Page 1 of Soft Tissue Damage
1
Cullan
“Tell me you’ve got something good. I’m going out of my fucking mind.”
Tyrant Mercer slides into the booth opposite me wearing a black suit and a hard, dangerous smile. “Oh, it’s good, Cullan,” he replies. “You’re going to be drawing hearts around my name in your diary like a lovestruck fucking schoolgirl when I tell you about it. But first I need to eat. What’s good here?”
I impatiently push a menu toward him. “No idea. This place was your idea.”
Archer’s Diner is on the west side of the city, set a few blocks back from the shore. Freezing wind is blowing in from the ocean. All that’s visible throughthe windows are old brick factories, rusting steel bridges, and fog. Lots and lots of fog. You wouldn’t think it’s nearly summer with how gloomy the sky is, but that’s Blackport for you.
Mercer and I have been associates for a long time, and friends ever since I designed and installed the one-of-a-kind security system that protects his house and surrounding labyrinth in Henson, the next city over.
A black-haired waitress hurries over, bringing us coffee and offering us a sweet, slightly flustered smile. Her eyes are sparkling blue, and she’s pretty in the way a woman is really fucking pretty when you’re freshly divorced and have been doing without for two years.
Or maybe she’s just really fucking pretty.
“To your divorce,” Mercer says, holding aloft his coffee cup.
Reluctantly, I turn my attention back to him. “To your marriage and being a father. How many kids is it now? Two, three?”
A smile tilts his lips. “Two. Barlow and Huck. They’re both perfect, like their mother.”
“Not crazy like their father?”
Mercer rubs his clean-shaven jaw. “Handsome like their father. How are your two?”
“Leon’s in college, and he’s doing so well. That boy is whip-smart with figures. And Rosie’s picking up new words every day,” I tell him proudly. I became a father for the second time at forty. Rosie was the result of her mother and I trying to reconcile one last time. It didn’t work, but I’m the father of the most beautiful fourteen-month-oldgirl in the world. The attempted reconciliation was a mistake, but I don’t regret Rosie. It’s corny, but she really is the sunshine of my life.
The only sunshine.
Christ, that’s sad.
Mercer eyes me curiously. “Just when you thought you were done with fatherhood, you had to start all over again with the diapers and sleepless nights. It must have been a shock.”
I wouldn’t call it a shock. When my now ex told me she was pregnant, there was no sinking feeling. If anything, I regret not having more children, but with someone I love.
“Not really. Are you over the diapers and no sleep already?” I ask Mercer. “Considering a vasectomy?”
Mercer frowns like I’ve insulted him. “Fuck no. I’m nowhere near done getting Vivienne pregnant.”
I lean back in my seat with a grin, admiring his spirit, and I catch the black-haired waitress’s eye for a moment. She smiles tentatively back at me as she passes us with plates of club sandwiches and fries. My eyes travel down her shapely legs. She’s about twenty, and lovely to look at. I fall headfirst into a daydream about fucking her with the single-minded intention of making her come and getting her pregnant. Hearing her cries of pleasure and feeling her nails in my back. My cock pushed up tight inside of her as I burst apart.
I feel a surge of heat. Am I just horny? Is this conversation giving me baby fever? Maybe it’s a combination of both.
The waitress’s undone shoelace snags my attention. It’s been loose ever since we sat down. I’ve been wanting to catch her arm and point it out to her, but my ex-wife’s voice is ringing in my ears telling me I should focus on things in my own home before I try to fix everyone else’s problems.
The nape of my neck prickles in annoyance. I like fixing people’s problems, but her binge drinking wasn’t something that either of us could fix. She didn’t want it fixed. I wanted more children, and she preferred getting wiped out at weekend brunches with her friends, and then again at dinner. I worried that she wasn’t interested in our son. “Cullan, you’re soboring,” she was fond of telling me. When I tried to tell her about my clandestine side, she wasn’t interested in that either.
The next time the black-haired beauty passes our table, I lift my hand to get her attention. Before I can say anything, her lace catches against our booth where it’s bolted to the floor, and she trips. Thankfully she’s not holding any dishes.
I put out my hands to steady her, and she grabs them both with a gasp. “Careful…” I glance at her name badge. “Elena.”
“Oh, my goodness. Sorry, sir. Thank you.”
Her shoelace is stuck, and I slide out of my seat and onto my knees so I can pull it out.
“You don’t have to do that. I feel so silly.” Elena speaks in a breathless rush, clenching her Archer’s Diner branded apron with both hands. Her uniform is vaguely retro, witha zip-up dress and an A-line skirt, and it looks really cute on her.
