Page 60 of Gin and Bear It

“Getting there.” I force myself to relax my shoulders. Hopefully the rest of my body will follow.

Wes gives me another few moments to pull myself together before he speaks.

“We get drunk assholes all the time, and yeah, they’ll do anything to get under your skin,” Wes says. “But you need to cut them off sooner, or they’ll end up like this. The guy’s wasted. Jasper’s kicking him out.”

I rake my hands down my face and cup the back of my neck, taking a few deep breaths. I’m still too wound up to speak like a normal person, so I take more deep breaths.

“I get the urge to punch that guy’s face in. If he said anything like that to Rose? Or acted like that even in her general direction?” Wes shakes his head. “It’d be over. But we can’t. We just have the power to toss him out on his ass.”

I finally get a grip. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He rubs the back of his neck, too. “But I’m going to have to tell JD.”

I don’t want to get an earful from JD, but Wes is just doing his job.

“Fine.”

It won’t be the first time JD’s been pissed off at me, and it won’t be the last. I just hope he doesn’t decide to throw me out of the family business before I can finish my year’s worth of work.

“Take another few minutes.” Wes nods at me and heads inside.

I crouch and lean against the wall, biting my thumbnail. It’s better than smoking, even though it’s still a bad habit.

Before I step inside, though, the door opens and Jada comes out.

“You okay?” I ask Jada.

“I came out here to ask you that.” She looks me up and down and steps all the way into the alley. “They threw that asshole out before you kicked his ass.”

“I know. Wes told me.”

My adrenaline rush is coming down, so I let myself look at her for longer than I usually do. Her eyes look tired and worried, and I hate that I’m a part of the cause.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But that guy was crossing the fucking line and I⁠—”

“You don’t have to apologize. You were just…” Her head tilts to the side as she studies me. “Protective. Of me.”

Her words hang in the air between us. I’ve never once described myself as protective of anyone, not even women I’ve been with in the past. Not even with the woman who wrecked my heart ages ago, and those feelings seemed so massive at the time.

This protectiveness snuck up on me, hard and fast.

I haven’t thought about my feelings for Jada too closely because it’s flat-out uncomfortable. Our relationship is supposed to be stuck in the “fake” box, and nothing else. But now I’m seeing it’s spilled out of that box and I don’t know how much it’s spread into territories that I want to keep my feelings out of.

All I know is that I like her too much, and I care too much. But I can’t do what I’ve done in the past and just detach.

“Yeah,” is all I say in response.

“Well, thank you,” she says, tucking a loc that’s fallen out of one of her buns back into it. “I appreciate it.”

I just nod instead of telling her the truth—that the protectiveness over her scares the shit out of me.

EIGHTEEN

JADA

“The entire wedding industry is a scam,” I say. I’ve spent most of our drive to Nashville for Danika’s engagement party googling the origins of the event, which led to a rabbit hole of how many expenses go with a wedding.

“Obviously,” replies Ash.