Chapter 7
7
KINGSTON
Samantha:
Thanks for visiting yesterday. You really perked him up.
Me:
Anything for Eddie. You know that. Plus I like visiting. You both make me laugh enough my sides hurt.
Samantha:
We try. And thank your mom for me. She didn’t have to make us so many dinners!
Me:
You know she wanted to. It’s her thing.
Samantha:
Bless you, Montgomerys.
Me:
Just get some rest and I’ll see you soon.
Samantha:
You too.
“ A re you ready to go yet?” Lex asked from my side, and I glared at my cousin as I put my phone on my dresser. I stood there in my towel after getting out of the shower and already wanted to be finished with this family event.
“Why do you say that as if you’ve been waiting for me for an hour. You’re the one who got here ten minutes early.”
“And you know the rules. Being on time is late, being ten to fifteen minutes early is on time.”
“Honestly, you’re early to my house so we could get to the course even earlier? The math ain’t mathing.”
“Just finish packing up your things. How hard can it be to figure out which polo shirt you want to wear?”
I glared at my cousin. Lex, AKA Lexington Montgomery was the son of my Uncle Beckett and Aunt Eliza. He’d been adopted into the family a couple of months after I was born, and we were the same age. We’d grown up together in the ways that cousins tended to, though we didn’t attend the same schools since I was in Boulder for most of my childhood, and then down in Denver when we’d moved down for my dad’s art. Lexington had lived up in Fort Collins his entire life, but the thing with Colorado was that even though we lived in different cities, it all felt the same. Driving an hour up north to Fort Collins wasn’t anything, we would do it weekly if not more. The I-25 corridor was great for that, and getting to Boulder was a snap. That’s why even though all of my cousins had been spread out over the suburbs of Denver and each of the major cities surrounding it, we all were thick as thieves and close as ever.
It wasn’t like when we visited Lex’s cousins down in Texas where everything was spread out to the point that driving to another city would take four to eleven hours. No, we were lucky that way. Hence why people would joke that the Montgomerys were taking over the world. We happened to have a higher percentage of people in this state than one would think.
“When did you ever see a Montgomery in a polo shirt?” I asked, annoyed.
“Hey, huge football players and celebrities go golfing all the time. They wear polos. We all can’t be Adam Sandler in a T-shirt and large athletic shorts.”
I snorted, shaking my head at Lex. “Maybe I should go dressed as Adam Sandler.”
“Or you could just put on a polo and some khakis and pretend like you know what you’re doing. ”
I flipped the other man off and walked in a towel toward my closet. I had khakis and a polo for instances like this, or for events where I needed to blend in with the clientele. But it wasn’t usually my favorite thing. Give me jeans, gray sweatpants, and a Henley? I was fine.
“How much ink do you think is going to be on our course today?” I asked with a laugh.
“Enough that we’ll scare the locals. I’m going to really enjoy it. Especially when Crew comes around with all his piercings.”
The Montgomerys and friends were headed to the golf course today, and I wasn’t quite sure why I had agreed to it. But they wanted to go, so we were going to figure out how to be adults. Apparently. We needed activities to do as friends and family that didn’t involve throwing axes or playing video games apparently. At least, that’s what my mother had said jokingly over dinner one day, and now here we were.
Lex continued to talk behind me, as I found a polo shirt that I didn’t mind wearing, this one charcoal gray. I would just have to wear some form of cream or white pants, I thought I had some at least. I still didn’t know why we were going golfing, but I was just going to roll with it.
Plus doing something out of the ordinary seemed to be what I was good at recently .
Considering that I had slept with Claire.
And it hadn’t been just one time. It had been numerous times over the night. We hadn’t slept at all, except for a few dozing naps with each other, and there was no going back. I could still feel the softness of her skin underneath my fingertips—could still feel her clamping around me as she came.
Then there was the way that the side of her mouth quirked up into a smile, while the other side would scrunch just slightly so it looked like she always had something on her mind, a little mischievous.
There was seriously something wrong with me. Because I felt as if I had studied every inch of her, multiple times, and I was still getting to know her, finding new aspects that drew me in.
