Prologue #8
Is that … panic on his face? No. Can’t be. I’m seeing what I wanna see. “Hunter lets you date?”
I laugh. “I’ve been dating since I was fifteen, Trav.”
He shrugs. “I’ve never seen you with anyone.”
That’s because I never bring my dates here. Don’t know why other than “it feels wrong”, but I talked myself out of that last night. I can’t lust over my best friend’s dad.
“Admit it. You found him on that fucking app I hear all the staff talking about. How do you know he’s not gonna gut you open when he’s done with you, and feed you to his pigs?”
“Oddly fucking specific, Trav.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard of the Pickton farm? It’s not fiction, Dirk. And that’s just one story. Maybe I need to tell you about the time I had to fish someone’s bloated body out of the—”
“Okay, okay,” I concede. Trav’s seen the worst of humanity, and he’s paranoid as hell because of it. “I’ll make sure he’s not a serial killer.”
“And how you gonna do that, huh?” He gets closer. I can smell him. If he takes one more step toward me, we’ll be touching. My skin breaks out in gooseflesh that I hope to fuck he doesn’t notice.
A weird sensation passes between us in a silence that lasts for too long. I mean, it’s not like Trav and I are chatty Kathys, but if we don’t have anything more to say, we carry on. We don’t face off in silence like an old married couple disagreeing about where we place the coffee canister.
“Anyway, I’m gonna…” I trail off, indicating that I’m leaving for the day.
“Since when do you tell me when you’re off? I’m the manager on duty. I sign you out.”
The “what the fuck” is on the tip of my tongue, and if not for the other members of staff present, that’s exactly what I’d say to him.
As is, all I can do is take the scolding.
Can’t say the other thing I want to either, which is that I never sign out with anyone anymore.
Haven’t since I first began working here.
It’s kinda known that Trav and I are … friends, I guess? I always inform a manager when I leave, but I never ask them. I definitely don’t ask Trav.
“Anything you’d like me to do, sir?” I say, doing my best to keep the snark out of my voice. Buuuut, I’m almost ninety-eight percent sure I failed.
“Yeah, there is, actually. We’re low on expo stock.”
He’s a fucking liar. We are so not low on expo stock.
His indigo eyes are hard, daring me to call him on it in front of everyone. I pull my cap off and run a hand through my hair. Looks like I’m doing expo stock we don’t need. That’s gonna take me an hour. “Jack’s expo tonight, if he’ll come in an hour earlier, can he do it instead?”
“No.”
“No?”
“S’what I said.”
I grit my teeth, biting back all the ways I wanna tell him he’s being a fucking dick. “My date—”
“Will have to wait. Or I’m happy to tell him to come back another time.” Trav sneers. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was jealous.
Is he? No. He can’t be. He’s maybe miffed about work protocol and worried about me getting sliced open by a psychopath, that’s all.
Gotta be. And I appreciate it, but I don’t need him lying about expo stock to keep me here.
Just talk to me about whatever’s eating at him.
What an asshole. As soon as I’m alone with him, he’s getting six pieces of my mind.
“Nah. I’ll text him.”
“Mhm,” he hums, walking off. I can’t take my eyes away; pure disbelief roots me to the floor for several heartbeats until I can move again. I text my date that I’ll be thirty more minutes, because I’m not doing a full fucking stock, planning to get this shit over with fast.
It’s all so wild, though, that I’m questioning what I saw earlier. Maybe it wasn’t fully stocked? Nope. As soon as I enter the walk-in fridge, I spy the backup expo cart. Full. So full it’s overflowing to the point of mockery.
Is Trav losing his damn mind? Or didn’t he see this? Him missing this giant cart when he came in here is more believable than whatever the fuck might be going on.
After changing into my street clothes, I knock on his office door. “Come in.”
“Uh, Trav? I’m sorry if there was some kind of misunderstanding about protocol at work. I won’t do it again,” I say, even though I probably will, because he’s just acting weird. “But fucking say something to me if you have a problem next time.”
“What are you wearing?” he says instead of answering any of that.
Did I get something on my shirt? I look down, taking in the crisp white crop top.
It shows off a little skin, but not too much, cutting just above my belly button.
My low-slung jeans are shredded in the right places.
Okay, maybe the phrase “lookin’ cute” on the crop top is a bit out of my wheelhouse, but I wanted to give a certain vibe for the man that’s about to ruin me.
