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Just as Nita searched for different names of knives, her phone rang with Diesel’s tone.
“What’s up, girl?” she greeted.
“My patience,” Diesel said with a groan, then covered the phone to murmur something to a very excited-sounding Casey, her daughter. After a moment, Diesel came back on the line. “We’ve got a practice set up for tomorrow and you have to be at this one,” Diesel said, and Nita heard the ten-year-old’s voice babble urgently. “Shush, young lady. I’ll ask her.”
“Say hi to Casey for me,” Nita said with a chuckle, hitting enter on the laptop and seeing several images of knives appear. None looked right, so she described the shape of the knife and hit enter.
“Casey says hi back and that you better be there for her next lesson,” Diesel informed her.
Nita hesitated, distracted by the menacing images that appeared on the screen.
“A karambit,” she murmured, reading the rest to herself.
Used for slicing in close combat situations.
She swallowed.
“Say, what?” Diesel responded.
“Nothing. Uh, I’m not sure if I can make it,” she said, and closed the laptop.
“It’s Sunday tomorrow! Are you telling me your sex club bosses expect you to work on a Sunday afternoon?” Diesel demanded incredulously.
Nita chuckled.
“Hey, you’re not supposed to know that I work at a super secret sex club, remember?” she reprimanded. “What if my phone is bugged?”
“Girl, you’re the one who’s bugging,” Diesel scoffed.
Nita smiled. Her friend wasn’t wrong. At his core, Ryder was a dangerous man. The only thing she could really count on was that Stone trusted him, and Georgia trusted Stone. According to her Cavendish boss, Claire, Georgia trusted nobody.
“Hey, you still there?” Diesel asked.
“Yeah, sorry. There’s just a lot going on at work. I kind of have a new supervisor who’s making my life hell,” she explained. It wasn’t exactly a lie. He was definitely invading her nervous system, and for all the deliciously wrong reasons.
“I’ve got two reasons you have to be there. First, you promised Casey a skating lesson before every practice,” Diesel said. “I gave you a pass on the last few because, well, you know why. But Casey has been hounding me about your promise.”
The thought of Casey’s earnest face and spaghetti body fighting against the huge roller skates made Nita smile.
“True. That should be a good enough reason,” she replied, but something prickled at the back of her mind.
“And second, it might be our last practice at the rink,” Diesel said with a sigh.
“What? Why?” Nita asked, vaulting off the bed.
That prickling turned into spikes as she thought about Luke taking out his anger at their breakup on the team. They’d met at the warehouse he co-owned with his dad. When his dad died, it had gone to Luke. Owning the place had inflated Luke’s ego, making him feel entitled to more than one girlfriend while making her feel insane for doubting him.
“Luke says he’s leased the place to a big manufacturer as of the beginning of next month. Proving himself to be an asshole landlord and a complete gaslighting bastard of a boyfriend,” Diesel grunted.
Nita compressed her lips.
“Ex-boyfriend, but yeah, asshole bastard sounds like a pretty accurate description,” she agreed, but felt good that Diesel had her back.
Diesel’s mention of Luke’s gaslighting sent a wave of tension coursing through her body. It stirred up memories of a relationship that alternated between love bombs and veiled insults. The girlfriend he had on the side wasn’t even the biggest issue. Luke had plain made her doubt herself, and like that frog in the pot of boiling water, she hadn’t seen it happening until it was almost too late.
“Will Luke be there tomorrow?” Nita asked, swallowing the doubts that rose in her throat. She didn’t want to, but memories of how he’d taunted her goal of becoming a lawyer floated back. She could feel that sensation of shutting down creep into her gut.
No, I’m not that pathetic woman anymore,she told herself.
