“Shut up,” I say. “You’ve been married for two seconds. You’re not the relationship god.”
Griffin laughs and reaches out one of his abnormally long legs to kick my ankle. “Try nineteen days and—” He checks his phone. “Eight hours.
“Come on, you know the time to the hour?” Dax scoffs. “Griff, you’ve got it bad.”
“So bad, Daxton. And I’m basically the foremost expert on winning women over who don’t particularly want to be won.” Griffin turns his big eyes to me, like I might pour out my soul any second. All he needs is a yellow notepad and glasses on the bridge of his stupid nose and he’d be a therapist. “How are you going to handle this? What are we walking into?”
“We’renot handling anything.” I glance at my athletic watch. “In fact, I need to go. We’re meeting.”
“Let it out,” Griffin says. “We’re here for you.”
How do I explain she clawed into me, believed in me, cracked my ribs, and stole pieces of my heart, then I never asked for them back?
A soft buzz causes Parker to startle. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and groans his way into sitting. “Skye is warning us we’d better have pants on; she and Wren are on their way with a few people on a tour of the clubhouse.”
Griffin pops up and rams his nose under his pit. “Do I smell?”
“Yes,” I say to spite him.
He shoves me against my chest, chuckling, then skips putting on his shirt, and goes to wait by the door, again, like a puppy.
* * *
Outside the conference room door, a woman with bright purple hair wrestles with a busy toddler with cornsilk curls. Mason stands by them, arguing with Micah, his eleven-year-old sister, on who gets to hold their little cousin first.
But when the toddler girl sees me, she squeals and babbles a sound that almost sounds like Ryder. Almost. I’m going with it though.
“Hey, Morgie.” I tickle the little girl’s chin before giving her mom a side hug. “Hey, Elle.”
Mason gets a hair ruffle since he hates it so much.
“D-Dude,” he stammers. “I’ve got a date later.”
“With Geeeerrrtie.” Micah makes a kissy face.
“Yeah, and guess who’s doubling with us?” Mason snaps back. “Lucas.”
Micah glares at him. “So? I don’t care. Why would I care?”
“Oh, I think we know why, Mikey. Should I tell him you think he’s cute? Or was it hot that you said?”
Micah lets out a shriek of frustration. Ellie snickers and turns to me while the two siblings go at it. “Good game, Ryder. Almost looked like you were trying to impress someone.”
My face sets like a hard stone. “Parker has the biggest mouth.”
Doesn’t help that Ellie starts laughing, but it gets worse when the door to the men’s room opens and her husband, Tate Hawkins, the drummer of Perfectly Broken, stalks out with a smirk. “Ryder, Ryder, Ryder, you know how his sister is. Alexis is relentless when she wants information, and at our dinner on Sunday she wanted the dirty details.”
Tate is tall and lean, even though the man is constantly eating. Sure enough, he pulls out a chocolate granola bar and bites into it. When his daughter whimpers and holds her arms out, he breaks off a piece and hands it to her, giving her cheeks a few kisses.
“You okay with all this?” Tate asks, something like concern in his voice. I’m not close to the rock stars like Parker, but they’re all good guys. Mason and Micah’s dad is the producer for the band, Ellie is their aunt, and Parker is their brother by extension.
Somehow along the way they adopted a few baseball players.
“I’m ready for this field house to be running.”
“Fair enough.”
“I appreciate you coming to give some feedback.”
