Chapter Six #2
Knox knew pissing Lou off would get him nowhere, so he took a deep breath, then another, in an effort to calm down. But it wasn’t working. Annoyed, resigned, he looked at Jesse. “You better talk.”
“Gee, why didn’t I think of that?” Laying a calming—or more likely restraining—hand on Knox’s arm, Jesse stepped forward. “Is Chloe a client?”
Sawyer’s eyes, dancing with mirth only a moment before, were guarded. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
The surge of anger hit Knox like a wave, propelling him forward. “The hell you can’t.”
“Knox,” Jesse snapped, his hand tightening painfully on Knox’s arm to keep him in place.
“It’s okay, baby,” Sawyer murmured to Lou, who had stepped in front of him when Knox moved. He dropped a kiss on her mop of hair. “Knox isn’t going to punch me.”
Knox wasn’t so sure of that.
“You sure about that?” Lou asked, eyeing the hands Knox had clenched into fists.
“Sure, I’m sure. First, because we’re friends. And second, because he’s too scared of you to try.”
Since both of those things were true, Knox unclenched his hands. “Sorry,” he ground out, shoving his hands into his pockets, and tried to think of happy things. Like the smell of fresh cut grass, the taste of a cold beer on a hot day, Sawyer bleeding from the nose…shit, not that one.
“You good?” Jesse asked.
Knox jerked his head in a nod. “Fine.”
Lou was eyeing him, not with suspicion but with curiosity. “You don’t look fine, sugar. You look a mite tortured.”
“Tortured,” Jesse muttered and dragged a hand through his hair. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Look, we probably shouldn’t have come.”
“But you did,” Lou said, cheerful now. “So we might as well get into it. Who’s Chloe?”
“She’s a…not a client, exactly,” Jesse began.
“We’re doing a restaurant reno for her aunts,” Knox put in. “She tends bar there.”
“Okay. She cute?”
Jesse looked helplessly at Knox. “Ah…”
“Was that a hard question?” Lou asked, then turned to Sawyer. “Is she?”
“Very,” Sawyer said. “Petite, short blonde hair. Kind of punky. Blue eyes.”
“Nice,” was Lou’s opinion, while Knox struggled with the ridiculous urge to punch Sawyer for noticing that Chloe was cute. “Did she hire you?”
Sawyer hesitated. “Honey, you know I don’t discuss client business.”
“Yeah, but look at him.” Lou gestured to Knox. “You ever seen him look like that before?”
Sawyer lifted his gaze to Knox, considering, and surprise lit his light green eyes. “Well, damn.”
“What?” Knox asked.
“She didn’t,” Sawyer said. “Hire me. I left it open, and she might contact me, but…”
“But what?” Jesse prompted.
“I don’t think she will,” Sawyer admitted.
Lou frowned. “She didn’t like you? What’s wrong with her?”
Sawyer’s grin flashed. “Nothing’s wrong with her, and she liked me fine.”
Knox closed his eyes. Cold beer, fresh grass, Sawyer with two black eyes, a broken nose…
“Then what’s the deal?” Lou demanded.
“What she wants…”
Knox’s eyes flew open.
“…she doesn’t want from me,” Sawyer finished, looking Knox dead in the eye.
“What she wants?” Jesse echoed, sounding confused. “What does that mean?”
Sawyer held Knox’s gaze for another beat, then shifted to look at Jesse. “Just what I said.”
“But what does it mean?”
“Jesse—”
“I know, you don’t discuss client business,” Jesse interrupted, a rare impatience tightening his voice. “But you just said she hadn’t hired you, so she’s not a client.”
“Technically, no,” Sawyer allowed. “But we spoke in confidence.”
“But—”
“You might as well save your breath,” Lou advised, skirting around Sawyer to the stove. She picked up the spoon to stir. “He takes that shit seriously.”
“You said what she wants, she doesn’t want from you,” Knox said.
Sawyer nodded. “Yes.”
“So not just sex.”
Sawyer hesitated. “I can’t say.”
“For God’s sake, Sawyer,” Jesse blurted out.
“Watch your tone,” Lou warned, and spooned up a bite of chili. She blew on it, tasted, and hummed in pleasure. “Baby, this is so good.”
“I’m not fucking with you just for fun,” Sawyer told Jesse, then, “although that’s a nice side benefit.”
“For me, too,” Lou piped up, spooning up more chili.
“I promise my clients discretion, anonymity.” Sawyer opened a cupboard, took down a bowl, and handed it to his wife. “And yes, technically she’s not a client at this point, but anyone who contacts me, meets with me, gets that discretion and anonymity. It’s how I stay in business.”
“Nobody else wants any of this, right?” Lou said as she filled her bowl to heaping.
