He walks through the living room and into the kitchen, stopping right in front of me and placing a hand on the counter to cage me in on one side. “Put the green-eyed monster away, Tiger. I’m not here for Haley. Brody told me you’d be here.”
Fucking Brody. Every day he gives me new reasons to want to suffocate him in his sleep. And I’m not jealous.
The front door opens again, and the moment I see who it is my heart stops. Liam walks in with Blaze not far behind him. Jake peeks over his shoulder then turns back to me. His eyes glitter with amusement as we both realize how this looks, how intimate we look.
I swallow the lump in my throat, but my body stays frozen in place. My gaze locks on his expression, the way his eyes narrow and his jaw clenches as he tucks his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. He’s wearing a shirt this time—my ovaries thank God for that—a Carolina blue T-shirt and the same charcoal beanie from last night. God, that beanie.
“Hey,” I say as I slide away from Jake.
Jake huffs a laugh then follows me around the bar and into the living room.
Blaze straightens his posture and looks down at me. “He doesn’t need to come tomorrow.” That voice, his voice, is like a drink of water in a vast desert.
“Are you sure? I don’t mind—”
“I’m sure,” he interrupts. He looks over my shoulder at Jake then back at me. “I have people coming tomorrow to clean up the water, so there’s nothing for him to do.”
“Water?”
“From the firehoses.”
Oh. Right.
The front door swings open, and the rest of the boys come in, nearly knocking Blaze down as they rush past him. They stop before they reach the stairs and glance toward the kitchen at the unmistakable scent of garlic and butter.
“What’s for dinner?” Zeke, the youngest one, asks.
I walk back to the kitchen to check the bread because standing here between these two men is more tension than I can bear. “Chicken alfredo.”
Liam looks at Blaze. “Dude, you have to stay for dinner. Miss M’s chicken alfredo is the bomb.”
The way Blaze looks at me sends the hair on my skin prickling up. If I was a romantic person, I’d call it possessive, fixated almost. But I’m not, so I won’t.
After several seconds of melting me under his stare, he swallows. “Yeah, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” He flicks his gaze to Jake, and his expression tightens. “Maybe some other time.”
Liam shrugs. “Your loss.” Then he follows the rest of the boys upstairs.
Jake plops down on the sofa, splaying his arm across the back as though he belongs here. I suppose in some ways he does, just not on my shift. His smile morphs into a mischievous grin. He knows exactly what this looks like, and he’s eating it up. As soon as Blaze walks out this door, I’m going to punch Jake in the throat.
Blaze turns around and opens the door. “I’ll call you,” he says over his shoulder. Then he walks out, leaving me standing here with a knot in the pit of my stomach until I work up the nerve to follow him outside.
“Blaze…”
He turns around just as he’s reaching for his door handle.
“I just wanted to say thank you. Not just for today but for giving Liam a chance. Not many people would have done that.”
“Don’t mention it.” He opens his car door but stops before he climbs inside. “He reminds me of someone I knew when I was a kid. Someone I hope was able to get another chance too.” His wounded expression chips away at another piece of the wall I built around myself. In an instant, he’s granite again. The pain is gone as quickly as it appeared. He halfheartedly smiles. “Night, Adrienne.”
“Goodnight, Blaze.”
It takes me a solid five minutes after he drives away for my heart to beat right again.
She’s taken.
Good. She needs to be taken. By someone other than me, because after seeing her today, I was thoroughly convinced the next few weeks were going to be pure hell. It just sucks that the guy’s a Grade A douchecanoe. I know his type. I see them at The Taproom every weekend. Sure, they look the part, but once you peel back the layers, they’re insecure pieces of shit. She can do so much better than that.
Why the fuck do I care?
Her love life is not my problem. The brewery is my problem.
Thank God the insurance adjuster came early this morning so we could get started on clean up. The sooner I get things back in working order, the sooner I can be done with my obligation to the kid… and this ridiculous fascination with Adrienne.
I don’t date. I haven’t even thought about a woman in that way in over three years, not since the accident that tilted my entire universe and replaced my heart with an empty shell. But this woman with her brown eyes that are so much more than brown has the power to bring me to my knees. I want to drink whiskey from her belly button and trail my fingertips down her spine while we lay in bed naked and watch the sunrise. Jesus, she’s under my skin already, and that aggravates the fuck out of me.
Until last night, I was the workaholic. I get out of bed, then work until it’s time to go back to bed. Not for success or money or notoriety. My last name gives me enough of that already. I work to forget because in the stillness, I remember. In the stillness I feel the pain.
I live in a loft in uptown Charlotte–a one-bedroom lease to keep me from getting any bad ideas about settling down. I have one coffee mug in my cabinet and zero extra keys to my apartment. Until last night, I wanted for nothing. I needed nothing. My life was simple, uncomplicated, exactly the way I like it.
Now, I’m sitting at a diner across the street from my complex scouring the menu for chicken fucking alfredo.
I wipe down the bar for the eighteenth time in the past two hours. Ten years ago, breweries were content with crafting their brew and distributing it to the world. Now, most of us have taprooms where we serve our beer right from the source. Mine is the largest in this area. I started out with a twelve-foot bar and ten stools. Three years later, I have that same bar, thirteen tables inside, and nine in a closed-in outdoor patio. I serve hot dogs, fries, wings, and choice cocktails. There’s a different band here every Saturday night. But today, The Taproom is a ghost town. For the first Saturday in three years, I’m staring at an empty room.
“So, are you gonna tell me what’s so special about the brunette, or do I need to find out for myself?” Hector’s voice comes out of nowhere and scares the shit out of me. Dude is like a ghost, always popping up when I least expect him.
“Jesus, dude. I told you to stop that shit.”
He laughs. “I can’t help it you’re a pussy.” He reaches into a bag of Combos and pops one in his mouth. “Speaking of pussy…”
“Fuck off. It’s not like that.” I’m not fucking her. I grab the remote from the bar and flick on one of the televisions, muting ESPN because I don’t need a recap of the Nationals/Phillies game, but I do need a diversion from this conversation.
“Isn’t it?”
“No. It isn’t.”
He grabs a glass and pours himself a Coke to go with his pretzel-coated processed cheese. “Could’ve fooled me. All that tension yesterday damn near gave me a chubby.”