He grins, chuckling. “I don’t buy it.”
“Good thing I’m not selling.”
“Bullshit. You’ve been sold on her since that meeting you told me about. Same girl, right?”
“That’s not true. I’m not?—”
“It is.”
“It’s not.”
“Gray.”
I point the axe at him. “You want to keep all ten of those fingers, Pearson?”
He laughs. “There he is.”
We go another round, then another, mostly because it gives me something to do besides think.But thinking creeps in anyway.
Carly in that restaurant, standing there with her pride bleeding out.
Carly at my house last night, trying to act like my little speech about professionalism didn’t land like a slap.
Carly in my kitchen, pizza in hand, laughing at something Penelope did like it actually made her smile and wasn’t a performance.
Carly wearing one of my jerseys and thigh high socks on my couch.
Carly bent over my desk in one of those tennis skirts she designed.
Carly naked on my bed with my head buried between her thighs.
By the time we hand in the axes, I’m more wound up than when I got here.Cole claps a hand on my shoulder as we walk out the exit. “For what it’s worth?”
I unlock my car and pull my jacket in tighter around me. “That usually means I’m about to hear something annoying.”
He smiles. “You did a good thing.”
My feet stop moving, pausing a few paces from my Aston Martin. “What?”
He leans against his truck, hands shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket. “Stepping in for her. Making sure that asshole didn’t think she was struggling. That part of all this? Good.”
“Right,” I say, thinking he’ll say more. But he doesn’t. “The rest?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
* * *
I drive home with the windows cracked, night air frigid across my face, but it keeps my thoughts in check. Downtown glows in patches as I pass through it — restaurants busy, strings of patio lights over college kids as they spill out onto sidewalks. By the time I pull into the driveway, the house is quiet.
It’s late.
Too late to hear Penelope thundering around in her socks or demanding one more story, too late for cartoons, too late for pizza crusts left on napkins and toys abandoned on the living room rug. She’s in bed already if Carly did her job right.
I kill the engine and sit there for a second, forehead leaning against the steering wheel.
You can keep yourself from doing something stupid.
I have to.