And here I was, waxing poetic nonsense and shit as if I knew what I was doing. This was not like me. But hell, nothing I had done with Claire was like me.
The morning after, we had woken up from our catnap, packed our things up, checked out the house, and then said our goodbyes. It had been awkward, and yet, not as awkward as it could have been. As it should have been.
We had both said we would see each other soon, and I had tucked her hair behind her ear, and she smiled up at me. And then we’d parted ways.
We hadn’t discussed anything. About what we would do when we saw each other next or what we would say. For all I knew she was telling Phoebe and all the Montgomery girls exactly what happened. And here I was, not telling anybody, because I had no idea what I was thinking, or what was going to happen next.
Total mature shit.
I got dressed, ignoring the way that Lexington rolled his eyes when I just dropped towel in front of him. If the man didn’t want to see my ass, he could have just left the room. I pulled on boxer briefs, and then white khaki-feeling golf pants, and then shoved on the polo.
“Look at you, all fancy now. You’re going to get grass stains on those pants.”
“Are you saying I’m going to trip and fall?” I grabbed my bag and gestured toward Lex. “Let’s go. I still can’t believe that only a couple of days after a fucking snowstorm we’re going golfing, but here’s Colorado weather for you.”
“We don’t look a gifted sunny day in the eyes. That’s the whole thankfulness of living in this weird state.”
“I don’t think any of what you said was part of the actual metaphor or simile. I’m just saying.”
“Actually I think it’s just an idiom. Like a cultural thing. We probably should have taken more English classes.”
I laughed. “Well I don’t need no English. I just sit there and grunt and look fierce. ”
“And I just hit a hammer against a nail and really hope the house doesn’t fall down.”
Lexington, along with a few other cousins, had joined up with Montgomery Inc, but Inc, not Ink. They had eventually broken off into a subsidiary, called Montgomery Inc Too. They still were under the major family umbrella like all of us were, but instead of working on all the same projects with their parents and uncles and aunts, much like the tattoo shops, they had branched off into their own.
I liked the fact that there were so many handy people in my family. Sure, I could do a few things on my own, but not everything. And while we didn’t take freebies and handouts, we did trade and barter our services. Meaning any home improvement projects I wanted done at my house, I could get at cost, or for just helpful hints when it came to security and installation.
It all worked out in the end.
“So, did you have fun up in the lodge with Claire?” Lex asked as I got into the passenger seat, and we made our way toward the course.
I tried my best not to look as if I were guilty. Because there was nothing to be guilty about. We hadn’t done anything wrong.
It was just I had no idea what we had done in terms of labels and the grand scheme of things, and I didn’t want to talk about it. Part of me wanted to shout from the rooftops, but that sounded like a bad idea.
So I wouldn’t. I would just pretend nothing had happened. And I had been silent for a little too long.
“It snowed worse down at the base where they closed the pass than it did up where we were. It was weird, but I guess we were on the opposite end of the storm. So we got some snow, but then the roads were fine by the time we drove the next morning.”
“What did you guys do, play video games or something?”
“Yeah, a little bit. Watched a movie. Drank too many old fashioneds.” Had hot sex multiple times throughout the cabin.
“I love that she loves bourbon.”
My lips quirked into a smile. “She makes a better old fashioned than I do, I had to steal a recipe.”
“Oh, I want it too,” Lex said as he pulled off the highway.
“She learned it at a mixology class actually. She learned a few things.”
“You can take classes for that?” Lex asked, and then shook his head. “Of course you can. People need to learn to be bartenders rather than watching somebody make Jack and Cokes.”
“That is the max ability of some of our family members though,” I said with a laugh. “And she needed to learn it for some party or something. I don’t really remember.”
Of course I remembered. I remembered everything about Claire. But that made me sound stalkerish. And this wasn’t like me.
“That’s cool. I forget that she plans parties. Big ones or just like kids’ birthday parties?”
“Big ones. Although I know she does some parties that are birthday-like. And even weddings. She’s growing leaps and bounds.”
