Dance With Me (With Me in Seattle 12)

“I don’t need a bag. Let’s go.”

She snatches her handbag from the table by the front door and marches ahead of me out to my car, sliding into the passenger seat. The air is thick with silent irritation as we drive the short distance to Jax and Logan’s condo. Starla hops out of the car and hurries into the building without saying goodbye or even looking in my direction, and I don’t get out to follow her.

I’m done with this godforsaken day.

I do pause to make sure the guys assigned to her are in place before I drive away. I want to go home, pour about six glasses of scotch, and go to bed. But that won’t help anything, and if I’m alone, I’ll just hate my own company.

So I drive to my parents’ house. I promised a few weeks ago that I’d stop by and look at a leaky faucet.

I’ve been a little busy.

“Anyone here?” I ask as I walk inside my childhood home. The house has evolved over time with the addition of new furniture, different paint colors, and flooring. But the smell and the feelings it evokes when I walk inside will always be the same.

This is home.

“I’m in my office,” Dad calls, so I wander to the room he keeps in the back of the house. Dad’s mostly retired now, but he still likes to dabble at home. He’s a successful financial planner, and I can see him doing this until the day he dies.

Numbers and music are his passion.

“What are you up to?” he asks as he pecks at his keyboard.

Dad never did learn to type.

“I had a couple of free hours, so I thought I’d drop by to fix that faucet Mom called me about a few weeks ago.”

“That was four months ago,” Dad says with a laugh. “We had a plumber come. It’s fixed.”

“Well, shit.” I collapse into the chair facing him and rub my hand over my face. “I’m sorry, Dad. I guess time just slipped away from me.”

Just the way it did for Starla and her emails.

God, I’m an ass.

“Not a big deal,” he says and finishes what he was doing, then turns to look at me. “You don’t look so hot.”

“I don’t feel so hot either.” I smile ruefully. “Sometimes, you have a shitty day.”

“If you’re still breathing, it’s a fantastic day.” He winks and opens a cupboard, then pulls down two glasses and a bottle of scotch. “But a guy can always use a sip or two of this.”

“You might have read my mind.”

He slides a glass to me, and I take a sip.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “The job?”

“Yeah.” I swallow the rest of the amber liquid and set the glass aside, then settle in to talk to my dad. I tell him the whole story. Because no one knows me better or gives better advice than Dad does.~Starla~

I feel like shit.

Worse than shit.

I feel like someone beat me over the head with a mallet, made me eat fourteen meals at a fast food joint, and left me for dead in the gutter.

“Ugh.” I try to roll over, but my joints are sore, so it takes me a minute. By the time I’m settled on my other side, Jax barges through the door.

Okay, so he cracks it and quietly looks inside.

“Good morning, sunshine,” he whispers.

I grunt a response, and he takes that as a come on in. So he does. He sits next to me and brushes my hair off my face.

“You look like shit.”

“Yep.”

“You didn’t go to bed when you said you did.”

I shrug a shoulder. “Nope.”

“What did you do?”

“Wrote.”

“I don’t have a piano.”

“Don’t need one for lyrics.” I yawn and frown at the dry mouth I feel. Jesus, you’d think I went on a four-day bender. “So sore. Headache.”

“Because you haven’t drunk any water in twenty-four hours, haven’t eaten, and barely slept.”

“Stop judging me.”

I bury my face down in the pillow and regret my life choices.

“Come on, I’m going to take care of you before Levi discovers the state you’re in and cuts off my balls.”

“Levi’s not the boss.”

But I sit up and let Jax pull me from the bed to my feet. I am hungry. If I drank coffee, I’d have six cups.

Too bad it repulses me.

Must be left over from when I was a kid and my parents said caffeine was from Satan.

I follow Jax to the kitchen and sit at the island as he sets out to make me eggs and toast. He’s a great cook.

Jax is actually good at most things.

“Should we talk about what’s going on?” he asks as he cracks four eggs into a bowl.

“No. Because you’ll yell at me, and I’m already pissed at myself enough.”

“I won’t yell.”

“Yes, you will.” I sigh and hunch over the counter, resting my pounding head in my hands. “It’s not like I kept it a secret. I just didn’t tell anyone.”