6. Luka
6
LUKA
“Boo!”
“Jesus!” I jumped a mile, bobbling my phone and nearly falling off my couch.
“You should see your face right now,” my sister howled, bending over at the waist as she laughed her ass off.
I put a hand on my chest, over my racing heart, as she composed herself. “The fuck?”
She crossed the room and sat on the couch next to me, pinning me with a look. “That’s what you get for not locking your door. Lock your door, dumbass. That’s how people get murdered.”
“I don’t need to wait for a murderer to break in when I have you jump scaring me like that,” I pointed out. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Good. Maybe that’ll teach you to lock your damn door.” She toyed with the silver bracelet on her wrist.
“Did I know you were coming over?” I glanced at my phone to check the time. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Jade?” I sat up straight. “What happened? Are you okay?”
She nodded, but the tear that streaked down her cheek told me that was a lie.
“Come here.” I held out my arms to her.
She slid across the couch and fell against my chest. I held her tight, trying not to go through all the worst-case scenarios as she took a second to compose herself.
“Are you hurt? Did something happen?” I asked.
“It’s nothing like that.” She sniffed. “I got fired.”
“What? Why?”
“I fucked up.” Her voice was barely audible.
“How did you fuck up?”
“Michael.”
My heart sank.
I’d worried about this happening when she told me she was dating her supervisor a few months ago. Her work had a strict no-fraternization policy, but she’d insisted that he was worth the risk and that he could be her forever person.
I’d never met Michael, but she’d told me enough about him that I’d formed a deep dislike for him.
For one, he was ten years older than her, and he was her immediate boss, so the power imbalance between them was a giant red flag. He also treated her like crap at work and would only see her or spend time with her when they were at his apartment. She said it was to throw off suspicion and she was fine with it, but I knew how much it hurt her to be treated like a dirty secret.
My sister was an amazing person, but she had issues when it came to men. She was so desperate to find someone that she was willing to settle for any asshole who showed interest in her.
“Did they find out about you guys?” I asked.
She sniffed again and nodded against my chest.
“I’m so sorry.” I rubbed her back. “Are you okay?”
“No.” She wiped her hand over her eyes and pulled away from my hug. “I also found out that he’s married.”
“What?” Anger flowed through me like a living thing. That asshole was married ?
“Apparently his wife found pictures of me on his phone and told him he had to end things or she was leaving him.” She flopped back against the couch in a heap. “It would have been fine if he just dumped me, but I guess he wanted to make sure I couldn’t cause trouble for him, and he told his manager about us.”
“ He ratted you guys out?” I clenched my fists, my vision going hazy around the edges. “Please tell me they fired his ass too.”
She shook her head dejectedly.
“I’m going to kill him,” I snarled.
“No, you’re not.” She shot me a small smile. “He’s not worth going to jail over.”
I relaxed my hands and tried to calm down. She didn’t need my anger right now.
“Have you told Mom?”
Jade shook her head. “I came here right after I left the office. I can’t face her right now.” She winced. “She was just telling me a few nights ago how proud she is of me. How am I supposed to tell her that I fucked up and now I’m going to be stuck living in my old room for even longer?”
“It’ll be tough,” I agreed. “But she loves you. And I’m sure she’ll see things the same way I am. This isn’t your fault.”
“Of course it is.”
“No, it isn’t. He took advantage of you. I know you think he didn’t, but he did. He lied to you, and he threw you under the bus to protect himself. He’s the asshole here. You’re not to blame.”
She blew out a breath. “Yeah, I guess. I just feel so stupid. You warned me he would do something like this. You said I’d be the one who got punished if anyone found out about us. But I didn’t listen.”
“Because you thought he was worth it.”
“I wish I was gay—or bi.” She shot me a look I couldn’t read. “Dating women would be so much better than being stuck with men as my only option.”
“I imagine there are a lot of queer women who’d disagree with you on that one.” Guilt churned in my gut as I bypassed yet another opportunity to tell my sister the truth about my sexuality.
It wasn’t that I didn’t think she’d be okay with it. I knew she would be. Being bi wasn’t the problem; lying to everyone was, and I was terrified of what would happen when she found out I’d kept this hidden for so long.
