I’m going to fucking kill him. I don’t have patience on a good day. I don’t have the ability to think rationally once a nerve has been struck. He’s struck twelve since he walked over here in those stupid, shiny ass shoes, and my palms are itching,beggingme to remind him I can still be the guy he keeps telling me I am.
My jaw ticks. Keep it under lock, Fork. You got this.
“Didn’t she just introduce herself?” a smooth, taunting voice enters the conversation.
I glance beside me.
Caulfield.
He stands between Noah and me, hands in his pockets. He offers a crooked smile that is typically cute as hell, but looks awfully intimidating in this light. He never once looks at me or at Penny. He keeps his attention solely on Peck.
“She’s the devil,” he clarifies, and reaches over like an absolute beauty and sticks his full finger in Noah’s ear. “Do you need your ears cleaned out?”
Noah smacks him away, looking horrified, but the laughter that explodes out of me relieves the rage a bit. Wyatt leans back, pretends to examine his finger, and cringes. He brushes it on the front of Peck’s shirt.
His eyes skirt to mine. “Gross.”
Noah is red-faced and fuming now. “So, I assume Dolly’s at work and you’re out here entertaining yetanotherwoman behind her back. Classic.”
“Oh, forfuck’ssake!” I feel a whoosh of air, and I just know Penny is trying to get at him from behind me now. I throw out my arm and she crashes into it. It takes more effort than I’d like to admit to hold her back.
My eyes meet Wyatt’s. We have a conversation that doesn’t need any words.Get her the hell out of here before she swings.He slides his arm around her shoulders, makes a littlejoke about an exorcism, and hauls her back toward our booth.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you, Officer Prick,” I announce, once they’re gone. I lean forward on the bar again, glancing at him. “Unless I’m under arrest, and if that’s the case, I’d like to call my lawyer.”
“She’s been working a lot lately, hasn’t she?” he asks, cocking his head. He nods at the bartender and orders another beer. “Not your lawyer. Though I’m sure that they are, too. But Dolly. Late nights. More than usual.”
I stare at him, not rising to his bait. He has a point to make, and I’d rather him just get to it.
“Long,longshifts.”
I bring my Jager to my mouth, refusing to lower my stare.
“Have you heard of on-call rooms, Forkerro?” he asks, nodding at the bartender when the beer is dropped in front of him. “Where doctors catch a few hours of sleep if needed?”
“Can you leave?” I ask, giving him my best bored expression. “I truly do not care to sit here and recap the entire series ofGrey’s Anatomywith you.”
“Ask her what we did in that on-call room two nights ago,” he says with a smirk, and my blood goes cold. That menacing look only grows more wicked when he sees the way I go rigid at that comment. “She was probably a bit distant that night. Guilty, maybe. Ask her about it. I fucking dare you.”
That’s it. My restraint snaps like a twig. I smack the beer out of his hand with such violence that it goes flying across the bar, shattering into pieces on the ground. There’s warped satisfaction on his face when I lunge forward and bury my fists in his shirt. I haul him off the ground with ease, lifting him right up to my face.
I’m seeing red.
This is what he wants.
I can’t hear anything.
This is what he wants.
All I see is his face and all I feel is pure, burning rage that needs an outlet.
Hit him.
The Beast is awake.
Hit. Him.
“I fuckingdare you,”I snarl, hating how pleased he looks about this. “Keep talking, Prick. Keep running your fucking mouth. I think you underestimate how little I care about a murder charge if it’s on her behalf.”
