, the good part of my past, the part I missed, before my mom died and I was led astray. His friends saw me coming and scrambled to give us the table alone. Angela collected the stack of hundred dollar bills from him and winked at me as she passed. My heart felt like it might jump out of my chest. I had no clue what to say. This was a fake-ass charity date, but still … I was so out of practice I didn’t even know how to talk to other men.
“Hailey Willows. I heard you’d moved to Los Angeles,” he said casually and gestured for me to sit.
Fuck.He remembered me and his voice was like butter with a little scratchy whisky thrown on top.
I sat, grabbing the beer Angela had handed me before scurrying off. I hated beer. I was a wine and cheese kind of girl, or if the day was hard enough, Jack, but I took a swig anyway.
Maybe Hailey 2.0 could be a beer chick.
“Yeah. I’m back now,” was all I offered.
He remembered me.I couldn’t get over that. Did he remember our talk that day on the bridge?
Ethan nodded and I couldn’t help but let my eyes roam over his tattoos, the tiny scar below his lower lip. Spending the last few years living in a loft in downtown L.A., with a bellhop and men constantly wearing three-piece suits, left me ill-equipped to deal with Ethan King. His jeans were worn, there was grease under his fingernails, and his dark hair was messy in a sexy, I-don’t-care-what-I-look-like kind of way.
“Where are you staying?” It was a casual question but one that brought a lot of pain for me. I’d obviously signed a prenup before marrying Bryce, the son of a billionaire, and because he never let me work or go to college, I had nothing in the way of savings. My family were all dead, and the “friends” I’d had in L.A. disowned me at Bryce’s command.
AKA homeless.
“In the youth hostel on Jefferson,” I squeaked, trying to sit up tall.
Hailey 2.0 wasn’t ashamed of her circumstances.
His brows drew down for a moment, but then he brushed it off and took a swig of beer.
I tried to make normal conversation and not think about how crazy and intense this fake date was: “So what have you been up to since high school?”
Ethan’s posture was relaxed, but those eyes watched me like a hawk. It was sexual in a way I couldn’t explain.
“Did you hear about my big brother going to jail?” he asked.
I nodded. He had an older brother who’d ended up in jail for dealing drugs. God, this place was such a depressing shithole sometimes. Half the people I grew up with were either hooked on drugs, in prison, or dead.
