Chapter 7
SEVEN
I’M ME
“This is some lame-ass shit,” Knox grumbled from behind me. “Dude’s shot off fifty-seven rounds…from a handgun, for fuck’s sake.”
I twisted my neck from where I was lying, tucked in front of him on his cozy, comfy, deep-seated couch.
“You counted the rounds?” I asked.
“There went five more,” he said, then continued with advice I hoped I never needed, because Angels carried Tasers not guns, and we always would, “You always count the rounds.”
Interesting.
And terrifying.
“And there isn’t a handgun in existence with a magazine that carries sixty-two rounds,” he finished.
We were watching a spy thriller, shoot-’em-up that did, indeed, require some serious suspension of disbelief.
But it was a streaming TV show.
And I thought it was awesome.
“Also, no man is gonna storm a warehouse on his own against forty, fifty of the enemy, and have those enemies be stupid enough to rush him, while carrying guns of their own, so he can shoot them, essentially point blank,” Knox carried on.
“He’d be dead two steps in because they’d shoot from their positions, but I’ll give him five steps since he took them by surprise. ”
Although this was fascinating, I was internally at odds with how well he knew this information.
“It’s a streaming TV show,” I reminded him.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said to me.
“But it’s just a TV show.”
He had the remote, because of course he did, because he also had a dick (and a very nice one at that).
Then again, the verbal tussle we had about who would be in command of the remote was only half-hearted on my part.
This was a weird thing about me.
If I was watching TV with other people, I had remote anxiety. I didn’t understand it. But it freaked me if I was the one who had to type into the search screen or fast-forward or rewind to the right spot.
Knox paused the show, and explained, “They’ve founded this in reality.
It’s a show about the UK maybe going to war with South Korea, which is the start of the ridiculousness, since they’re allies.
If you make it real, it’s gotta seem real.
You make it all fantasy, you can do whatever the fuck you want. ”
“Like Han and Luke being good shots, and nearly every stormtrooper sucking with their blasters,” I said.
He nodded his head that was lying on a toss pillow. “Like that. And John Wick kicking ass in what is our world, but everything about his world is dark urban fantasy. So him besting everyone he’s up against doesn’t seem stupid.”
“Do you want to stop watching this?” I offered.
“Not if you’re into it,” he said.
Aw, he was so sweet.
“Is this something I need to make note of for future, that spy or commando or whatever type action shows need to pass the Knox Chambers test of believability or you’ll grumble through the whole thing?”
He appeared insulted. “I’m not grumbling.”
“Dude, we’re watching a hot guy, who’s not as hot as you, by the way…”
He smirked.
Mm.
I was falling in love with that smirk.
“…saving two awesome nations from going to war and you’re counting rounds,” I concluded.
“It’s reflex,” he muttered.
I rolled my eyes.
When I rolled them back, he was smiling at me.
“Since we’re paused, do you want to take this opportunity to make a huge-ass bowl of popcorn?” I asked.
“Real melted butter?”
Now I appeared insulted. “Eating dry popcorn? Uh…no.”
“You’re on butter. I’ll get out the popcorn popper,” he said, moving us, so Jacques, who was curled at our feet, jumped off the couch then got excited when we headed toward the kitchen (Knox was a treat guy, I said no human food often, and he ignored me every time I said it—I couldn’t be certain, but I was thinking Jacques was contemplating defecting).
And just to say, I could fall in love with a man who had a popcorn popper.
And who spoiled dogs.
We made popcorn.
I confided in him about my remote anxiety while we did, and he nearly injured himself laughing.
I huffed.
He kissed the huff out of me.
We returned to the couch, but this time, tangled up sitting so we could share the massive bowl.
Knox often sent kernels flying, and Jacques went after them.
I often told him to stop doing that.
He consistently ignored me.
He also grumbled through the next two episodes.
Honestly?
I didn’t care.
Even if it was scary, it was also hot he knew this shit.
And as ever and always with my open mind, I was learning all sorts of things, and letting them soak in.
* * *
I was walking from my car to The Porch for dinner with Brady, doing this reading a text that Gemma sent forewarning me not to come up with any last-minute excuses to get out of karaoke (I was considering a flash bout of tonsilitis, but apparently that sterling idea was going to die an early death).
I was almost to the door when I looked up and saw a car drive by in the parking lot.
It was mostly past me, so I didn’t see the driver well.
But I could swear it was Cheyenne.
