Except one.
The one that was on a loop when I tried to sleep. How much I missed Dare calling me darlin’.
How much I missed Dare, period.
I pulled out my phone and stared at the last text I’d sent to him on Sunday. The one that said it was delivered on my screen, but had not been answered.
Please talk to me.
Fourteen
I over-cranked my socket wrench and banged my knuckle into the radiator I was trying to replace. “Goddammit.” I shook my hand with a hiss and made a fist to see the damage.
“You keep busting up those knuckles, you’re not going to have a hand left, boy.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I’d turned into a walking disaster zone in the shop lately. Hell, I hadn’t been this messed up when Katherine walked.
Jerome sighed. “Good thing it’s nearly five. Get the hell out of here. I’ll finish that up. I’m tired of you adding your DNA to every car we service.”
I hung my head. “I was hoping for a few extra hours tonight.”
Jerome jammed his rag into his back pocket. “Nope. Maybe next week. Go out and have a good time. It’s Friday night, for God’s sake.”
I was a single dad. I didn’t have a good time. I accidentally stuck my dick into a kindergarten teacher twice and got her in trouble. Probably. Maybe. Hell, that would be why I looked like I’d been on the wrong end of a Ginsu knife demonstration.
It was the maybe part that was killing me more than the baby. What the hell did that say about me? Analyzing shit to death wasn’t my thing. The fact that I was still fucked up about this almost a week later was ridiculous.
I dug out my phone, flicking away from Kelsey’s text that I still hadn’t answered.
I sent a text to my friend who owned the furniture store across the street. I needed a goddamn beer.
Before I finished washing up, I got a hell yeah reply. Evidently, August was feeling just as glad for the end of the work week as I was. My mother was already expecting me to work late tonight, so an extra hour wouldn’t matter.
It was a quick drive to The Spinning Wheel and a relatively thick crowd for Crescent Cove made for some creative parking. Even after I got inside, it took me nearly five minutes to find him.
He waved at me from one of the pool tables at the back of the bar. There were already two glasses on the shelf behind our usual table. That wasn’t a good sign.
I took down a pool cue. If I’d known we were going to play, I would have brought my stick, but it would do to kill some time. Running the table against August was a normal night.
It seemed like it had been ages since normal had been anywhere in my sphere.
We didn’t even really talk. Our competitive natures made all the bullshit crowding my brain empty out for twenty minutes—then thirty as we went head to head on a a final third tie-breaker game.
A flash of red hair distracted me enough to scratch my last shot.
“What the fuck, Kramer?”
I thumped my head on the bumper and swore. Especially when I looked again and the girl didn’t resemble Kelsey at all. I definitely deserved to lose my game.
/> If that wasn’t a direct correlation to my life, I didn’t know what was.
August snapped a beer down on the green in front of me. “Obviously, you need that.”
I stood up, grabbed my beer, and set my stick back into the rack. August nodded to the next set of guys waiting on a table.
“Nice game, man.”
I grunted at the kid who barely qualified as legal. He slung his arm around the redhead who had killed my concentration. She was cute, but too hard-edged to be my girl.