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Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sawyer
“Found him,” I hear from a familiar voice over my shoulder as I move the glass to my lips. I’ve made this move multiple times before, but I can’t seem to force myself to swallow the toxin. Instead, I reach for the ice water–the fourth glass I’ve had since arriving at Lucky’s an hour ago.
“What are you guys doing here?” I ask without looking up from the shot of Jack sitting in front of me.
“Came here to kick your ass,” Linkin says pointedly.
I realize instantly that I wouldn’t fight it. In fact, I’d welcome the physical pain. “Have at it. You can each have a free shot,” I tell them, watching out of the corner of my eye as one more sits on the opposite side of Linkin, while two take my other side.
“It’s not as much fun if you don’t put up a fight,” the big guy says, flagging down Lucky and ordering a beer. The others do the same, as I continue to drink water and stare at the whiskey.
I grunt in way of acknowledgement, not really interested in small talk. After several minutes of uncomfortable silence, I finally speak again. “How’d ya find me?”
“Wasn’t that hard,” Ryan says, taking a drink from his bottle. “You weren’t at home or at the ball field. Figured this was the next logical place.”
Again, more silence.
“You going to tell us what happened?” Dean asks, casually spinning his bottle on the bar.
“I don’t know,” I reply, exasperated. That’s the hardest part–the biggest pill to swallow.
“You don’t know?” Linkin asks.
“Are you telling me you don’t know?” I ask, turning and looking his way for the first time since they all arrived. Levi is over his shoulder, calmly drinking his beer and watching.
“Nope,” Linkin says, taking a drink. “AJ didn’t show up for brunch at the café. Meghan got worried and called her, but she didn’t pick up. It took several phone calls before she finally did. Said she was sick, or some bullshit like that, but Meghan knew. Said she could hear it in her voice. She was crying.”
All over again, it’s like someone thrusts a butter knife straight into my gut and twists. “So she didn’t tell Meghan that she found me in bed with my ex-wife this morning?” Just saying the words makes it hard to breathe, brings back those visions of her devastated face, and those tears–fuck, those memories are torture.
Linkin stands up. Fast. His barstool falls back and crashes on the floor. “The fuck did you say?” His voice is low and menacing and makes me glad that I’ve never been on his bad side.
Well, until today.
The others stand too, a show of brotherly solidarity, or some shit. A bond that I thought I was working my way into, but now I’m suddenly pushed to the outside. Hell, I’m so far on the outside, I might as well be in another universe.
“What the hell happened?” Ryan asks, his voice scarily similar to Linkin’s.
“I don’t know.” Fuck, I hate saying that.
“You said that already,” Levi reminds me.
“I know!” I bellow, turning in my stool and facing them. There’s a little size different between the four, but for the most part they’re an intimidating bunch. Even though I have Linkin by an inch or two, throw them together and something tells me I’d probably be on the receiving end of a few hard punches and probably two black eyes.
Taking a deep breath, I keep going. “I really have no clue, all right? AJ dropped me off at my house and everything was fine. I went inside and grabbed a beer, opened the back door to let some of the breeze in. I went upstairs to shower, and when I came down Carrie was there. She came in my back door and was sitting on my couch. That’s all I remember until I woke this morning with Carrie in bed with me. You can imagine the rest.”
“I should knock your fucking head off,” Linkin seethes, clearly getting into his protector of the sisters’ role.
“Wait, you don’t remember what happened?” Levi asks, a confused look on his face.
I exhale and perch my ass on the barstool. “Listen, if I really made the mistake it looks like I did, I would own up to it. But I fucking can’t. I don’t know what happened. I remember feeling tired and maybe a little funny. But I have no recollection of what happened.”
He keeps staring at me, as if gauging my sincerity. “What did you have to eat and drink?”
“What the hell is this? Are you gonna make sure he did his chores too?” Linkin asks, a smart-aleck smirk on his face as he looks over his shoulder at Levi.
Levi ignores Linkin’s comment and keeps staring at me, waiting. “Uhhh, I had the pizza and two beers with you guys at the cages, and then one beer at home. No, wait. Two. Carrie got me one.”
