Page 99 of Heart Strings & Hotlines
“Then what’s your issue with Cal?” I ask. Getting answers wouldn’t be this hard if he’d just spit it the fuck out.
“That’s between us.” His chair scrapes against the wood floor as he heads back to the bar. Moments later, he’s back and pressing new beers into our hands.
I haven’t even finished my first one.
“Then what are we doing here? If you don’t want to talk about your brother, what the hell do you want to talk about?”
He downs half a pint, before lifting his gaze to mine. “Ava wants me to try and make amends while he’s here. She saysI’mthe asshole.”
My head is ready to explode. This is why I don’t have friends. “Who the hell is Ava?”
Boone chokes on his beer, then sets it down and crosses his arms over his chest. “You give a woman a check for forty thousand dollars, and you don’t even know her name?”
Forty…Oh.
“She told me her name was Sharky. How am I supposed to keep track? Nicknames, real names, surnames. Everyone appears to have multiple call signs for different people.”
“Cal’s met a girl. He wants me to come home and meet her,” Boone says, ignoring me.
I’m going to shut my mouth and let this trainwreck happen. It’s too much for me to follow.
“I take it you don’t want to. But you’re here, talking to us, so something’s making you second-guess yourself.” Rafe is playing therapist again—even though he says he’s not licensed.
“James is almost an adult now. The last time I saw him in person, he was two feet shorter than me. And Bailey? Jesus. I don’t know how Cal’s dealing with her. They’re so…grown up.”
“You miss them.” How did Rafe pull that assumption from his ass?
But Boone nods, so I guess Rafe’s ass knows what it’s talking about.
“I miss Cal too—but I don’t think I can ever forgive him.”
Forgive him for what?Never mind, I don’t want to know. I finish my beer and start in on my second. I’m already starting to feel hazy, so it’ll have to be my last. On second thought, I’ll switch to water.
The damn IPAs with eight percent alcohol are nothing but trouble. Sip of Sunshine, my ass. It should be called Sip of Moonshine.
I snort at my cleverness. These two idiots continue talking through Boone’s problem, so I tune them out. I have enough problems of my own.
What am I going to do with the property that blew up?
How do I get Lottie to let me help her with the technical side of her business?
How do I tell her I’ve been playing Whac-A-Mole with her hackers?
Why do I keep referring to her as my fiancée in my head?
That’s the one I keep coming back to. Hearing her call herself my fiancée shifted something in my brain—like a chemical reaction that can’t be undone, she’s changed the way I see her.
“Thane, are you coming?”
I blink Rafe into focus. He and Boone are standing, each holding a pool stick in their hands.
Glancing at the table, I groan. They’ve each had another full beer while I was fantasizing about making Lottie my fiancée for real. And worse, I finished off my second one.
“Where are we going?” Did I slur those words? I don’t drink… I leave that vice to my father, yet somehow, here I am, drunk off two beers. Or was it three? There are too many empties on the table for me to decipher.
“Playing pool until the girls get here to pick us up.” Rafe hands me a pool stick as though I have any idea what to do with it.
I shove it back into his hands. “I don’t know how to play pool.” But I join them on the other side of the room anyway.
