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“It’s all right,” Dipshit said patiently. “We’ll work through it. I’m an empath, so it’s really easy for me to read people’s energies and adjust accordingly.”
This was it. This would be the day I quit and walked away and told Cameron he was on his fucking own because it wasn’t worth the paycheck anymore.
I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, then slicked my tongue over my teeth and started walking away. “I’m not waiting for you, kid,” I called over my shoulder.
“That was a great day,” Dipshit said on a sigh. He was stretched out on the bed of Rob’s truck, staring up at the cloudless sky. “Physical labor is incredibly grounding.”
Rob sat on the tailgate, a cold beer in hand, nodding like that made sense.
It was one of our traditions—Cameron brought us a beer at the end of someone’s first day. He’d had to leave for a meeting, but Ian, Wade, and I took part with some other guys. I drank half of mine and tossed the rest into the metal trash bin next to the house’s frame.
Wade stood to the side, taking a long pull from his cigarette. “You break anything?”
Dipshit smiled. “Nope.”
“Almost,” I corrected.
“But I didn’t,” he said, sitting up and stretching his arms over his head. “You’re a good teacher, Jax, even if you pretend to hate it.”
Wade’s brow raised so sharply that the billof his hat moved.
I gave Dipshit a steady look. “What did I tell you about reading my aura at work?”
Rob laughed. “Come on, man, we should go. Cameron said you needed to drop off that paperwork at the office.”
“We do paperwork for this job now?” Wade asked.
“Not you,” I answered. “You’re too old, and you’ve been here too long.”
He smiled begrudgingly. “Tim pretty much said, hey, want a job? And then he started paying me cash at the end of every week.”
“Bro, that’s such a boomer thing to say.”
“I am a boomer,” Wade said dryly.
“You’re my favorite boomer, Wade.”
The sound of Poppy’s voice had me snapping up straight. It was a good thing I wasn’t in the middle of drinking my beer because I had the distinct feeling I would’ve choked on it.
Wade smiled easily. “Don’t tell your mom that.”
Poppy laughed, her eyes catching mine as she entered our little circle. “Hope it’s okay I’m interrupting the first-day tradition.”
Rob made room for her on the tailgate, but she waved that off with a grateful smile, one hand on her bump.
My awareness of Poppy felt like an electrical current. The moment she appeared, a low-lying hum of energy filled the space, tugging at the hair on the back of my neck.
Almost instinctively, my gaze traced over her face—the lush curve of her lips and the arch of her cheekbones, the dark brows over her dark eyes, the white of her teeth when she smiled at Wade.
God, it was like she brought the fucking sun with her. This sense of warmth and kindness soaked the space around her, and I wasn’t even sure she knew how powerful that was.
Years earlier, this would’ve sent me into a tailspin, and triggered that irrepressible urge to run and hide from it, buteven though she wasn’t mine to want, I let myself settle into the way it felt.
To know and admit it because, eventually, it would fade.
Eventually, it would pass.
It had to, right?