Trav’s eyes flick to the bare skin of my navel for too long, jaw clenched. I’m not imagining it. How do I know? Because lightning tingles zip through my body. Holy fucking shit.
My inner demon wakes up.
Tilting my head, I smirk, recalling all the times Lana had her hands on him the other day. This might be my only chance, and I want revenge for every fucking touch. “Don’t like my shirt? Or don’t like who I’m wearing it for?”
“No. Nothing like that,” he says, a little too strained for me to believe him. “Just surprised with how strict you keep telling me your brother is. Have fun, Dirk.”
He glues his eyes to his laptop, the tension in the room about to snap. I feel like I’ve won something, but I don’t know what.
My date’s out there waiting for me. He’s big enough to throw me around and has some major Daddy vibes going on.
One thing I’m looking forward to about moving out of Hunter’s house is being able to invite hookups over without it feeling weird.
Hunt was more like a big brother than a parent when it came to that topic, and so long as I used safe-sex practices, he understood the need to hook up without attachment once I reached eighteen.
But I still avoided it, especially with my general taste in men, because Hunt would have flipped about that part.
Older.
More typically, they’re eight to ten years older than I am. Trav would be …
Sigh. It’s not gonna be Trav.
“You wanna grab a bite here first?” I say, sliding into the booth on the other side of my “date”.
“Wow, you’re hotter than your picture. Nah. Only bothered comin’ here so you could see I’m not a serial killer. Come back to mine, I’ll order pizza after.”
And they say romance is dead.
Trav walks out from the kitchen and sits at the bar next to Dash. I can’t hear him ordering, but I know he’s asking Stacey to mix him a dirty scotch—that’s scotch and olive juice—with two olives. I smile to myself when I see I’m right.
My date’s eyes flick to Travis and back to me, a hesitant expression on his face. What’s that all about?
“I don’t know that you’re not a serial killer, yet, for the record. But see that man over there?” I point to Trav. I’m not scared of Trav, but most people are. “He’ll hunt you down and skin you alive if I don’t show up for work tomorrow.”
Buddy laughs. “If he’s so territorial, why aren’t you going to his bed instead of mine?”
My adrenaline spikes. I expected some quip about “not getting on my dad’s bad side”, not that.
“He’s just a friend. A protective friend—not a territorial one.” But now I wanna know why he said that. Will it confirm his suspicions if I ask?
“When he came over here to threaten me life and limb earlier, I’ll admit that I thought he was your dad. But no one looks at someone the way he looked at you without feeling some kind of … ownership.”
Did Trav look at me? I didn’t catch it. Even if he did, it wouldn’t be with ownership. That’s fucking impossible. And what a fucking word choice.
My brain catches on something else. “He threatened you?” When I went to Trav’s office, he was there, so I assumed he’d been there the whole time, but there was plenty of time—about thirty minutes—for Trav to come out here first.
“Yeah, I almost left. I’m here for a good time, not a long time—dealing with overprotective dads and psycho ex-boyfriends ain’t on the docket.”
“Wh-What did he say?”
“He said that if he should find that I’ve harmed one hair on your pretty head, there’s no hole I could hide in that he and his friends couldn’t find me.”
Pretty? Trav thinks I’m pretty?
Fuck. That shouldn’t be my first fucking thought here. Plus, I’m not pretty. I’m manly. I’m a hockey player. Fuuuuuuck, though. My cheeks heat. Can this guy see me blushing? And my cheeks aren’t the only place blood rushes. Suddenly, my jeans are too restrictive, my cock straining behind the denim.
Don’t squirm. Don’t you fucking squirm, Boulder.
“Anyway, it was such a fucking generic threat that it was hard to keep from laughing.”
Is this guy so fucking oblivious that he can’t recognize real danger when it walks up to him in a restaurant and promises to skin him alive? I’ve known Trav long enough to know he never makes an idle threat.
Trav promised to hunt this man down if he hurt me.
That’s hot. We’re talking “incinerate my nuts” hot. I squeeze my thick hockey thighs together under the table, a weak attempt to release some of the pent-up arousal in my heavy balls and bite back the moan that wants to fall off my lips.
“Anyway, can we get out of here now?” he says.
Yeah, that’s definitely for the best.