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Chapter 17
Logan
My second beer hissed when I cracked the top open, and when the door behind me creaked, I already knew I wasn’t drunk enough for this conversation. When I’d left the bar earlier and Auston stayed behind to close up with Simone, I expected there would be questions when he got home.
He walked in, dropping his jacket on the bench next to the coatrack. There was a nosy smirk on his face, and he dropped down on the couch, crossing his leg. “Let me have that,” he said, cocking his head and taking my beer from me.
I scowled at him, grabbing a new beer from the fridge and opening it before joining him again on the couch. “Did Simone get home okay?”
“You’re concerned about Simone? Since when?”
He was right. I hadn’t ever cared if she left or made it home alright. “I’m not concerned. I was just making sure she was okay.”
“Interesting day?” he asked. The raise of his eyebrow told me he already knew something. At the least, he knew we had spent a couple hours in the cooler together, and that guaranteed at least an argument. And then some.
“Something like that.” I shivered reflexively, thinking about the cold metal against my skin and the way our warm breath had hung heavy around us. For a moment I considered keeping a blanket on the back of the couch—something we had never done because it was too “live-in girlfriend” and not enough “bachelor pad.”
“I mean, I warned you the door was fucked...” Auston took a long gulp from his beer, using the back of his hand to wipe the stray drops from his lips.
Rolling my eyes, I followed his lead on the beer. I gulped, racing Auston to the bottom of the bottle and jumping up to grab two more. It was going to be one of those nights. “Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled. I closed the door to the fridge and turned around, finding Auston staring at me with an amused smile. “What?”
“What happened?” He snatched the beer from my hands, cracking the top open and taking a long gulp. The entire time, he kept his stare expectantly glued to me.
Taking a drink of my own beer, I huffed. “You mean besides us getting stuck in the cooler?”
He sat back on the couch, getting comfortable. “You know what I mean. What happened in the cooler.”
Here goes nothing.
“She completely panicked. I honestly felt bad for her.” A small twinge of guilt pulled at my stomach.
Auston raised his brow. “She panicked how?”
I sucked in a deep breath, reminding myself of the way she’d felt in my arms and wrapped around my body. The warmth between her legs could’ve kept me from freezing for hours. I could’ve stayed there.
“As soon as the door closed, she went into survival or panic mode. She started gasping and then hyperventilating. It was like a switch was flipped.” I cleared my throat, raising the pitch as if to imitate Simone. “Oh my god, Logan, what if we freeze to death in here?!”
When Auston laughed, I assumed the story would work and continued. “She started crying, and that was one thing, but when she started shivering? Man, I just felt bad for the girl.” I ignored the way my dick stirred, thinking about Simone shivering in my arms and the way her body shook when she fell apart. “I gave her my jacket and tried to distract her from the cold.”
“So, that’s different from the story she told.” He casually drank his beer as if he didn’t just call me out on telling him a massive lie. Did he know the whole truth?
Shit.
I took a drink from my own bottle, trying to still the shaking in my hands and keep my breathing slow. “Well, I don’t imagine she was going to tell you about the way she freaked out. It would blow her cover.” We looked at each other, but Auston didn’t say a word. He just watched me and sipped his beer. “What exactly did she tell you?” I asked a moment later.
He laughed loudly. “She told me about the way you let the door close and then promised you’d go to church on Sunday if you got out of there alive. From what I hear, Simone may not have been the only one that cried.”
I scoffed. I wasn’t the church-going type. “That’s a lie.”
“Which part?”
I closed my eyes, rubbing my eyes roughly with my finger and thumb. “All of it.”
“So you didn’t blame her when the door closed behind you?” My best friend stared at me knowingly. He knew me better than most people and knew without a doubt I would’ve blamed her in that situation. It wasn’t my best trait.
I groaned. “Okay, I probably blamed her for it, but I didn’t cry.”
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t believe me. I didn’t know if I’d rather he think I’d cried or know I’d fucked the new employee I couldn’t stand until she was a quivering mess. “And you’re sure nothing happened?”
