Luckily the location sharing worked and gave me an address. It should at least get me in the general direction of where he was. Once my Uber arrived to pick me up, I tried texting Greer to make sure he hadn’t left but got no response. If this was some joke, if he was trying to play me, I was going to rip his balls off. I had a feeling, though, it hurt him just as much to ask for my help as it did for me to come to his rescue.
We pulled up to a bar that wasn’t far from the hotel. At least it wouldn’t take me long to get him back to the hotel once this was all settled.
I sent off a text to Walker letting him know where I was as I stepped into the bar. It didn’t take me long to find Greer. He was yelling at two policemen who looked like they were on the verge of tasing him if they did that sort of thing in Australia.
The moment Greer saw me, he sagged against the officer’s hold.
“Thank fuck you’re here, Pen,” he sighed out. “You’ve got to help me.”
I gave my best smile as I looked at the policemen before turning to Greer. “What happened? Are you being arrested?”
“I hope not, but they sure as shit want to. I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong. Those fuckers over there bet me a hundred bucks that I wouldn’t run around the bar with a Batman mask on. One second, I’m laughing at my win, and the next, I’ve got these two on me saying they’re going to take me to jail.”
Cocking my head to the side, I tried to digest the story Greer just told me. “Did you only have the mask on?” The only reason I could come up with why they wanted to arrest him was Greer had on streaking across the bar.
“Yes, he only had on the mask. If he had on the entire costume, he’d be in the back of our squad car already,” a tall, blond, surfer-looking officer answered.
“Was he naked while he ran around the bar?”
“What?” Greer shouted. “Of course not. I had on my clothes and the mask. Even I’m not drunk enough to go streaking in a foreign bar.
“Okay, let me get this straight. You want to arrest him for wearing a Batman mask?” This made absolutely no sense.
“Correct,” the other officer with a squat build and a buzz cut answered. “It’s illegal to wear a Batman costume.”
What kind of fucked up shit was this?
I wanted to laugh, and later I would, but for now I needed to fix this.
Greer slurred something that I was sure wasn’t nice, but luckily it was so incoherent no one understood him.
“I’m sorry. I doubt if my friend here knew it was illegal; otherwise, he wouldn’t have put the mask on. In the United States, we love Batman, and there are tens of thousands who dress up like him every year for Halloween, if not more.” Putting my hands on my hips, I looked around the room, trying to find who had bet Greer to put the mask on. Whoever it was, was obviously trying to get him in trouble. He was probably being an asshole, and they were trying to get rid of him.
I turned back to the officers. “If I offer to take him back to his hotel room, will you please let him go? Greer had no idea what he agreed to was illegal.”
The two policemen looked at each other, having a silent conversation. If this didn’t work, I wasn’t sure how I’d get Greer out of this mess.
“If you promise to take him to his hotel, and he’ll never come back to this bar or wear a Batman costume again.”
I wanted to ask if that applied only in Australia or if it included the entire planet Earth because this was ridiculous. As much as I disliked Greer, he didn’t deserve to be arrested over something so stupid.
“I promise. I’ll take him there myself and make sure he doesn’t come back here.”
The officer’s hold on Greer loosened before he let go. “I hope you learned your lesson. You won’t always have a pretty lady to get you out of trouble.”
Greer’s lip curled, and I knew something nasty was getting ready to come out. Clamping my hand over his mouth, I pulled him out of the bar and out onto the sidewalk.
I whirled around on him. “What were you doing? I thought you didn’t want to go to jail.”
“Not for something stupid like wearing a mask,” he sneered and tried to pull his hand out of mine. I didn’t let go, though. There was no way in hell I was going to let him get into more trouble.
“Let go,” he demanded.
“No. Not until you’re in your room. Then we’re going to order us dinner because I’m starving, and you need to sober up. Then you’re going to tell me what your problem is with me.”
Greer yanked on my hand, causing me to become unbalanced and fall. I caught myself on my hands and knees. The instant I hit the pavement, I knew both would come up bloody. I stayed down, looking up at Greer, who was now circling me on the sidewalk.
Looking up at the sky, Greer yelled. The words dripped with so much pain that I felt it deep in my gut. “You want to know what my problem is with you? With the world?”
“Yes,” I whispered to him as I stood up and moved in front of him.
“My problem is I want the one person I can never have,” he cried out.
“Greer,” I put my hand out to comfort him, but he swatted it away.
“It’s not you, woman,” he said the last word with so much venom I took a step back.
“I want Walker. He’s who I want and will never have,” he confessed, a lone tear streaming down his face.
Walker, Cross, and Kenton stepped out of the shadows as if on cue, all eyes on us. When had they gotten here? “Well, that explains a lot.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
walker
Looking up from my phone, I spotted Greer looking over at me, but the second our eyes met, he turned his head to look away. It had been two weeks of this awkward dance. He wouldn’t talk to me or anyone else on the bus. The only people he talked to were the crew members.
I felt bad. Unrequited love, lust, like, or whatever the hell he felt for me was a bitch. I couldn’t do anything about it, though, and unfortunately for Greer, those feelings would never be reciprocated.
Pen felt awful and had been keeping too much space between us when Greer was around, which felt constant. I thought with all of the guys knowing, we wouldn’t have to hide, but now it felt like we were hiding more than ever.
Pen came bounding into the room. There was a bounce in her step and a wide smile. You could feel the happiness coming off of her in waves.
“I’ve got amazing news,” she squealed. Picking up my hand, she held it to her chest as she faced the others. “I just got off the phone with Cristiano.”
“Is that why you’re so happy? Not that I blame you,” Cross joked.
“No, silly,” she swatted at him. “Twisted Youth just went gold,” she called out the last word long and loud.
Cross leaned back against the wall across from me. His mouth hung open. “You’ve got to be fucking with us.”
“I don’t joke about business,” Pen said before turning and jumping on me. I caught her effortlessly like I knew I would until the end of my days. She wrapped her body around mine, her fingers pulling on my hair until I was exactly where she wanted me, and then her lips were on mine.