I’d had so many chances to tell her over the years, and I could have said something just now, but the words just wouldn’t come out.
“Do you want to hang out?” I asked, changing the subject. I knew her, and she needed a chance to decompress and sit with her feelings before she would be ready to go home and talk to our mother about what happened.
She nodded.
“I have to head to work in an hour, but you can stay as long as you want.”
“Thanks.” She tugged on the collar of her dress shirt and made an exaggerated face.
“You want to raid my closet, don’t you?” I arched an eyebrow at her. Jade always stole some of my clothes when she came over. She probably had more of my hoodies in her closet than I had in mine.
She grinned. “Yes, please.”
“Go ahead.”
“Thanks!” She jumped up and hurried into my room.
At least having her here would stop me from obsessing about the dozen other things that were currently occupying most of my brain power.
“Fuck it all to goddamn fucking hell,” I swore, staring down at the mess of sockets that had fallen out of the wrench set I’d knocked over.
“Are you okay?” Zander asked from his workstation.
“Fine.” I scrubbed a hand through my hair and knelt to pick up the fallen sockets. “It’s nothing. Just a klutzy moment.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, coming over to help me pick up the mess.
“Yeah.” I scooped up a few of the sockets.
“Luka.”
I stilled. Something about the way Zander said my name hit me right in the chest. Maybe it was his calm tone, or maybe it was the concern I could hear. Either way, I looked up at him, almost on impulse and not because of any conscious decision.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, his dark eyes scrutinizing me.
My cheeks flushed hot. That look was doing things to me it had no business doing.
“I know we’re not close, but I’ve gotten the impression that things aren’t great for you right now,” he said, his voice low and his gaze piercing.
I dropped my gaze, my neck heating with embarrassment. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a disaster. I know I’m making things harder around here?—"
“That’s not what I meant.” He picked up a few of the fallen sockets and handed them to me. “It’s you I’m worried about, not work.”
I held out my hand for them. His fingers brushed against my palm as he pulled his hand back, and the crackle of energy between us was so strong I nearly dropped the damn things again.
“I’m…” I started to tell him I was fine, but the words died on my lips. He looked so sincere and concerned, like he truly cared about me and not the extra work I was creating for him. “I’m not not okay,” I hedged.
He raised one eyebrow in question.
“Nothing’s wrong, exactly. I just have some stuff going on,” I said lamely. “Friend drama, family crap. Life in general.” I huffed out a laugh. “It’s a lot sometimes.”
“It can be.” He grabbed the last of the sockets from where they’d rolled under my worktable and handed them to me. “Do you have someone you can talk to about what’s going on?”
I plunked the sockets on my worktable with a rueful shake of my head. “No, and that’s part of the problem.”
He bit his lip, like he was either stopping himself from saying something or he was trying to work up the courage to speak. I couldn’t tell.
I might spend all week with Zander, and we were alone for the majority of that time, but I didn’t know him well enough to read his expressions.
“Do you want to maybe go somewhere after we close up?” he asked, his cheeks flushing pink under his golden skin. “You don’t have to talk about anything, but maybe having some company will help.”
I blinked at him. He wanted to hang out after work?
“Never mind.” He stood and brushed his hands off on his coveralls. “I’m sure you’re busy?—”
“No, I mean, I’m not busy. I’d like to, if you still want to,” I said, stumbling over my words as I stood too.
A smile tilted the corner of his lips. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” A strange flutter moved through my chest, not quite nerves, but similar to excitement.
“I’ll go check in with Cass and see if we have any more appointments coming in tonight. Do you need to take a break? Maybe grab some water?”
I shook my head. “I’ll be fine. Just need to make sure I watch where I put my elbows.”
He chuckled. “That’s usually a good idea. I’ll be back in a bit. Hopefully with good news.”
“Fingers crossed.”
I tried not to watch his ass as he walked toward the front of the shop but failed miserably. He had a nice one, even under his loose coveralls.
Jesus fuck. I was at work. Creeping on my coworker, who was also my de facto boss for the night, was the last thing I should be doing.
And he was straight.
I really needed to get over whatever this was before I said or did something that made him uncomfortable and gave away my secret.
Zander was a complete mystery to me, and I was having a hard time getting a read on him. I’d heard him mention his ex-wife a few times, but other than him being married at some point in the past, I knew next to nothing about his personal life.
