12. Owen
In the wake of the physical altercation, the chaos in the club died in an instant, the building becoming so quiet I could probably easily hear a whisper from the other side of the dance floor. Once the douchebag was gone, I saw no reason for me to stay open any longer.
“Everybody out!” I shouted. “Lawless is officially closed for the night!”
Groans rose from the crowd, but I simply met Hugo’s eyes over the heads of my guests. With a knowing nod, he began ushering people out onto the street, and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief that this nightmare was finally ending.
“Where the fuck is she?” a voice yelled from the entrance.
Or maybe not.
“I’m sorry, sir. You can’t come in here,” the bouncer at the door told whoever it was, though he was short enough that I could only see the top of his head.
“My girlfriend is in there, you dumbass. Get out of my way!”
“Alfie?” Ella whispered from behind me, and I turned to her as she pushed past Delia and Brie, weaving through the crowd to greet her guy.
“What is he doing here?” Brie asked quietly.
“Who the fuck knows,” Delia replied, then grabbed her sister’s hand. “C’mon. We better go see what the fuss is about.”
Silently, I followed behind the Delatou women as they made their way toward the door.
I didn’t know much about Ella’s boyfriend beyond the fact that I hated him. He was the opposite of everything I stood for, especially where women were concerned: misogynistic, prideful, overly invested in archaic gender roles. Even a few hours in his presence made me realize how much he belittled Ella. And if I knew anything about the Delatou women, first from that summer with and subsequent years knowing Amara, and now working side by side with Delia, it was that they didn’t take kindly to men telling them what to do. This guy must’ve had a really magical dick to make Ella act this way—or he was gaslighting the shit out of her. Either way, I didn’t like it one bit, and I could tell her sisters didn’t either.
All through dinner, I hadn’t missed how the corners of Delia’s eyes pinched with worry as she silently observed their interactions. Alfie managed to put Ella down at every opportunity, even over things as inconsequential as her asking for a second glass of wine or wanting the last little piece of bread.
The guy needed to be taught a lesson, but unfortunately, it wasn’t my place to do so.
“What the fuck are you doing here ?” Alfie spat at Ella, and instantly my hackles rose. I inhaled deeply, schooling my temper. The last thing I needed was to drop another guy with a fist to the face tonight.
“My sisters wanted to go out,” Ella said simply.
“You didn’t need to go with them,” he said. “In fact, I’m fairly certain I told you not to.”
“She doesn’t answer to you,” Delia said coolly, and though I couldn’t see her face, I knew that whiskey gaze was burning a hole through Alfie.
“She does, actually,” he said. “Mind your own fucking business.”
“Excuse you—” I started, fully preparing to—well, I didn’t know what yet, but I knew it didn’t involve sitting here while this little twit insulted Delia and Ella.
But Delia’s warm palm settled on my chest, somehow instantly soothing me as she said, “He’s not worth it.” Then she angled her head to look at her sister. “Remember what I said in the car.”
Ella’s face pinched, her eyes lining with silver, but she dipped her head. Her shoulders rose and fell as she inhaled and exhaled sharply, then once again faced her boyfriend.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Alfie. “Let’s just go.”
“Good girl,” he said, as though praising a dog. “I don’t know why you wanted to come here anyway. I told you these guys your sisters hang out with are a bunch of tools anyway.”
The leash on my rage frayed, near snapping, and only Delia’s hand still resting on my pec kept me in check.
As Alfie led Ella away, gripping her upper arm too tightly for my liking, she glanced over her shoulder and mouthed, “I’m sorry,” to her sisters.
“God, I fucking hate that guy,” Delia grumbled .
“Me too,” Brie said, looking at her sister. “You ready to go home?”
“I’m going to stay and help Owen clean up this mess, actually,” Delia said, looking at me. “If that’s okay with you.”
“Of course. I’ll drive you home,” I said. I wasn’t going to turn down the chance for more time with her. “But you don’t have to.”
“I want to,” she assured me. Then to Brie: “Are you okay to drive?”
Brie nodded. “I only nursed a single drink, wanting to keep an eye on Ella when you disappeared.”
Satisfied her sister would be safe, Delia passed her keys off to Brie. “I’ll come get the car tomorrow. Or you can crash in the guest room. Whichever you want.”
“I’m not going to say no to sleeping in the world’s comfiest bed,” Brie said, shooting her sister a wink and disappearing into the night.
“The world’s comfiest bed?” I asked, quirking a brow at Delia.
“It’s nothing fancy,” she said with a shrug. “Just one of those Purple mattresses, but it’s a king. She can only fit a full in her apartment above the bakery, and she’s a bit of a starfish when she’s sleeping. Personally, I don’t understand why she doesn’t just buy a house with a bigger bedroom. It’s not like she can’t afford it.”
I knew each of the Delatou girls had sizable trust funds, though all of them were content to work for their money, a trait I’d always appreciated both in them, and in their parents for instilling it.