“She and Phoebe are both amazing when it comes to their businesses. I’m glad that Kane hooked up with Phoebe. I like them.”
“Oh?” I asked, noticing the slight twinge of jealousy I needed to get rid of.
“Yeah. Claire’s fun. I’m glad that she’s around more, since I know she sort of hid away after everything that happened.”
I gritted my teeth and let out a deep breath. “Yeah. But she’s back.”
“That’s good. Maybe I’ll see what she’s up to.”
“Oh?” I asked, and Lex just snorted and shook his head. “There’s a spot over there,” I said, pointing to a very obvious parking spot, and trying to deflect the fact that I was not hiding my feelings and jealousy well.
Well shit.
Thankfully Lexington didn’t ask any more questions, probably because he got all the answers he needed, and I hated myself a little bit.
We got our clubs out of the back of the SUV, although I was borrowing one of my dad’s sets because I didn’t actually own any. And we made our way toward the rest of the group.
Leif and Nick would be partners, while Lex and Sebastian worked together. Noah and Ford were partners of course, and that left me with Crew, who was technically the only non-Montgomery of the bunch. But as he’d once dated Daisy, and was now all of our friends, it all made sense that he would be with us. In fact, Crew and Lexington hung out more often than not. They were always by each other’s sides, and credited Daisy for that fact. And that’s why the two of them weren’t allowed to play together, because they could kick all of our asses.
So I had the pierced and tattooed man in a similar outfit to mine, who just raised that pierced brow.
“So how was your weekend?”
I shrugged, trying my best and failing to act nonchalant. “Snowy.”
“Hmm.”
I Ignored his pointed cough, as we set out to playing. I wasn’t very good, but I was getting better. Thankfully I could mimic what Crew was doing, so it wasn’t that bad .
Halfway through Crew gave me a once-over and smiled. “Well, well.”
I looked over my shoulder and realized that the rest were paying attention to something else, and no one was looking at us. I leaned over and whispered fiercely. “How did you know?”
Crew just beamed and wiped his hand on his shirt. “I just know things.” Then he gave me a look, raising that pierced brow. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“I have no fucking clue.” It was the most honest thing I could have said in that situation because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.
I had always put Claire in a box, a friend of a friend, someone that I couldn’t get near because if I fucked it up, it would hurt Phoebe and that would hurt Kane. The fact that Kane wasn’t here today was helpful because he could read me like no other. Yes, Crew and Lex seemed to have read me just fine, but Kane? He would know. And then I would have to figure out what I was supposed to say. And yet here I was, trying to do the same.
“Well shit,” Crew mumbled. “Claire’s a nice girl.”
“Woman,” I corrected, and Crew nodded.
“Woman. She’s nice . She’s been through shit, but then again, so have you. Mister ‘I got blown up in a warehouse and nobody likes to talk about it.’ ”
I winced. “Daisy was in the warehouse. I was just near it and got blown off my feet. We’re both fine.”
I could still remember the heat of it, the impact as I fell. Daisy had been hurt significantly more than I had but was back to her normal. I had been through another bomb, and a few knife wounds, and a bullet graze. All because I was in the job of protecting people. It wasn’t safe, not always, but it was my job to make it safe.
Most days it was paperwork and installing cameras. Boring, and didn’t give me the adrenaline that I needed, but it was enough.
But Claire? She had been hurt. On my watch. And that was something that was always going to be between us.
“Just figure something out, okay?”
I nodded, then remembered something that had happened that night. “Hey. You know that gym that you work at sometimes? Do they have open hours for one-on-ones?”
Crew nodded, a frown on his face. “Yeah, though you have a gym of your own, Mr. Montgomery.”
I grinned. “Yeah, I do. But maybe I don’t want to be working out right where my entire family’s watching all the time.”
Crew raised a brow. “Well, well. Things are going to get interesting. ”
And then it was his turn, and I stood back, and pulled out my phone without thinking.
Me:
Hey, I have a place we could work out if you want to work on those self-defense lessons. No pressure.
