Page 51 of Junkyard Dog

And therein lay the problem. Sleeping with her should have ended the chase.

It had, for lack of a better word, not.

He set his empty beer bottle on the counter, shaking his head when the bartender offered another. “See the blonde over there?” he asked Bo, motioning toward a group of women standing beside the dance floor. “Yeah?”

Bo smirked, finally tearing his eyes off Charlotte to scan the women over. “I’m in a brunette mood tonight.” With a grin, he pushed away from the bar counter and led Alex across the room.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and fired off a quick text to Charlotte before he followed his brother through the crowds.

*

Charlotte’s eyes snappedopen to the obnoxious buzz of her apartment bell. She rolled onto her side and picked up her phone to check the time.

6:02.

And over a dozen missed texts, all from Alex.

She got to her feet, wrapping her blanket around herself as she walked to intercom. “Who is it?”

The speaker crackled. “Alex. Can I come up?”

Pressing the entrance button, she unlocked her door and opened it, listening as uneven footsteps thumped up the stairwell. Alex’s hulking form appeared at the end of the hall, his shoulders hunched as he used the wall to balance himself. She backed into her apartment and held the door open while he stumbled in, his head bowed and eyes on the floor.

“I thought you were going to be right behind me,” she stated, closing and locking her door as he leaned against the wall and bent down to pull off his shoes, tipping to the side twice before he succeeded.

“I tried,” he muttered, standing up and reaching for her fingers. “Don’t be mad, okay?”

She pursed her lips, allowing him to wrap his hand around hers but making no move toward him. “If you wanted to spend the rest of the night with your brother, you just had to say so,” she said, leading him into her living room. “I waited up for over an hour, and I work today.”

He slumped onto her sofa, his elbows on his knees and head dropped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to go there, but Bo…those chicks… So I walked… It was a lot farther than I thought.” He looked up at her, his eyes glassy and bloodshot. “I just wanted to come home.”

She turned to the kitchen and filled a glass of water, kneeling in front of him when she handed it to him. “You were nowhere near drunk when I left the Washout.”

With his gaze still unfocused on the floor, he set the cup down and lifted his hand to hers, grasping it tight. “I just wanna go to bed,” he slurred. “Here. With you.”

She sighed and stood, helping him to his feet the best she could. “Let’s go.”

She led him to her bed, running her hands over her face when he collapsed on the mattress fully clothed, the stench of stale beer and rye permeating the room.

She had questions. Questions he was obviously too drunk to answer.

He closed his hazel eye and tracked her as she crawled into bed beside him, annoyed enough to keep her distance but not enough to banish him to her couch. When she was settled in, he lay back. “You have a great ass.”

She rolled onto her side and leveled him with a dead glare. “Thanks. Go to sleep.”

She turned away from him, caught between feeling comforted and angered when one heavy arm was flung over her hips and he pulled her to him.

*

Alex shoved thepink comforter off his face and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, groaning as his pounding head protested the sudden shift in position. He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled out of Charlotte’s room, scanning the small apartment and finding it empty.

Right. Work.

He returned to the bedroom, rummaging around for his phone and coming up empty-handed. Straightening the bedding, he began hunting the rest of the rooms, pausing when a faint buzz came from the entranceway. He followed the sound, kneeling beside his shoes and finding his phone tucked neatly between them. Swiping the screen with his thumb, he sank back against the wall and ran his hand through his hair.

A number he didn’t recognize had sent him a series of photos interspersed with flirtatious commentary. One picture of him and Bo, plastered out of their heads and sprawled across unfamiliar couches, surrounded by women he could vaguely recognize from the Washout. Another of him alone, hunched over his phone with an empty shot glass at his feet. A selfie of the blonde. A shot of him and Bo licking salt out of the hands of an attractive brunette, tequila at the ready.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

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