AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You think so?” Jesse leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “C’mon, it’s been a year now, man.”
‘This isn’t the end, baby. It’s foreplay.’
It may have been a year since he fired Salena and kicked her out of his club, out of his life, but she’d been making good on her veiled threats ever since. Brendan was almost certain she was behind all the baby-mama drama Jesse, Taylor, and Chloe went through. He just couldn’t prove it yet. He would, though. Salena was conniving and manipulative, but she wasn’t all that cunning. She’d fuck up again, just like she did with Linnea’s message for Kyan. He was counting on it.
“I think it’s a possibility.” He took a swallow of warm beer and grimaced. “She did make an example of him at the masquerade ball.”
“Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Taylor nodded. “She still hanging onto Hugh?”
Kyan shook his head. “No, man. Hugh has dementia—something like that. His son put him in a nursing home. Heard he deteriorated pretty fast.”
Taylor cocked his head. Apparently that news didn’t sit quite right with him. “Hugh’s not that old, is he?”
“He’s in his sixties.” Kyan shrugged.
Taylor glanced over at him. “That’s not very old.”
“No, but it’s not entirely unheard of.” Kyan let out a long exhale. “Poor guy. I liked him.”
The French doors opened and his cousin’s magnificent Berners, Roman and Timo, lumbered out to the patio with the girls and baby Chandan following right behind them. Chloe put the baby in his arms.
“Can you hold him for me, Bren?” She winked.
Not gonna work, Chloe.
He couldn’t allow himself to even dream of such impossible things, could he? He gazed down at Chandan. The baby looked up at him with a big gummy smile and his heart melted. “Your mother put you up to this, didn’t she?”
Chloe giggled. “You know what I always say, Brendan.”
Let life happen.
“I need a girlfriend?” He chuckled.
She smirked. “I do say that, don’t I?”
He nodded.
“She’s out there.”
I know.
God, I loathe algebra.
Math had never been her strong suit, but it was a required class and she wanted to get it out of the way, so here she was. The professor stood at the whiteboard, marker in hand, droning on about linear equations in his monotone voice. Like white noise it was there but she didn’t really hear it.
Katie sat in the very back row, in the seat closest to the window, which probably wasn’t the best idea if she wanted to pass this class. Her gaze traveled from the whiteboard to the September sky outside the window. She counted the cotton ball clouds as they slowly drifted by. Memorized the view of the city from her vantage here in the third-floor classroom. Allowed her mind to wander.
So far, the city was everything she dreamt it would be. Even as a little girl she’d always known she’d end up here. Every year, in the summer and at Christmastime, her mother and her aunt Kelly would bring her and her younger brother, Kevin, on the train to the city. They’d go to the zoo, visit the museums, walk along the river downtown. Far different from the small town she grew up in a couple hours west of here, the city was a magical place that beckoned her to return every time she left it.
Her aunt, ten years older than her and the youngest of four sisters, must have felt the same. Kelly moved here the summer she turned eighteen and never looked back. It was a no-brainer then, when the time came to go to college. Katie came here too. And she didn’t plan on looking back either. This was her home now.
Katie was so excited to come here that she refused to spend her last summer before college in the small town she grew up in with her childhood friends, surrounded by nothing but fields of corn as far as the eye could see. Right after her high school graduation, and five days after her eighteenth birthday, her parents moved her in with her aunt. She wanted to acclimate herself and explore the city before school started in the fall. Kelly was opening her new business the following month and she was going to work there, so the timing was perfect.
They lived in a big loft apartment on First Avenue, directly above where she worked. There was a huge park close by with food carts out front on the wide city sidewalk, the big trees and trails a welcoming green space in the midst of concrete, steel, and glass. She went there a lot. Something always seemed to pull her toward it. Maybe it was him.
“Miss Copeland?”
Shit.