The few times I’d gone out with him and the other guys at the shop, they’d told anyone interested in Zander that he was in a relationship, but I’d never heard him mention a girlfriend. I’d also never seen him chat anyone up. Was he seeing someone and he kept that part of his life separate from work? Or maybe he just wasn’t into hookups, and I was reading into something that wasn’t a big deal.
Shaking my head, I fixed my attention on the pile of sockets that needed to be put away. At least some busy work would occupy my brain enough that I could hopefully stop spiraling.
It was annoying as fuck, but I seemed to have a lower threshold for stress compared to most people. Put me in a game, and I was cool as a cucumber. The pressure of competition helped narrow my focus until I was fully in the zone and the only things that existed in that moment were me, my opponents, and the puck.
But off the ice, I was a ball of overthinking anxiety. Little things that should roll off my back stung and cut deep, and it felt like my brain never stopped spinning. Most days I could handle the multiple streams of thought that always raced through my mind, but then there were days when it felt like my brain was my enemy and made me think about things I didn’t want to or forced me to remember things I’d rather forget.
I hated feeling like I couldn’t control my thoughts, and it had been like this for as long as I could remember. The overthinking sucked, but I’d learned to deal with it over the years.
My anxiety, on the other hand, was the absolute worst. I could probably handle it if it was predictable or a regular part of my life, but it wasn’t. It came in waves and always got worse when I was stressed. Some days I was fine and felt almost normal, but then there were days like today where I was a bundle of nerves and so jumpy it was like my body reacted to every little thing like it was a life-or-death situation.
Usually I’d talk to Jade about what was bothering me, but the shit I was struggling with wasn’t stuff I could put on my little sister. Even if telling her about my dating life didn’t ick me out, she didn’t know I was into men, so she’d be really confused when I told her one of the reasons I was such a mess right now was because I was crushing on two men and didn’t have a chance with either one of them. One was a faceless stranger on the internet who had a talent for getting me off, and the other was my straight coworker. Neither was an option, but that didn’t stop me from wanting both of them.
And it wasn’t like my Nice and Zander problems were the only things on my plate. I had shit going on with my mom and her boyfriend, with my friends, and I was still coming to terms with the revelation that I wasn’t just into being bossed around and told what to do, I fucking loved it.
I closed the lid of the wrench set harder than was necessary and put it aside. I needed to stop thinking in circles, or I was going to drive myself crazy before I clocked out.
“Looks like you can start shutting down,” Zander said, coming to stand next to me.
“Really?” I glanced at the clock on the wall. “We don’t lock up for another twenty minutes.”
“We’ll keep my station open in case someone comes in, but there’s no point in both of us waiting around.” He shrugged. “And it should make it quicker to get out of here if half the work is already done.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll get started on that.”
He shot me another shy smile. “Fingers crossed the next twenty minutes are as dead as the last half hour.”
I raised my hands and crossed my fingers. “Here’s hoping.”
The next twenty minutes were dead, and we managed to lock the doors on time.
Zander’s plan worked wonders in that it kept me busy so I didn’t have time to think or make a mess, and we raced through the closing routine and were done in record time.
“Is your dad picking you up?” I asked Cass as Zander and I waited with her in the parking lot of the garage. She was Nate’s oldest daughter and worked the front end of the shop most evenings.
Cass was a nice kid, and she knew how to keep the guys in line when they got a little rambunctious, especially Isaac and Jesse. I’d only known her for a little over a month, but I already thought of her as a little sister.
She shook her head. “My uncle Ethan is.”
I glanced at Zander. Nate only had one brother, and that was Devon. Nate’s wife had died two years ago, but I’d heard Nate talk about how hard it was to be a single dad with no other family around. As far as I knew, his late wife had been an only child, but Cass had an uncle other than Dev?
“Ethan is Nate’s best friend,” Zander explained, noticing my confusion.
“Not just his best friend, his BFF.” Cass grinned. “They’ve been like brothers since they were eleven.”
“Eleven?” Nate was forty, and it was kind of crazy to think he’d been best friends with Ethan longer than any of us had been alive.
“Yup.” She tipped her wrist to check the time on her fitness watch just as a dark sedan pulled into the lot. “That’s him.”