“So why doesn’t she? ”
“She likes being close to the shop,” Delia said, and I instantly understood. After all, I spent ninety percent of my time in my office upstairs, the control freak in me needing to be as near to my business empire as I could be.
Before I could say anything else to Delia, Hugo approached.
“Security footage from tonight has been combed and…edited. Our guy has been added to the blacklist.”
Delia gasped and looked at me. “That’s a real thing?”
I nodded. “I’ve got a document in my computer with the people who have pissed me off enough to never be allowed back through the doors.”
Delia’s eyes widened. “How many names are on it?”
“Enough,” I said, winking.
“Fuck!” Delia cursed suddenly. “I’d forgotten about the video I took.” She unlocked her phone and tapped around, holding it up to show me as she deleted the video of me punching that guy in the face.
“No one will ever see it. Though we should probably take care of that,” she added, gesturing to my knuckles.
I’d experienced injuries far worse, but as soon as she mentioned it, I couldn’t ignore the stinging of my split skin. She moved behind the bar and scrounged up a clean, dry towel, filling it with ice. Then she strode back out onto the floor and dropped down into a booth, scooting over and patting the seat next to her.
“I’m sorry your first night on the job didn’t exactly go as planned,” I said when I settled at her side, wincing as she set the towel on my knuckles. “And I really wish you wouldn’t have confronted that guy. ”
Delia scoffed. “You don’t have to worry about me, QB. You think that’s the first time I’ve been caught in the middle of a bar fight?”
I raised a brow. The thought of her being involved in something like that had that basic instinct to protect, protect, protect once again rising within me. I lifted my uninjured hand and rubbed my fist against my sternum, trying to soothe the sensation.
I realized in that instant that Delia Delatou didn’t need saving.
She needed a partner, an equal, someone who always had her back and believed in her ability to handle her own shit. She was a woman fully capable of making her own choices, and the beast in my chest needed to stand the fuck down.
“What happened?”
“It was blazing hot in the dead of summer, and there was a band that night at Granny’s, so the whole place was packed. I was sweating worse than usual thanks to line dancing song after song.”
Line dancing? God, why did the thought of her two-stepping have desire tightening my skin? I could easily picture her in a pair of boots, jeans clinging to her long legs, and a little red bandana as a shirt, moving around the dance floor in my arms.
What the fuck, Lawless ? I mentally slapped myself. Get your shit together.
Delia continued, oblivious to my internal strife. “I stepped outside for some fresh air, and I heard shouting coming from around the side of the building. When I went to investigate, I found a guy with his palm wrapped around a girl’s throat—and not in the sexy, hand necklace kind of way—pushing her up against the side of a vehicle. My vehicle.”
My lizard brain latched onto the words “hand necklace,” wondering what my own would look like around Delia’s pretty neck.
Fucking hell, I needed to cool off.
Clearing my throat, I said, “So what’d you do?”
“Told him to back the hell off. Instead of slithering away after being caught, he came at me. I had a bottle of beer in my hand, and when he lifted his fist to do god knows what to me, I beat him to the punch…literally.”
“You didn’t.”
Delia smirked, shifting the ice around on my hand. “I did,” she said proudly. “Hit him squared on the jaw.”
I winced at the thought of a sturdy, glass bottle slamming into my cheek. God, she continued to surprise me. Tough as nails with a backbone of steel. My brother Lane would have a field day with her. “What happened after that?”
“The guy I’d been with at the time came outside looking for me and caught the asshole just as he was about to lunge for me. It pissed the guy off enough that he swung at my date…and got arrested for assaulting an off-duty police officer.”
A cop? Of course she’d dated a cop. Hadn’t I just been thinking about her and Lane too? That was the kind of guy she should be with. Not me, the washed up quarterback who’s never once saved a life. Who hasn’t carried burn victims out of flaming buildings, or thrown himself in front of a bullet to save another human. I definitely hadn’t protected the goddamn President of the United States.
Throwing a football and getting people to drink was all I’d ever been good for. I went from providing daytime entertainment on Sundays to nighttime entertainment every other day of the week while Delia was dating fucking cops .
The self-loathing I experienced in that moment damn near choked me. For being unable—or maybe unwilling?—to do anything worthwhile with my life. I’d simply made it possible for my brothers to do those things instead. Not to mention, there wasn’t any reason for me to be jealous about who Delia was or wasn’t dating. That was none of my business. Our business was as far as I should take any concern for her.
Though Delia had stayed behind to help me clean up, we found ourselves spending the next half hour in that booth, chatting about nothing and everything. She left my side only once to dispose of the towel and ice when my fingers were so numb I could barely move them. And while my body certainly had notions of grandeur where she was concerned, I managed to keep myself in check, and found myself enjoying that quiet, easy time with her. Where we weren’t arguing over some distillery related thing or flitting from one task to the next. It was like we’d been friends forever.