Shit and hellfire.
I stopped and pivoted, watching the car traverse the lot to see if I could clock her on the back curve and…
Yup.
It was fucking Cheyenne.
“Shit and hellfire.” I said it out loud that time.
After I processed how annoying (and perhaps scary) that was, I sighed, deciding, if she wasn’t there coincidentally (and I knew she wasn’t, my guess, she’d followed me from Knox’s, which meant she did that from there to my house to here, quite the commitment), to think on what I was going to do about that after dinner with Brady.
What I knew I wasn’t going to do was tell Knox.
But I was now glad we were going to have our talk.
We needed to get a few things straight.
I sent off a text to Gemma to let her know I wasn’t going to blow off karaoke (who knew you could hope for a flash case of tonsilitis?) and went into the restaurant.
The Porch had a rectangular bar in the middle, some tables and chairs, booths around the walls, and approximately seven thousand, six hundred and nineteen TVs all over the place.
Brady was sitting in a booth in the back.
I headed that way.
He slid out when I got there, his smile not near the fun-loving, easy-going Brady I knew him to be.
Yup.
Something was on his mind.
Brady was about the same height as Knox. He had dark hair with a burnished cast, and a full, kickass russet beard that flirted with being almost too long, so obviously it was awesome.
He also had the prerequisite Nightingale built body and inherent confidence.
When we met him, we dubbed him Lumberjack Hottie, because he was so Lumberjack Hottie and he so worked it.
After we hugged hello, he waited for me to slide in (so, yeah…also the inherent Nightingale gentlemanly manners) before he slid in opposite me.
He already had a beer.
After I did a scan of the joint to ascertain if Cheynne was there coincidentally (she wasn’t, so it appeared stalking was a probability), I barely reached for the menu when the server was at our table.
I ordered an ale.
She took off.
“What’s shaking?” I asked Brady.
“You know where I work?” he asked back.
I nodded.
“Then you know everything’s shaking because everything always is,” he answered.
I smiled at him.
“Let’s order and get into it,” he said.
The way he said that didn’t sound promising, but I perused the menu, got stuck on the Nashville hot chicken sandwich and stopped looking, because I knew if I kept looking I’d probably find five other things I wanted, and then I’d be undecided.
A huge pet peeve of mine was when people hemmed and hawed over what they ordered, making the server return five times, and everyone at their table have to wait an extra twenty minutes to get to their food.
Find something you like. Stick.
And yes, this was partly because I was a server who got annoyed when I had to go back to a table five times for an order…but even when I was out in the wild, it irritated me.
I set the menu aside and saw Brady taking a sip of his beer.
“You going to karaoke?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he answered.
I smiled again. “What are you going to sing?”
He leveled his sky-blue eyes at me. “I’m only going as an observer.”
I knew this as truth.
The only male in our group who sang at karaoke nights was Tito (his song of choice?
“The Lime in the Coconut” of course), and sometimes Titus (one of our informants-turned-friends, which kinda happened to all our informants—we Angels had a bent toward collecting people—bee-tee-dub: Titus tended to sing Teddy Swims and killed it).
The server came back with my ale, jotted down our orders and vamoosed.
I took a pull from my beer then shared, “Not to horn in on your action with whatever you wanted to talk about during this meet, but you should know I outed Knox and me to the girls on Saturday.”
FYI: I didn’t know if Knox had confided about us to any of the guys, even Cap (however, I doubted it, because Cap one hundred percent would have told Raye).
I just knew Brady knew about us because he overheard Knox talking to me on the phone when we were together and obviously cottoned on to when that was no longer the case.
He then got pissed when Cheyenne was introduced to our posse, and the rest was history.
At least now, I hoped it would really be history.
“So they know you and me are just flirty friends,” I finished.
“I think we should keep going,” he said.
I blinked at him, and a funny feeling stole over me.
We were just buds.
Yeah, he was a good flirt (then again, so was I…eek!), but we’d always been just buds.
Don’t get me wrong, he was gorgeous, but he…
Dammit.
He wasn’t Knox.
In other words, I never had those kinds of feelings for Brady.
Did he for me?
“Brady—” I began.
“You’re the shit, Luna, but it’s not that.”
Relieved I didn’t have another hot guy romantic minefield to navigate, I took another sip of beer and asked, “Then what is it?”
“Knox needs to get his head out of his ass.”
I would agree, though he might not be thinking the same things I was.
“About what?”