The car slowed, and Cass gave us both a quick wave. “See ya tomorrow.”
“Have a good night,” Zander said, bending to wave at whoever was in the car as Cass pulled the passenger’s door open.
I caught a glance of dark hair and a dark jacket or sweater before she closed the door behind her.
“Still want to go somewhere?” Zander asked as the car drove away.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat . It’s just hanging with a coworker. He’s being nice because you’re a mess. Stop making things weird . “Um, where do you want to go?”
He paused, then the corner of his mouth curled up in a smirk-smile that was way too hot. “I have no idea. I didn’t think that far ahead.”
I chuckled and shoved my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t start fidgeting. “Me either.”
“We don’t have a lot of options,” Zander said as we headed to the staff parking area in the back of the lot. “Not on a Tuesday night. We could grab a coffee, but that’s probably not a good idea at this hour.”
I laughed, the sound a little too loud in the quiet night. My nerves were making me jumpy, and I was having trouble calming the fuck down. Thankfully Zander ignored my weirdness. “I wish caffeine woke me up.”
“It doesn’t?” He shot me a quick look.
“Nope. It actually has the opposite effect. It makes me sleepy.”
“Really?” Zander paused beside his car. My truck was parked next to him, and I stopped too.
I nodded. “Took me years to figure that out. I couldn’t understand why I’d be exhausted an hour after having coffee, and drinking more would just perk me up for a few minutes but then make the sleepies a thousand times worse. I stopped drinking coffee and voilà, no more crashes.”
“Isaac is like that.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Asa too, now that I think of it.”
I tore my eyes from his thumb and the gentle way he was running it over the leather tag on his keychain. “It’s annoying.”
“The only other options I can think of are a bar or a restaurant.” Zander stopped fingering the tag and flipped the keys in his hand a few times.
“Or you could come to my place.”
Zander missed his toss and dropped his keys on the ground.
A surge of panic tightened my chest. What the fuck? Had I really just invited him to my apartment?
I tried to tell him to forget it, but I couldn’t seem to form the words. Instead of wanting to run away, my panic had frozen me in place, and it was like my brain and body were no longer connected.
“Yeah, we can do that.” Zander picked up his keys. Some of his hair fell into his face when he stood, and he pushed it back with a sweep of his hand, leaving the thick strands a little disheveled and looking way too hot.
When he was at work, he tied it back in either a low ponytail or a messy bun, but outside of the shop he seemed to prefer to wear it down. I was a fan of both styles, and my throat went a little dry as he ran his fingers through his hair in what looked like a nervous gesture.
I’d spent more time than I’d ever admit thinking about how those silky strands would feel running through my fingers or trailing over my skin. I’d always liked it when a woman’s hair fell around her face and created a little curtain around us when she was on top, and the thought of experiencing that with Zander got me hotter than it had any business doing.
“Great!” I said, my voice way too loud again, realizing I’d been staring at his hair like a creeper. “I don’t live far. Do you know where Chamberlain is?” I named the arterial road my street intersected with.
He nodded. “Yeah, I’m not far from there.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. Chamberlain was a long street, and depending on where he lived, we could either be neighbors or live miles apart. “I’m on Elmdale.”
He offered me a smile. “I’m on Honeybrook.”
My jaw actually dropped. He lived five minutes from me. Well, five minutes by car. I could walk to Honeybrook in less time than that, thanks to a path connecting my building’s parking lot to the subdivision behind it.
“1412,” I said. “My building number is 1412, on Elmdale,” I clarified stupidly.
He arched his eyebrow playfully. “I didn’t realize we were neighbors. I’m number seven Honeybrook. Right next to the path.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Really? I can literally see your house from my balcony.” It was probably a thirty-second walk from his front door to my building.
“Crazy, isn’t it?” He flipped his keys in his big hand again. “I’ll park at my place and walk over. No point driving home when it’ll take five times as long.”
“Yeah, good call. I’ll meet you at the back door.”
“See ya in a bit.”
I hurried over to my truck as Zander unlocked his car. This was crazy. I’d barely spoken to him in the month we’d worked together, and I’d invited him to my apartment the first time we were going to hang out alone.
What the fuck was I thinking?