Page 44 of Friends to WHAT?!

Darling Starling:The whiteboards?

That’s… foreboding. Right? Surely we all see how foreboding that is.

Nevertheless, I trot to my office like a good little project boy and take a picture of each whiteboard containing my life’s sins and pitfalls. I send them to her with an emoji that lets her know how very much I’d rather not.

Darling Starling:Stars, I forgot how much there was…

Darling Starling:No matter. Thanks, Wolfe!

Wolfe:Miserably, you’re welcome. Lamenting, it’s no problem. Dismally, anytime.

She replies with a series of star-eyed emojis, follows them with a purple heart, and finishes it off with a hand heart.

I stare at the string of messages, which are clearly a full and complete andendedconversation.

I wonder if I could say something else without making it weird. I could ask how her day has been. I could ask if the slow season is still bothering her. I could ask what she made with the chicken thighs that were in her cart on Saturday…

The bell above the shop door rings, and the smell of garlic, onions, and meat fills the studio.

I sigh.

“Stay there!” I call to Warren, walking around my tattoo chair and past two others to reach the waiting area near the front. “No eating in the booth area. It’s not sanitary.”

Warren nods, golden hair flopping with the motion, and sets a plastic take-away bag from the diner on the front counter.

I round to the employee side, grab the two rolling chairs stored there, and slide them out to where clients and companions are invited to chill when not being tattooed.

Warren and I sit, and he hands me my sandwich before tipping his head at a drink. “Mel said you like root beer.”

Mel would be correct. I take a sip, and we eat our food mostly in silence. Warren is a repeat client of mine, and he’s one of my least talkative. I have a theory that when his parents were having children, they saved up all the pomp, aplomb, and chatter for their youngest, Veryan. Honestly, if they didn’t look so alike, I don’t think I would have ever known they were brothers. Warren’s bigger, and quieter, and all around… saner, but he is undeniably Veryan’s brother. No one else has eyes so golden as the Hale brothers, nor hair so bright. And, despite Warren’sI’m not clinically insaneouter shell, there is something…somethingin his eyes, that matches the same sort of something Veryan carries around.

Plus, no one completely sane sits for an entire sleeve in one day, and this is Warren’s second. And the only reason he didn’t get it at the same time as his other one is becauseItapped out.

“So,” he rumbles, his default sound. “I heard you and Leora are finally together and that you yelled at an entire bar to leave you alone.”

I nearly choke on my reuben.

Warren grins, and thatsomethingin his eye becomes a whole lot moresomething. “Good for you, Wolfe. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

I cough, and he pats me on the back—hard.

“Neither did I,” I wheeze, honestly. “Truly.”

Warren laughs.

Then, he asks if he can see the infamous whiteboards.

I choke again.

Chapter Twenty-One

?

We love a project update.

Wolfe

I did not let Warren Hale see the infamous whiteboards. I’m not a masochist. It was bad enough that my family got to see and be a part of the making of them. And even worse that someone—if I had to guess, Almond—blabbed about their existence to enough of the town that Warren, of all people, has heard about them.