The last time I’d called her Juniper had been the night that I’d asked her out on a date.
And tonight.
So yeah, she realized the importance.
She also knew that I wasn’t kidding anymore.
“I don’t want to,” she whispered.
I turned my back on her and walked back to Crockett who was staring at us in surprise.
Me, with a look of finality on my face.
“You don’t need to do…” she started, but I was already shaking my head.
“I don’t want anything to do with her.”
She looked… relieved.
And that made something in my gut loosen that I hadn’t realized had tightened.
There was an audible hitch in breath behind me, and I knew that Juniper had heard me.
Then the sound of mad, clicking heels as she all but stomped out of the room.
That’s when the tightened shoulders loosened.
“You…” she hesitated. “You ever need to talk, I’m here.”
I laughed then. “Thanks, babe. But I’m okay. That ship went off track a long damn time ago, I just didn’t realize it.”
I knew that she wanted more, but I didn’t feel like talking about it right then.
What I did feel like doing was sewing up her cut, which I did in the next few minutes.
Seven stitches later, she was all ready to go, and I was cleaning up my shit.
She was looking at her finger in awe.
“You’re good at that,” she observed.
I snorted. “Been stitching up family and friends since I was in high school. So I would hope that I am. My dad taught me to do it when I was a kid. And after surveying him doing all the club’s cuts like I just did for you, I decided that I wanted to learn how to do it myself.”
“Is your dad a doctor?” she asked.
“Flight medic,” I answered as I stuffed everything into her trash can. “The guy that comes to your rescue when you’re in really bad shape.”
She shuddered. “The guy I hope to never meet while he’s on the job.”
I flashed her a grin.
“Come on, let’s go try out your food.”
I gestured to the other room with a jerk of my chin, and she filed out ahead of me, leading the way.
When we arrived, it was to find everyone waiting on us to eat, and the booze end of the party going strong.
“Crockett!” Six called out. “Finally! I found you a date for your brother’s wedding.”
And all that happiness that I’d somehow managed to find after Juniper left fled out the fucking window.
“Yeah?” Crockett asked, sounding excited at the prospect. “Who?”
“That would be me.” Laric raised his hand. “But only because after tasting this cake, I realized having another slice might be worth it. And, just sayin’, but I have a dick for a parent, too.”
The room quieted down slightly as Lynn sighed.
“Jesus Christ,” Lynn, his father, grumbled.
“Sorry, Daddy-O.” Laric shrugged. “Wasn’t talking about you. You’re cool… now that I know about you. But back to you, darlin’. Let’s talk business. What time do I need to pick you up on Saturday and are you going to be wearing a dress? Or what? Can we still ride my bike?”
And, to find my way out of the complicated hellhole that this might end up supplying, I walked over to the food and surveyed it.
But the details of their upcoming time they would spend together did not go unnoticed. Neither did the offer for a date the Wednesday before to ‘get to know each other’ so that it didn’t look like they were just meeting each other the day of the wedding.
Which made my stomach knot, and an irrational surge of jealousy shoot through me.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I needed to get the hell out of here.
So I did.
And didn’t look back.
CHAPTER 8
I’m glad I have boobs. I don’t want anyone making eye contact with me anyway.
-Crockett to Zach
CROCKETT
I all but marched up to the front door of Armadillo Willy’s.
“Whoa there,” I heard an amused male voice say from deep in the shadows. “You look pissed. Everything okay?”
I paused mid-step and turned to stare at Laric, whom I hadn’t seen in the shadows until now. “Ummm, yes. Everything is fine. I’m just… the day was long.”
The day was more than long.
I’d had to deal with crisis after crisis at the store, my little sister had texted me saying that she was ‘taking a mental break’ from me because I was ‘exhausting her’ and my other two siblings had gone out on a lunch date without me and also without asking me if I wanted to join them.
Which, honestly, hurt the worst.
Why did they always go out without me? I mean, yes, I worked a lot. But if they scheduled it in a time that I could the store was slow, then I would be able to go with them. Instead, they just blamed it on my lack of time and went without me, and that was upsetting.
To make matters worse, when I’d confronted them about it, they acted like me being upset that they never invited me was new to them.
It shouldn’t be new. I always, always, always told them that I wanted to go. And that it made me sad that I couldn’t.
Most morons would see that they should do it at a time and location—even if it was at my damn store—that I could attend so I wouldn’t feel so left out.
“You look like you could use a drink,” he teased as he stood up.
My eyes went to the dog at his side, one wearing a service dog camo vest that declared him as such.
The dog was a mutant.
He was the biggest chocolate lab that I’d ever seen in my life.
He was also, might I add, glued to Laric’s side and didn’t look like he wanted to come close to me at all.
I frowned.
“I could,” I admitted. “How do you transport them around? And isn’t this a different dog than the one that you had a few weeks ago?”
Laric nodded as he gestured at me to precede him inside.
“It is,” he confirmed. “That’s what I do for a living, train dogs. I have a new one sometimes every week.”
And that was what we spent the majority of our time talking about, up until the point where we got on the subject of Zach.
“You run at the track a lot?” he asked. “Zach does, too. I can’t stand running in circles, though.”
I tilted my head slightly to the side, wondering if I could get some information out of Laric about his club brother.
Likely, I couldn’t.
But I was just so curious about Zach that I wanted to at least try.
“I do,” I confirmed. “Zach’s there a lot. He garners a lot of… attention.”
Laric laughed. “Women feel safer at a track. It’s in the middle of town. There are bathrooms. You can park close. And when you walk, you don’t wind up miles from your car. And Zach’s an attractive, unattainable young man. Women love that bad boy that they can’t have.”
My brows rose. “You’re not that?”
“I’m a bad boy, sure.” He shrugged. “But I never said I didn’t want a woman. Just don’t want one that’s sweet on one of my club brothers.”