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Will laughed and nodded in understanding.
I turned from him to the room to finish what I’d already started. My eyes had scanned the crowded bar immediately upon our arrival regardless of my knowledge that such an exercise was foolish and futile. My Georgie would be late to our wedding, the birth of our kids, and her own funeral.
Wait. What?
I glanced at her brother, panicked that he could read my mind, but he must have seen something other than outright terror in my eyes.
“Don’t worry, man. George’ll be here eventually.” He laughed. “But if Cass is with her, they probably stopped at Barcelona Bar before even thinking about coming this way. That girl actually gives no fucks.”
I nodded along as though I understood, but I was barely even listening.
I mean, I could almost understand the wedding thing. I was crazy about her, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. But the kids?
Jesus.
My thoughts were in a tailspin, headed straight for the harsh reality of a quickly approaching ground when my pinballing eyes caught on something unexpected and unwelcome. Loud, boisterous, and impossible to ignore, it was quite possibly the only thing that could have superseded my line of thinking at that point.
Shoving through the crowd as gently as possible, checking to see that Will was trailing along behind me, I sought confirmation of my new, much more immediate fears.
Bodies moved with ease, and flirty smiles bombarded me from several female angles. I didn’t have eyes for any of them, though, and for the first time in weeks, it wasn’t because of Georgia.
Thatch turned as I approached, a shit-eating grin topping his redwoodlike frame at the sight of me. “K-man! Fuck yes! Out on the town! I thought I’d seen the last of this,” he spewed out in quick succession, the effect of being several drinks deep slightly loosening his already slack tongue.
Will smiled at his greeting, and I tried not to cringe.
I really didn’t need Thatch to be there tonight. I’d stupidly believed I could keep being Ruck and myself without the gun going off in my face. I was wrong. This was what happened when people played with things they weren’t responsible enough to handle.
The walls collapsed, or at least, they felt like they did, and my tie set out to strangle me. Will smiled and greeted Thatch happily.
I ran through the consequences of his presence and tried not to puke.
God, if I couldn’t get him the fuck out of here quickly, I was in trouble. His picture was on my profile. His face was the one Georgia had been associating with Ruck.
What was already a goatfuck of dishonesty was setting up to turn into an all-out cluster.
I leaned forward and right to Thatch’s ear, using the crowd noise as an excuse to keep Will out of the loop.
“You need to leave,” I told him succinctly, knowing that if ever there was a time my girl would be less than forty-five minutes late, this was it.
He laughed and slapped me on the back.
“It’s good to see you too, man. I miss you. I only get to see you at practice these days.”
I shook my head in frustration.
He laughed some more.
“I’m gonna run to the restroom, guys,” Will excused himself, fading into the crowd fairly quickly.
Thatch nodded and smiled, taking Will’s leave as an opportunity to shit talk.
“But, really, I guess that’s the same as always. It’s just the reason that’s changed, right? Instead of work, it’s the mystic pussy.”
“Thatch.”
“I get it, man. Sometimes your dick just gets caught in the snare of a good snatch. Like a vise grip, am I right?”
“Thatch, listen.”
“How is Miss Georgia? Almost done with your ass and looking—”
Eyes to the door, I only heard the first half of his sentence—thank God—because, just as I knew she would, the object of my affection walked in looking like sex on legs right then. Leather and lace and enough beauty to make me think my earlier panic about kids was actually the best idea I’d ever had. Her blonde hair was styled wild, just how I liked it, and I could see the blue topaz of her eyes shining from across the room despite their failure to meet mine.
And arm in arm with her? The face of her profile, a woman I could only surmise was the infamous Cassie Phillips. I’d heard a laundry list of antics and anecdotes featuring Georgia’s best girl, but I had yet to have the privilege of meeting her.
Fuck.
The web of lies was starting to look more like a convoluted clusterfuck of what are the goddamn odds? We’d each put our friends as our profile pictures—a scenario I should have predicted but absolutely had not—and now, I had to sit through an evening where any second this mess could brilliantly blow up in my face.