“I start telling client business, I might as well go back to selling tires,” Sawyer continued. “So no, I can’t tell you more. I’m skirting the line telling you what I have, and I wouldn’t have given you that much if you hadn’t spotted us together.”
“Look, I—we,” Jesse amended, “sort of have…feelings for her.”
Lou snorted into her chili. “Sort of. Right.”
Sawyer handed his wife a napkin. “Yeah, I got that when Knox growled at me in the restaurant.”
Jesse looked at Knox, a helpless look in his brown eyes. “We can’t really do anything about it, so—”
“Why not?” Lou mumbled around a mouthful of food.
Jesse blinked. “What?”
She swallowed. “Why can’t you do anything about it?”
“We’re renovating her aunts’ restaurant,” Knox reminded her, but saying it out loud made it sound…
“That’s weak,” Lou scoffed. “Do we have any cheese to put on top of this?”
“I was going to grate some, but you got greedy.”
“I’ll live without it,” Lou decided. “Where was I?”
“Weak,” Sawyer supplied helpfully.
“Right. So what if you’re doing the aunts’ restaurant? What’s that got to do with Chloe? She’s not the one who hired you, is she?”
“No,” Jesse admitted.
Lou waved her spoon. “She in charge of you at all? Making any design decisions, cutting checks, anything?”
Knox shook his head. “No.”
“Then what the fuck’s stopping you?”
“I… It’s complicated,” Knox managed.
“So the fuck what? Life is complicated.” She gestured to Sawyer with her spoon, flinging a blob of chili that landed on his chest. “Look at this fuckin’ guy.”
Sawyer frowned down at his sweater. “That’s going to leave a stain.”
“He literally fucks other people for a living,” Lou went on, clearly unconcerned for the fate of her husband’s sweater. “You think that’s not complicated?”
“Well, no,” Jesse admitted.
“You’re damn right, no. It’s complicated and messy and sometimes it’s fucking hard, but I love him and he loves me and we make each other a priority, and we make it work because it’s important. And this house.”
Since she didn’t pause for breath or a bite of chili, Knox assumed she didn’t actually want a response and wisely stayed silent.
“You think this house is uncomplicated?” Lou went on.
“Plaster walls and fucked-up floors, plumbing and electrical that could kill us? We could’ve picked one of those new builds in some subdivision and saved ourselves the lead-paint abatement and foundation issues and new roof and plaster walls that aren’t square to anything but vibes and maybe ghosts, and we’d be thousands of dollars richer and fucking miserable.
Because it’s not us. Because complicated doesn’t fucking matter.
What matters is what you want, and need, and having the balls to go get it. ”
She shoveled in a spoonful of chili, jabbed her spoon first at Knox, then at Jesse, glowering as she chewed.
“I don’t know what that means,” Knox confessed.
Jesse looked just as lost as Knox felt. “Me neither.”
“I think she’s telling you to find your balls,” Sawyer said with a grin.
Mouth full, Lou nodded, then grimaced and pointed at herself, then at Sawyer.
“What’s that mean?” Knox asked, fascinated.
“That means she’s eating too fast and needs something to drink.” Sawyer pulled a jug of milk out of the fridge. He got a glass, poured and handed it to her.
She took it with a grimace and downed half of it. “God, I hate milk. Milk sucks.”
“It’s good for you.”
“You suck, too,” she told him without heat and went back to her chili. “So?”
Knox realized she was talking to him when she stared at him pointedly. “So, what?”
“You gonna find your balls, or what?”
He honestly didn’t know how to answer that. He felt like he’d been through the emotional wringer, from fury to anguish to this confused…he didn’t know what to call this feeling. He looked into Jesse’s dark eyes, saw his own conflict reflected there. “We have stuff to talk about, I guess.”
To his surprise, Lou nodded. “Talking is good, as long as it’s followed by doing. You don’t do, you’re just a talking, ball-less fool.”
“I think what my beautiful wife is trying to say,” Sawyer said with a laugh in his voice, “is good luck.”
“That covers it,” Lou decided. “You got anything to add?”
“‘You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take’,” Sawyer said.
Lou rolled her eyes. “Fucking Michael Jordan again.”
“Actually, that’s Wayne Gretzky,” Knox said absently.
Sawyer laughed.
They left after that, declining an offer of chili and beer, and drove home in silence. Knox parked the truck in the detached garage and switched off the engine, then grabbed the now-cold food from the diner off the seat between them. “I’ll heat this stuff up.”
“You mind waiting half an hour?” Jesse asked, his usually vibrant voice quiet under the rumble of the garage door closing. “I’d really like to grab a shower first.”
“Sure.” Knox hesitated. “I was going to clean up, too, actually. Want some company?”
Jesse’s eyes met Knox’s, and the need in their velvety brown depths was like a fist to the gut. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“Me too,” Knox murmured.