Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men 9)

She was the only person I knew who called her husband by his real first name. It made me wonder if his clients called him Oren or Ten.

Yeah, he was probably Mr. Tenning to them, which made me smirk. Mr. Tenning? How professional. He probably wore a suit and tie when he met with them too, like some kind of skilled architect or something, which I guess he was, but still…weird.

“Colton?” Caroline asked.

“Hmm? Oh, right. Sorry. No. You guys go ahead.” I wasn’t going to crash their family night out. “I’m not hungry.” I was fucking starving, especially since she had mentioned food. But with the mood I was in, I already knew I’d feel like a fifth wheel if I tagged along. “Maybe some other night.”

“Yeah, sure. Anytime. I had this idea about a Vine where someone tells you to log online to some website, and in the next scene you’re cutting a literal log off a tree with a chainsaw, asking, ‘is this big enough,’ or something like that.”

“Sweet. I like it.” I nodded, already thinking through the details to accomplish it. “Do you have a chainsaw?”

“Why would we have a chainsaw?” Caroline sounded perplexed. “There are no trees in our yard.”

“So we have to get our hands on a chainsaw and a tree someone is willing to let us maim?”

Caroline sniffed as if irritated. “Well, I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”

“I suppose you want me to come up with both the tree and chainsaw too, huh?”

“Yeah, would you? You’re such a doll, thank you!” In the background, I heard a male shout and then a toddler’s shrieking back talk. “Oh, geesh. I gotta go. Love you. Bye.”

She hung up on me before I could say anything back, and I mumbled a delayed farewell as I stared at the dead phone. Typical of her to race off in the middle of a conversation. I always felt a little abandoned when she did that to me. But glad I had a mission now, I c

alled Asher, hoping he had a chainsaw and a bushy tree he wanted trimmed.

He had no chainsaw and wasn’t willing to let me touch one of his trees either. “You’re not cutting up my trees, kid. My squirrels need those.”

And that was that. End of discussion.

I knew Pick had trees in his backyard, but I’d already begged enough from him lately. Caroline and I had about a dozen awesome bar skit ideas we wanted to post on Vine, so we were probably lucky enough Pick had given us some time in Forbidden after hours. We shouldn’t push our luck by begging for more shit from him.

I knew Felicity and Knox didn’t have a tree in their backyard.

I was about to call Sarah’s brother, Mason, because they had trees—not sure about a chainsaw—but an incoming call from one of my buddies I’d known since high school waylaid me.

“Dude, are you coming to the Kappa Sigma tonight? You are so missing out right now. There are chicks everywhere. Hot chicks. Hot half-dressed chicks.” And alcohol too, apparently, since he sounded about as toasted as I’d ever heard him.

“I, uh…” When I realized I was trying to think up an excuse why I couldn’t make it, I paused.

What the hell was I doing? I had no reason in the world not to go, except I hadn’t been in the mood to do much of anything outside family shit since…well, Julianna.

I didn’t like realizing that. I didn’t like how I’d given her that much power over me. She’d been on my mind every day since that night. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, I hadn’t been able to throw her underwear away, and I hadn’t been able to look at her after she’d tried to hide from me the day after Brandt’s wedding when I’d gone to the bar to see her.

I’d been ready to move past her drunken slip and actually apologize to her for the way I’d taken off, but then she’d ducked behind the counter when she’d seen me walk in. I don’t know why that made me so irate, maybe because she’d promised she wouldn’t regret anything we did, when clearly she regretted the fuck out of it. But I lost it. I breezed past her and ended up making my cover reason to be there—to talk to Pick—the only reason I was there.

I’d been ready to forget about her completely after that—or, you know, at least try to—but then I’d bumped into her in philosophy class and then she’d bitched me out afterward for ignoring her at Forbidden, when actually, I had kind of thought that’s what she’d wanted me to do since she was the one who’d hidden from me in the first place. But now I had no idea what she wanted. I just knew that whatever I did around her was going to be wrong…which irritated me even more.

Dropping the philosophy class we shared had been tempting, but ridiculous, so I’d stayed on, thinking it was such a large class we’d probably rarely cross paths anyway. Hell, we’d probably run into each other at a party more than we’d be forced to interact in that class.

But I should’ve never had that thought because shit, here we were, running into each other at a party.

Jinxed myself.

I should’ve let her walk on by, but the words of her scolding me earlier after class, telling me I needed to be less contentious, echoed through my head. And before I knew it, I was lifting up my foot to stop her and smarting off some stupid comment about how I was only talking to her because she’d pretty much demanded it and I didn’t want her to bitch me out again.

Except that wasn’t the reason at all. What was worse, I didn’t even know why I felt the pressing need to make her see me and acknowledge me and talk to me. I just knew blood surged through my veins when she turned her glare my way, only for her expression to freeze with shock when she realized who she was looking at.

My heart began to pound and my breathing stalled as if I was actually worried about what I was going to say to her next and how it needed to be exactly the right words. But that wasn’t something I ever worried about, which pissed me off too, so I blurted out the first angry thing that popped into my head.