Page 49 of Cakewalk
I turned and pounded down the stairs, then through the alley to avoid any locals. I had still essentially been in hiding this entire time, and I wasn’t in the mood to field any questions today.
Especially now that I knew Griffin was still very much a resident, and didn’t seem to have any plans to move out any time soon. When was he going to tell me?
Not to mention I needed a place to live!
I plowed through the front door of the seedy local bar, and my eyes honed in on Griffin hovering over the pinball machine in the back, a beer in one hand, his other hand on the button for the only working paddle. His hair was disheveled, and his clothes were casual, just jeans and a tank top. His muscles and tattoos were on full display, making him look like a hot ex-con—which hewas—and all the attraction and need came flooding back to me.
Mentally shoving that aside, I approached him, stopping beside the pinball machine. “What are you still doing in town, Griffin?”
He glanced up at me for just a moment before returning his attention to the machine. “Oh, nice to see you again, Jade.”
“I thought you planned on leaving by now?”
Griffin pointed with his beer at the pinball machine’s score, then enunciated with some difficulty, “Cl-ear-ly, I am defending my title as the Calhoon pinball champion.”
“On a machine that only has one working paddle?”
“I’m used to such…” He took a moment to search his drunken mind for the word. “Hindrances.”
“But why are you still in town?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you wanted me out of here so quickly.”
I knew it probably came across that way. But the only reason I wanted him gone was to make things easier on me. Having him still in town made it so much harder to do what I knew was practical: to forget all about him and move on with my life.
“Re-gard-less,” he enunciated. “The lease is for a full year. Sotoobad, bucko.”
“Griffin! I was counting on being able to move in there. I can’t afford anywhere else.”
Griffin stepped back from the pinball machine and let the ball drain, finally turning his full attention to me. “All right, all right. You can be my roommate if you want. You don’t have to beg,sheesh.”
“Let’s go back to the apartment. It doesn’t look good to be drunk by freaking noon.”
“I’ll never look good, so who cares?” Despite that, Griffin relented and let me hook my arm around his elbow and drag him back home.
At the door, he fumbled with his keys for so long that I grabbed them and unlocked it myself. As he stepped in, he mumbled, “You’re not getting another one-night stand out of me just because I’m drunk, you know.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“So you’re over me already?”
I tossed his keys on a plate by the door. “We only knew each other for a short time before we broke up. Be realistic.”
Griffin sighed wistfully. “And here I thought we had gotten along so well that it had made up for lost time.”
He wasn’t wrong. I felt like I knew him a hell of a lot better than I ever knew Thomas, and once upon a time I had thought I’d marry that asshole. But if Griffin was going to move out of town eventually, then what difference did it make?
My head jerked as I heard a rustling in the far corner. Out of a pile of clothes erupted a one-eyed raccoon. “Patches?” I gasped, then turned a disbelieving glance at Griffin. “You didn’t get rid of him?”
Griffin gave me a surly smile, then swayed over to the sofa. Patches skittered up his pants to snuggle into his lap after he sat down. “Nope. Turns out my little buddy is domesticated.”
I approached the sofa, but stayed a few yards away. As cute as Patches was, he was a wild animal. At this point, I was pretty sure Griffin had lost his damn mind. “How do you know he’s domesticated?”
“He can do tricks. Like, here, watch.” Griffin faced Patches and waved at him, and Patches enthusiastically waved back with his little raccoon hand. “See? I’m pretty sure he must’ve had an owner who died a few years back, and that’s why he’d been running wild about town. I tried to release him into the state forest, but he clung onto my leg and chittered up at me until I couldn’t take it anymore. So he’s now my little buddy, and that’s that.”
“A millionaire CEO, letting a raccoon live in his house. Who would’ve thought?”
“We were both lonely.”