Well, that wasn’t exactly what I had wanted to say right away, or how I’d wanted to reach out, but it was a good excuse.
Claire:
Okay. Just tell me where. And when I guess. And what I’m supposed to wear. And well, I guess I’m going to need a long list.
She ended it with the laughing emoji, and my lips quirked.
Me:
I’ll take care of you. I promise.
Before she could say anything to that, or I could think too hard, I texted again.
Me:
How are you?
Three little dots appeared quickly, then went away, then came back.
Well hell. Maybe on a golf course surrounded by family wasn’t the best place to have this conversation over text.
Claire:
Is this where we talk about the thing we’re not talking about?
I threw my head back and laughed and ignored everyone staring at me for answers. Leif came over to read over my shoulder, and I pulled the phone away before he could see who it was.
“Ooh. I want to know.”
“Privacy. Just a little bit.”
“We’re Montgomerys, we don’t believe in privacy,” Sebastian said, and I flipped him off, ignoring the fact that we were on a fucking nice golf course, and kept the phone to myself. Thankfully Crew seemed to be blocking people coming my way, and I would have to thank him again. Or it was possible I owed him more and more with each passing moment.
Me:
Maybe. If that’s what you want.
How the hell had I missed that she was so cute and funny over these past months? Oh, because she was Phoebe’s friend and that meant off limits. And maybe we had already crossed that line.
Claire:
Maybe we should keep not talking about it? How many double negatives were in that?
Me:
If that’s what you want. Or I can ask what you’re wearing.
Shit, what the hell was I doing?
Claire:
LOL. I’m wearing nothing but an apron. Barefoot in the kitchen.
My cock thickened, and I willed it down since these pants hid nothing. Crew cleared his throat beside me and I tilted a bit, annoyed at my own body’s reactions.
Me:
Sure, darling.
Claire:
I’m in leggings and a T-shirt as I am working on a plan for a welcome home party. Lots of things to do, and I feel so fancy right now.
Me:
I’m currently in a polo shirt and white khakis.
Claire:
Oh my God. So fucking sexy.
Me:
I know, right?
Claire:
Is this weird?
I nodded at Lex as he walked past me, interest in his gaze, but I ignored him again.
Me:
Yes, but I don’t mind it.
Claire:
I don’t mind it either. But I guess I’ll see you soon? Just don’t get hit with any balls.
Before I could even text back, Claire texted first.
Claire:
I meant golf balls.
Me:
I’ll do my best.
Claire:
I’ll talk to you soon?
Me:
Yeah. See you soon.
Not exactly what she had said. Because we weren’t just going to talk. I was going to see her. Maybe it was just going to be for a self-defense lesson. Maybe it was going to be more.
I had no fucking clue.
Crew looked over my shoulder, and I hadn’t even realized the man had moved, before he whistled through his teeth.
“Fuck off,” I growled. “I wasn’t like this when you were dating Daisy.”
Crew just laughed, and I was grateful that no one else was around us in that moment. “First off, I didn’t realize you were dating Claire.”
“Fuck. I’m not. That’s not what I meant.”
Crew just shrugged. “Well, choice of words and all that. But the reason that you weren’t like this, the reason that you didn’t hover over me when I was texting Daisy? Because Daisy can easily kick my ass and I was fine with that. And plus, I’m not going to get all growly over you with Claire. Nor are you going to ever need to worry about me with another Montgomery. That was a one and done.”
I just shook my head. “Famous last words.”
Crew glared. “Seriously, I’m never dating another Montgomery.”
I just fluttered my eyelashes. “How could you? There’s just so many of us. You can’t just walk away.”
Crew let out a laugh, then leaned forward, and smacked a kiss to my lips. “Fine. I’ll fuck you if that’s what you want.”
We both burst out laughing, as Lexington came over and looked between us. “So, what did I miss?”
And as we ignored him, and my other cousins came over, confusion on their faces even as they laughed, we went back to the game, and nobody asked me about my texting again. And yet all I could do was think about Claire, and exactly what the hell I was supposed to do when it came to her.