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Fucking Johnson. Goddammit. Fucking Mari Oakes and her games.
I change clothes, pull on the shorts and running shoes I keep permanently at the gym and head out to start with some bike and running on the treadmill. Hope nobody comes to bother me right now, because I itch to throw some punches.
Then again, the guys aren’t always using their brains around here, I swear. I guess they’ve trained their blood to always flow to their dicks. Part of the job.
“Hey, man, whatcha doing? Haven’t seen you in a while.” Gale comes to lounge against the treadmill next to mine, clearly not in any hurry to exercise. He’s blond and bearded, tall and strong with ice-blue eyes. “Ladies keeping you busy?”
“You know it,” I growl, pounding away on the treadmill, sweat rolling down my face, stinging my eyes.
“And here I thought maybe it was something else.”
“What the fuck else could it be?”
Gale chuckles, unruffled, the bastard. “I don’t know, man. A girlfriend?”
“Fuck you.”
“Did you say girlfriend?” Fuck, now Zeke is standing beside Gale, wiping sweat from this face with a towel. “Congrats, Riot.”
“What the hell do you guys want from me?” I stop and scowl at them. “There is no girlfriend. Go fuck yourselves or whatever else it is you do in your free time.”
“Oh, touchy.” Zeke roars with laughter, the fucker.
“Am I amusing you?” I step off the treadmill and advance on him. “Huh?”
“Ah, ah, no fistfight today, sorry to disappoint you.” Zeke lifts his hands. “Got an appointment in one hour.”
“Whatsa matter? Afraid I’ll bang you up? Give you black eyes?”
“In your dreams,” he sneers but he’s still retreating. “Just not today.”
“Fine.” I turn to Gale. “You, then.”
“Need to let off some steam?” He cracks his knuckles, smirking. “Let’s go.”
***
An hour later, dripping with sweat and bruises blooming on my torso and jaw, I stumble into the locker room. I shower, get dressed and head back out. Gale wants me to wait up, to go out with him for drinks, and I’m seriously thinking about it. Getting drunk off my ass sounds like a great idea right now. Could help fix the mess in my head.
Don’t know why I’m so hung up on Pax. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t pay me on the spot, so that I forget sometimes what this really is. If I see the cash on the table, I’ll remember that this is a job.
Still can’t get why she keeps meeting me, a nice, rich girl like her, a psychology major of all things. What she thinks she’ll find in a street-bred guy like me, raised in the sound of bar brawls and motorcycle engines.
Gale joins me and gets ready quickly. We ride our motorcycles to a bar he knows and enter the dimly lit building.
Quincy’s says the flickering neon sign over the entrance.
“How do you know this place?” Lots of young, well-dressed guys and girls. “A student bar?”
He shrugs. “Why not, huh?”
“Who are you meeting?” I give him a suspicious look.
He only laughs and pats my back. It doesn’t matter anyway. Booze is booze, and I need to start working on my goal for the night.
I order whisky at the bar and knock the first glass down before I take another look around. Yeah, student bar all right. It’s a weird feeling, seeing them flitting around the place, seemingly without a care in the world, giggling and dancing and taking group selfies.
They’re practically my age, minus a couple of years. I’m twenty-five and they’re, what, twenty?
