66. Chapter 66
“Is it always karaoke night?” Lindsey asked.
They filed into the Haunt, an entourage without a star at the center holding them all together. A bunch of misfit groupies looking for a band.
Penny set a stack of plastic cups on the bar in front of the empty stools they were aiming for, saying, “You’ve brought the party.”
“We need whiskey. Lots and lots of whiskey,” Jase told her. Lindsey wore a dress tonight for an excuse not to ride on his bike, he was pretty sure. She’d rather ride with Graham than on Jase’s motorcycle.
Luke bellied up beside Jase and Lindsey stood on Luke’s other side.
“Okay, now them I know, but who is this tall hunk of muscle?” Penny asked.
“Penny, this is Luke, Lindsey’s brother,” Jase said. “Luke, this is Penny. We went to school together.”
“Pleasure,” Luke smiled at the bartender, who suddenly seemed much less into women than she had before.
“What’re you drinking, honey?” Penny asked. It wasn’t Jase’s imagination that she pushed her breasts together and set them on the bar in front of Luke. “I’ll make it extra good to take care of that eye.”
“Whiskey, neat,” Luke said, not even trying not to look at the set of C’s dangling in front of him. “Top shelf, please.”
“Make that two,” Jase said.
When Penny left to scrape up a bottle of something that wouldn’t rot their guts, Jase said, “I wouldn’t bother. You don’t have the necessary equipment.”
Luke scrunched up his face. As banged up as it was, it probably hurt.
“Oh, yes he does,” Penny called over her shoulder.
“Thought you didn’t swing our way?” Jase asked.
“For you? No, dear.” Penny set a bottle of Jack Daniels on the bar. “I’ve read the warnings.”
“Goddamn bathroom wall,” Jase murmured.
“For you?” Behind her glasses, Penny scanned Luke from his hands, his bruised knuckles and ringless finger, to the butterfly tape holding his eyebrow together, and said, “I’d swing all the way back.”
“Thank you…I think,” Luke said, adjusting his pants on the stool.
The man’s cheeks were on fire. Curse of married life, Jase figured, that Luke forgot how to flirt.
Penny’s laugh was low and calculating. She’d eat him alive, if she got her pointy, maroon talons into him.
Lucky bastard. Being devoured by a sexy redhead and her girlfriend sounded like a hell of a way to go.
“You singing tonight?” Penny asked Jase as she poured into two plastic cups.
It had thawed Lindsey out last time. “Sure, sign me up,” he said.
Penny dropped a giant song binder in front of him. “Go nuts, stud.”
On Luke’s other side, Jase heard Lindsey ask her brother, “So, what? You and Jase are best friends now?”
“Why don’t you give him a break?” Luke suggested.
If she answered before she walked away, Jase didn’t hear it. Graham and Helen immediately filled the space she left empty.
His nose in the binder, Jase asked, “Luke, you sing?”
“Only if you want to clear this place out,” he said.
“What about your sister?” Jase asked. “She sing?”
“Have you ever asked her?”
Jase looked behind him and saw that Lindsey had drifted to the end of the bar, watching a Taylor Swift duet onstage. He’d tried to get her to join him for karaoke in Texas, and she’d turned him down.
“I think she’s pissed at me.”
“Do you deserve it?”
“Probably.”
“Of course you do.”
Jase tensed at the familiar voice behind him.
“Chloe.” He turned and found her in fishnets and the see-through top she wore last night. “Thought you were at the hotel resting.”
“We were,” Charlie chirped beside her. “We did.”
“You’re so predictable.” Chloe’s eyes narrowed on Jase. “You’re going to mess things up with her just like you messed things up with me.”
“Chloe, doll, I really wish you wouldn’t do this,” Charlie said.
Luke swiped his whiskey and put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder.
“That’s our cue to leave,” he said. Charlie started to argue, and Luke grabbed the second whiskey, putting the cup in Charlie’s hand. “Trust me. We are not wanted here.”
“Here we go,” Jase said with a sigh. He tapped the bar top for another whiskey, since his walked away in Charlie’s reluctant fist, and braced himself for what was sure to be his second pummeling of the day from another woman with every reason to pummel him.
“I don’t get it,” Chloe said. “What didn’t we have?”
Jase slapped the karaoke book closed, and Penny slid a new whiskey across the bar. “Don’t jerk me around. Don’t do that to Charlie. He’s clearly nuts, but he shouldn’t be stuck in…whatever this is. Neither should she, for that matter.”
She. Lindsey. He sucked down a mouthful of the whiskey that would’ve felt smooth a few weeks ago. His dad’s stash was ruining him for all future drinks, and she was ruining him for everything else. He put Chloe up in a hotel and Lindsey still wouldn’t look at him.
“Is she why?” Chloe asked. “Is she really the reason you won’t try to make this work with me?”
He stared into his plastic cup. “She’s a reason,” he said finally. “Not the reason.”
“Then what?”
“Chloe, the last time I left, I wasn’t coming back.” He looked up from his drink and straight at her. “Ever.”
She blinked and understanding settled in. The look was sad and ugly, and he felt rotten being the cause of it, but he had to be straight with her so she’d stop trying to reel him back in.
Chloe lifted her finger to bring Penny back over and asked for a drink.
“She can’t have one,” Jase said.
“It’s not up to you,” Chloe said.
“You’re pregnant.”
“It’s not your fucking problem,” Chloe snapped.
“It might be my fucking problem.”
“And yet it changes nothing.” She turned to Penny and said, “Jack on the rocks, please.”
Penny raised her eyebrows at Jase, and he shook his head.
“I’ll sip it slowly,” Chloe retorted.
“You called me an asshole last night for offering you a drink,” Jase reminded her. “What changed since then?”
“Everything.”
Penny poured a small cup, muttering a quiet apology. Jase watched Chloe take a sip, then slid the karaoke book across the bar.
“Sign me up for anything, Penny. Make it good.”