It should’ve embarrassed me how badly I wanted to be her friend, knowing that’s all we’d ever be. The almost kiss earlier had been a moment of weakness brought on by the dim lighting and her sexy little dress. It was a line we couldn’t cross for so many goddamn reasons—and I hated every single one.
“Everyone is gone and everything is cleaned up, boss,” Hugo said when he approached the table and popped our little bubble. “Me and the guys are going to head out. You leaving too, or are you going to be here for a bit? ”
I spared Delia a brief glance, then checked my watch, noting it was well after one in the morning. “We’ll follow you out.”
After locking the doors and setting the alarms, I walked Delia to my truck, internally giddy when she didn’t protest my insistence I open her door and help her into the cab.
Tonight had been…exhausting, to say the least. Being a business owner—particularly of establishments that sold alcohol—often wasn’t easy, but it should’ve been easier than this.
I’d never understand why people thought they deserved some sort of exclusive access to me because they were coming to my business. Even when I was actively playing football and representing the city of Detroit, I never enjoyed that part of it. The fame, this god status normal people assigned to us simply because we played a sport on an international stage. We weren’t the kind of people who deserved that level of praise and hero worship.
Hero worship should be reserved for actual heroes , people saving lives every day by running into burning buildings or working in emergency rooms or serving in our armed forces.
I’d done what I could while in the NFL, using my celebrity status to contribute to numerous charitable and nonprofit organizations over the course of my career, but it never felt like enough.
“You okay over there?” Delia asked, pulling me from my internal raging. “I can literally hear your wheels turning.”
“I’m fine. Just…thinking about tonight,” I said. “People are fucking crazy.”
Delia huffed out a laugh. “Understatement of the century.” She shifted slightly in her seat, angling her body toward me. “ Does that happen a lot?”
“That’s probably the”—I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I counted—“sixth major incident since I opened the club. Though tonight, at least no one but me and that asshole ended up bloodied.”
Delia folded a leg under her butt, and that fucking dress rode up, barely covering the apex of her thighs. My gaze darted down to that darkened alcove between her legs, but I quickly tore it away, focusing on the road.
“I’ve gotta hear that story,” she said.
So I told her, how this guy—who I’d actually had a few issues with back in Detroit; the man really took the whole hero worship thing to a level I had never experienced before and I hoped I wouldn’t again—came into the bar, somehow made it past security, and showed up in my office. A shiver passed through me at the memory of that crazed look in his eyes, how I’d narrowly talked him out of my office and back downstairs. How I’d slid behind the bar to serve him a drink and, when I made another one for a customer standing next to him who, by the way, did not make me fear for my life, he turned to that girl, hauled her back against his chest, and held a fucking knife to her neck.
“And then ,” I continued when Delia sucked in a shocked breath, “when Hugo tried to intervene, in his haste to scramble away, the guy cut the girl he’d been holding hostage—nothing major—and fell backward, winding up with the knife lodged in his own leg. His fall caused a chain reaction. You know one of those comical things you see in movies? He bumped into another guy, who accidentally dumped his drink on a girl nearby, whose boyfriend took offense and punched him in the face, and then a whole brawl ensued. The cops were called, multiple ambulances arrived to deal with all the wounded, and the fire department showed up for crowd control. It was…not a highlight of my entrepreneurial career.”
“So what you’re telling me is there’s never a dull moment when you’re around,” Delia said, and I glanced over in time to see her eyes shining with glee, a small smirk tipping up the corners of her full mouth. “Maybe we’re more alike than you thought, QB.”
I held that stare longer than was probably safe while behind the wheel, but I couldn’t look away. I hadn’t consumed a drop of alcohol that night, but I was drunk all the same.
Delia had that effect.
I swear something shifted between us then. I was transported right back to that moment in my office when I’d nearly thrown caution to the wind and kissed her.
But the moment broke when I was forced to return my attention to the road, and like a balloon being deflated, that shimmering in the air dissipated.
When I pulled up in front of her house, Delia slowly unbuckled and stared at me expectantly, as though waiting for me to make a move.
But I wasn’t going to. Wasn’t going there with her.
I couldn’t.
“Good night, Whiskey,” I said softly, avoiding her gaze like a fucking coward.
After a beat, Delia said with a resigned sigh, “Good night, QB,” and got out of the truck.
I waited until she stepped inside, offering me a small wave then flipping off the porch light, before I drove away. As I wound my way through the sleepy streets of Apple Blossom Bay, I breathed the first lungful of air I’d managed in hours. Hugo interrupting us in my office before anything could happen had been a blessing, and only my barely-there self-control had stopped me from rectifying that wrong before she got out of my truck.
Working and sleeping together, while ultimately working out in their favor in the end, had made things so messy and complicated for Amara and Calvin. I was going to learn from their mistakes. I didn’t need messy or complicated . I’d had enough of that bullshit with my ex, and the other women I’d screwed around with during my playing days. What I needed was to get the distillery open and keep my dick out of Delia Delatou.