Breaking Even (Sterling Shore 5)

“This one is on my tab. Do whatever needs to be done.”

I can actually feel his surprise, so I don’t bother looking up. Brin can’t keep driving that thing around, and she’d have never let me take it if I hadn’t had it towed without her knowledge.

> “Alrighty then,” he says at last, and then I hear him talking to a familiar voice in the hallway.

“Hey,” Wren says as he walks in.

I look up as he comes to drop onto the chair in front of my desk.

“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your date?” I ask, glancing at the clock on the wall.

I don’t usually work on Sundays, but it’s been so busy that it was necessary to do. I really have to get my new guys trained properly so I can let this place run without me a little better.

It sucked to call Wrench in, but I know Brin will be impatient while waiting on her car. And I won’t dare let anyone besides me or him touch it. Since he’s even better than I am, I want him to take care of every detail.

“I canceled the date,” Wren says, bringing me back to the here and now.

I could strangle him. She just finished saying he was going to do this.

“Why?” I growl.

His eyebrows go up as a daring grin forms. He has no idea how close I am to slapping his grin off.

“Dude, if you liked her, all you had to do was use Star. You didn’t have to dye the girl’s mouth red.”

Star? I’ve never used Star. It’s a code we came up with a long time ago after a battle over a girl named Star went on between two of our friends. If you ask a guy about Star, it means you’re calling dibs. I’m not calling dibs on Brin.

We are friends. Nothing more.

“No need to use Star. Pranks are just our thing. You know the only two rules I have.”

I look back down to the interview questions, and then I groan when I see all the even more probing questions. Why do they need to know the length of my longest relationship?

No wonder they send you a pre-interview list. They’re letting you know ahead of time that they’re about to bend you over and fuck you hard. It almost makes me want to cancel.

“Whatever you say,” Wren snickers. “It was obvious you didn’t like the idea of me dating her.”

His eyes are on me expectantly when I give him my attention again. “You don’t make a good couple. But that doesn’t mean I want her for myself.”

I’d sound like an ass if I told one of my best friends that I didn’t think he was good enough for Brin. But he’s not. He proved that.

“It’s fine, Rye. Honestly. You’re right. We’re not right for each other.”

That just pisses me off.

“What the hell is wrong with her? You don’t think she’s good enough? Because she—”

“Whoa!” he says laughing, holding his hands up for me to stop. “First of all, put your fangs away. Secondly, I didn’t mean anything bad by that. She’s cute and sweet, but we have nothing in common, and there was mostly heavy uncomfortable silence between us the entire time we tried to talk.”

“That’s because you were too busy staring at your phone instead of paying her any attention. She’s easy as fuck to talk to.”

His grin only grows. “I’m sure you’re right. Anyway, I’ve sort of got some shit of my own going on right now. And dating isn’t exactly on the agenda. Turns out... I’m a father.”

I think my jaw just hit the floor. What. The. Hell?

His grin is gone as the weight of the world settles into every feature he has.

“When the hell did Erica have a child?” I ask in a rasp whisper. Am I that oblivious to the world around me?