Rock Revenge (Rock Revenge Trilogy 1)

“Getting soft too.”

“Asshole,” he said as they started to walk. Limp in his case, though he did his best to hide it. “I’m in the gym every damn day.”

“About that. I think I could use some, uh, honing.”

Simon cocked a brow. “Honing? Well, yeah, duh, but nothing new there. Your potato chip days catching up with you finally?”

“Yeah, maybe a little. You ever see how that Lewis dude looks under his shirts? It’s kinda scary.”

“Whoa, why are you checking out Donovan’s body?”

“I wasn’t checking it out per se, just happened to notice it when he was sitting around shirtless while in a meeting with my wife.”

Simon scratched his chin as they circled around to the front of the hotel. “This sounds like a story I should hear.”

“No story, just I need some, I don’t know, shaping? Plus, I guess the diet is part of the whole knocking up thing.”

“Your diet?” There were many things he didn’t know about having a child.

Nor did he want to.

They walked into the hotel. “It doesn’t hurt, I guess.” Nicky ran a hand over the back of his head. “Whatever. I wanna get cut. If that jackass Lewis can look like a model under his business suits, I can do the same. Minus the suits.” He shuddered. “So how do I do that?”

Simon straightened as he noticed an elderly woman eyeing him as he limped across the lobby. He didn’t answer until they were in the elevator on the way upstairs.

“First step? Come to the damn gym now and then.”

“I’ll do that. What time?”

“Tomorrow, six-thirty.” Where he should’ve been this morning instead of stewing about fucking Ian.

Nick leaned against the back wall of the elevator. “Six-thirty? We’re doing soundcheck then.”

“Not six-thirty at night, fucko. Try six-thirty in the morning.” He glanced back as the elevator reached their floor, only to laugh as he glimpsed the pure shock on his boy Nicky’s face. “Dude, you want to get cut, you gotta put in the work. Isn’t that what you said outside?”

“That’s not even a humane time. Charlie’s up half the night and with them in our room, we can’t escape.”

“Yet you want another one.”

Nick shrugged as he straightened from his slouch against the wall and finally got his ass moving. “They’re cute when they’re unconscious. And only Charlie doesn’t sleep well. Odds are 50/50 the next would be a good sleeper.”

“Charlie is a demon, awake or asleep. Just like her father.”

“Watch it, asshole, or I’ll step in front of a bus just so you get sacked with parenting your goddaughters.”

Simon shook his head and tugged out his wallet to pry out his keycard. “Li would wisely kill me herself before she’d ever let me parent a child—” The door swung open just as he was about to slip in the keycard and he swallowed, taking in Margo’s unusually disheveled appearance.

To anyone else, she would look flawless. Beautiful. She was beautiful to him as well, but he couldn’t miss the lines of strain around her eyes, or the dampness on her cheeks.

Because of him.

“Hi.” He swallowed again and found his throat was dust-dry. “Were we loud?”

Rather than answer, Margo turned around and walked into the suite.

Exchanging a look with Nicky, Simon followed. Nicky headed into the connecting suite. The door closing between the two rooms seemed so final.

A punctuation mark on a shitty morning.