“I’m not,” I replied, inhaling Ani’s scent. Fuck, I was going to have to smell her for the entire hour-long drive home.
“Who was—”
“Ani.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Pretty much.”
“Was it—”
“Best I’ve ever had.”
“In her car?”
“Yep.”
“Damn.”
“Call you later.”
“Will do.”
Jay nodded as I moved past him, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. He was probably my best friend if I didn’t count my twin brother Alex and my cousins, and with just a few words from me, he’d known how completely I’d fucked up.
Ani and I had never gotten along. I didn’t know if it all stemmed from the fight we’d had when I thought she was stealing shit from my parents’ bedroom or if our personalities just clashed—but I couldn’t remember a time when we’d ever agreed on anything.
No, that wasn’t true. A little over a year ago, my sister Kate had gone through some major shit when she was pregnant with my youngest niece, and she’d been completely inconsolable. Ani and I were on the same side then—we’d both wanted to cut Shane’s dick off.
But I couldn’t remember any other time over the last fourteen years that we’d gotten along at all.
Ani was opinionated and rude and pushed her nose into everyone’s business like she had a right to be there. Tonight in the bar had been a perfect example. She’d been curious about what I was doing, but instead of asking me or just leaving it the fuck alone, she’d followed me all the way into Portland. It wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment idea, either. It took almost a full hour to drive from my parents’ house to Jay’s bar. She’d had plenty of time to turn around, but she hadn’t.
My hands clenched around my steering wheel as I pulled onto the highway.
If she would have just turned around, I wouldn’t still be hard as a rock thinking about the way her cunt had clamped down on my dick when she came.
I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, turning up the radio in my truck.
It didn’t matter—that’s what she had said. Like I was going to get clingy or some shit. It was fine as fuck with me. I wasn’t going to repeat that shit anytime soon.
I remembered the feel of her teeth against my skin and shuddered, my dick growing softer at the memory of the sensation.
Never again.
* * *
Monday mornings always blew. I had a ton of paperwork to go through before I headed out to talk to our side rod—the guy who was in charge at different logging sites. I was tired, pissy, and I never got as much done as I thought I would.
When I walked into our small office, I was already in a completely fucked-up mood before I’d even realized that there was no coffee in the pot and the place was completely silent.
“Hello?” I called out, gripping my thermos tighter as I moved toward the offices. The door had been unlocked when I walked in, so someone must have been there.
“In here,” my uncle Mike called, then cursed as I heard a loud rustling.
“Hey, where is everyone?” I asked, watching as he picked up unopened mail from all over the floor.
“Your dad is with your mom today, Trev is at that meeting he had with Mark from the mill, and Ani called in sick, which is why I’m trying to open up this mail,” he answered, grabbing letters by the handful and dropping them back on top of his desk.
“Ani called in sick?” Was she fucking avoiding me? That was real goddamn mature.
“Yup. Looks like it’s just you and me today.”
“I’ve gotta head out to some sites and meet—”
“Nah, Trevor can do that today if you want. He’s already out there.”
“Yeah that works,” I said distractedly, tapping on his door frame. “You need anything?”
“Nope, I’m gonna handle this mail and then head on home. Ellie’s making me lunch.”
“It’s seven in the morning.”
“Your point?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.
“No point.” I lifted my full hands in the air and backed out of his office.
My dad and uncle had started our logging business over thirty years before and were mostly retired now. When Trev and I had begun taking over, they’d balked a bit, but they were glad now for the extra time to spend with their wives and sit in front of the television.
They weren’t the type of men to go golfing.
In Oregon, the logging business is really close knit. Everyone knows everyone, and your business’s reputation and the reputation of the loggers you hire play a huge part in how many jobs you get. That meant, at first, the old-timers at the mills wanted little to do with Trevor and me, even though we’d been working on crews for years and they knew us. Thankfully, our dads had stayed on for a while, and eventually we’d earned a good enough reputation that we were bidding on and winning jobs pretty frequently.