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My voice gets small again. “There was this cute guy in line behind us—”
“The one you and Floss were fighting over?”
My laugh is louder this time, coming easier. “Yeah. I guess we need to work on our quiet voices.”
“I reckon.” She gently shakes me. “He didn’t do anything bad, did he?”
“No. Nothing bad but I think these might be his wife’s clothes I borrowed.”
“Oh,” she says with a shocked giggle. “Oh, I see.”
Like always, her voice doesn’t contain any judgement. Not like the internal voice that immediately starts chiding me for poor choices and berating my lack of self-control.
“I’m glad you weren’t badly hurt,” I mumble, sleepiness making my limbs heavy. “If you ever see the culprit again, let me know and I’ll beat her up for you.”
“You’re half a foot shorter. I’m the one who should offer to beat up people.”
“We can swap,” I say as my brain slows down all processing. “Do a ‘strangers on a train’ but with fighting.”
Sleep claims me before I hear her answer.
CHAPTERFOUR
CONNER
My adrenaline spikesas I walk into my brother’s club, nodding to the bouncer before I head for the back rooms. A waitress drifts across my path and I pull her to a stop. “Is Patrick around?”
It’s nearly four in the morning. There’s nowhere else he should be.
I tried to let the spiked drink go, I really did. But with each passing moment, with each new second I enjoyed in Emilia’s company, the need for justice stabbed deeper into my body.
It surges thinking what he might have done to her if I hadn’t got there first. How he might have ruined this beautiful girl, his shadow haunting her for years, taking something from her she might never replace.
Underneath that is my fear that she’ll sober up and think the same thing of me, ruining the best night I’ve had in years. A perfect memory spoiled by his hand.
“In his office,” the waitress says with a sultry smile, angling her body so her cleavage pops. “Would you like me to show you?”
I dismiss her with a flick of my fingers, and she goes, throwing me a pout over her shoulder. The gesture is reassuring. After the disastrous turn of my evening, I expected my outsides to be as dishevelled as my insides, but apparently not.
Much as I hate stepping foot in my brother’s bar, there’s a relaxed feel to the environs that helps me keep a grip on my anxiety. I tug at my wrist, only realising when I glance down that I’m still wearing the band from the Bounty Club. A grossly inefficient system. Half the gutters around the place must be clogged with the things, like oversized rubber bands.
But the sting when I flick it works to keep my mind focused.
“Hey,” I say in greeting, walking into his office without knocking and slumping in a chair. “Got a minute to talk something through?”
His face sinks into a frown then just as quickly switches to a blank slate. “Sure. Walk right in. Help yourself.”
“I might have a problem.”
Patrick’s lips press hard together, then he reclines in his chair, cracking his knuckles, the joints popping like gunshots. “No shit. The only time you visit is when you have a problem.” He waits a second, then asks in a snide tone, “Shouldn’t you be at school?”
I grimace at the reminder. “From Monday.”
“My baby brother making the whole family proud by putting his arts degree to work.”
“Jealousy gives you wrinkles.”
“Really? Thought it gave you a pile of dead stallions and a divorce.”
