Chasing Serenity (River Rain 1)

And with iron will, through all that, I did not think of a thing.

Except what bottle of wine I’d open when I got home.

* * *

Judge

“She seemed high maintenance to me.”

Chloe was the new definition of high maintenance.

Judge took a sip of his beer and smiled at the starry sky.

When he finished the sip, he said to his buddy Rix, who had his own beer and was lounging in his wheelchair at Judge’s side by the railing on Judge’s deck, “Shut the fuck up.”

“Probably takes an hour and a half just to do her hair,” Rix kept on.

“If it looks like it has every time I’ve seen her, I don’t give a shit,” Judge replied.

“She’ll spend half your money on makeup alone.”

“Good she makes her own then.”

“Though…that ass…”

Rix let that hang, and the crinkles at the corner of his eyes stated how he knew that got under Judge’s skin even if Rix didn’t look at him, just sucked back some of his own beer as he stared at the sunset.

“That isn’t funny,” Judge warned.

That was when Rix looked at him, all fake innocence. “It isn’t?”

“Fuck you,” Judge returned.

Rix suddenly stopped giving him stick and started studying him.

He then diagnosed, “Man, you got it bad.”

“She’s gorgeous. Dresses great. Is funny. Smart as hell. Got her own thing going with work. Gives back. So yeah…” He shrugged, totally down with this concept. “I got it bad for Chloe Pierce.”

“Your dad is gonna love her,” Rix said carefully.

Judge shifted in his seat.

“Your mom is gonna detest her,” Rix went on.

“How ’bout I have an actual date with her before we get into the parents,” Judge suggested.

“I don’t know why, considering you’ve met all of hers, and work with the step one.”

“And they’re damn fine people,” Judge returned.

Rix shook his head, took another slug of beer and cautioned, “She’s gonna be work, bud.”

Okay, now Rix needed to piss off.

“I’ve been around her where she hasn’t been pushing me away twice, Rix,” he shot back. “And one of those times, I had to coax her to stop pushing me away while we were having it. We got to know each other a little. We had fun together. She doesn’t have my ring on her finger. Christ. Chill.”

“I just know you,” Rix noted.

“I know you do, but you don’t know her.”

“Yeah, I know, even though I spent hours with her at a party where it wasn’t like there were five hundred people there and she didn’t meet me,” Rix pointed out.

“She was pushing me away. She’s hardly going to stroll up and introduce herself to my best bud when she’s avoiding me.”

“And at that time, you hadn’t even let on you were interested and she was jacking you around already.”

Judge kept quiet so he wouldn’t lose his shit and say something he didn’t want to say.

Rix twisted his torso to fully face Judge and continued, “Listen, I can see you’re pissed at me. But you gotta know I’m not sayin’ this shit to set you off. I’m also not saying it to dog her. But you got a type…and you repeat a pattern.”

“Let’s not talk about this,” Judge suggested.

“We been out here thirty minutes and you’ve looked at your phone ten times because the woman has not reached out all day.”

Judge said nothing.

Though it hadn’t been ten times.

Three, tops.

“That’s shades of Meg and Kimberly,” he carried on. “And Jess was far from above yanking your chain.”

“Chloe has a business to run.”

“She knows you’re into her and she knows, because you are, she can bust your balls.”

Yup.

Rix could piss off.

“Just because you got a thing for heads-up-their-asses pieces of work, Rix, do not land your shit on me,” he clipped.

“At least mine don’t make me drive two hours before they fuck me over,” Rix shot back. “And they wait until they’ve given me at least one orgasm before they decide to try to lead me around by my dick.”

“You do not know this woman,” Judge returned.

Rix nodded once. “You’re right. I don’t. I know you. And all I’m saying is, be careful. That’s it. The thing now is, you’re as pissed as you are about my message because you know I’m right. And you’ve put yourself out there.”

He had.

But so had she.

“She’s not who you think she is,” Judge told him.

“I hope you’re right,” Rix replied. “What you need to get is that not every woman who’s just your average, everyday woman who doesn’t have some lofty ambition or some massive trust fund or some other gold-plated stick up her ass is gonna turn out to be like your mom.”

Judge returned his attention to the night sky.

His black and brown brindle shepherd mix, Zeke, shifted up from his place lying on a folded blanket between them to sit on his haunches and butt Judge’s hand with his muzzle.