Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
AIDEN
Halloween passed, October bleeding into November, and Avery and I had managed to keep our little entanglement a secret, despite the fact that we spent every night together—either in her bed or mine. I was growing addicted to her. Quickly. Even though I was well aware that we had an expiration date.
Temporary had always been my standard MO. And I didn’t know why this felt so different from every other situationship I’d been in. But it was. I couldn’t say how, but I knew it in my bones.
Just like I knew the placement of all eighteen of Avery’s scattered tattoos, the stamps on her body that marked her life—the bunny behind her ear because her mom told her they bring luck if they cross your path, even if you can’t see them, and the three star signs below her collarbone that she swore told the story of who she was, and the open book on her ankle and every other one in between.
I knew she got a little needy after her seventh orgasm, and that she was just as desperate to crack a dozen as I was to get her there.
I knew the list of places she wanted to travel to someday, and that she loved ice cream in the winter and hot chocolate in the summer, and that playing with her hair always put her right to sleep.
Through learning all of it and the two of us growing closer, there’d been a couple close calls of people finding out.
Addison was relentless and determined to expose us.
Like when she’d stormed into Avery’s room at the ass-crack of dawn one morning, except my little bunny had been in my room, completely naked and dead to the world.
Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to lock the bathroom door that led to Avery’s room before we’d crashed for the night.
Because of that, she’d been able to play it off and tell Addison she’d been sick and had set up camp on the bathroom floor.
Then there was the time we’d been taking a bath, the water hotter than Satan’s balls and the bubbles sky-high, just how Avery liked it.
I’d been massaging her feet as she wondered aloud where her first flight would be to when Addison had barged into Avery’s room, then into the adjoining bathroom with barely a knock.
I’d slipped under the water just in time and had to hold my breath for three fucking minutes until Avery had finally convinced my sister to leave.
Addison continued trying to catch us together, overstepping in ways that were too far for normal people, but not nearly far enough for her.
The fucking she-devil. It was clear she was onto us and on a mission to make whatever this was between us publicly known.
But catching us in the lie was proving too difficult for her.
At least until mid-November.
It was after hours, the time of night when the front desk closed, and we were only available for emergency calls.
I was home alone, enjoying the quiet and working on edits, when my phone buzzed with an incoming text.
I glanced over at it, assuming it’d be one of my brothers.
I figured I could ignore it until I got to a good stopping point. But it was Avery’s name on the screen.
Avery:
Wish you were here. I’d love to see my stern brunch daddy drunk. You get loose and a little wild, don’t you? I should ask the cute bartender. I bet he’d know.
I read her text three times, trying to make sense of it.
First of all, I didn’t know what the fuck a stern brunch daddy was.
Second, she and Addison, along with Everly, Quinn, Luna, and Mabel were supposed to be at the police station, volunteering for some kind of sobriety test training, and not at a fucking bar getting hit on by a random guy.
Aiden:
What fucking bartender?
I stared at my phone, willing the dots to appear that showed she was typing a reply, waiting for what seemed like forever. When the message finally came through, it didn’t calm me in the slightest.
Avery:
The one serving the drinks, obviously. He reminds me of your stupidly handsome face. Like, you could be brothers.
I hadn’t even finished reading her message before I grabbed my keys, taking the steps two at a time as I headed downstairs. I’d never been a jealous guy. To be honest, I could take or leave whoever I was with, so this kind of stuff didn’t bother me one way or another.
But I’d never been with Avery before.
She was different, in every possible fucking way.
And there was a whisper inside me that was growing louder each day.
One that didn’t care that this was supposed to be temporary or that she was leaving in just a few short weeks.
It still repeated a single word over and over again, until I’d started to believe it.
Mine.
Aiden:
Where are you?
Avery:
How about we play hide and seek and you try to find me?
Aiden:
I’m not playing right now, Avery.
Avery:
Uh oh. You didn’t call me bunny. Am I in trouble?
Aiden:
You’re going to be if you don’t tell me where you are. Now stop fucking around.
Avery:
You know where I am.
Aiden:
Clearly, I don’t because I thought you were at the station with Brady. And the station doesn’t have bartenders, cute or otherwise.
Avery:
Of course they do. How else were we supposed to get drunk???
I was going to kill my brother for leaving out this little detail.
I would’ve been their fucking bartender if I’d known they needed one because God knew that group was nothing but trouble.
But Brady had passed this off as no big deal, just a couple of drinks so they had enough alcohol in them that the station could do their annual sobriety test training, and the girls would be back home in no time.
Aiden:
I’m on my way. And tell the bartender to keep his fucking hands to himself if he wants to still have them at the end of the night.
Six minutes later, pandemonium greeted me when I stepped inside the police station.
Mabel stood on a table, swinging a baton above her head and catcalling Paul Traeger, Brady’s deputy.
Luna had confiscated Brady’s desk and was pretzeling herself into a yoga position on top of it.
Quinn and Everly were attempting—poorly—to perform some kind of stupid-ass dance.
And my beautiful girl was in the middle of it all, holding up a very drunk Addison, who had her cup shoved in Brady’s face.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” he snapped at our sister, his patience long gone. “I’m not the fucking bartender.” Then, louder so as to address the entire room, he said, “And you’re all cut off.”
Mabel snorted, not pausing in whatever sort of wanna-be martial arts routine she was attempting. “If you’re not the fucking bartender, you can’t cut us off, you killjoy. Another one on me!” she yelled, sloshing alcohol over the side of her glass as she thrust it in the air.
“Traeger,” Brady barked. “Get her down from there while I wrangle the rest of these troublemakers. And tell George to get his ass in here and gather up his wife before I throw her in the holding cell.”
“He’s making his way in from the parking lot,” Traeger said. “Slowly.”
“Of course he is,” Brady muttered. “Did you contact the rest of the designated drivers? Because I want my station cleared out in the next ten minutes.”
“Sure did, Sheriff,” he said, his eyes still on Mabel. “Your brothers are on their way.”
“One is already here,” I said, striding into the fray. “Though my text came from a drunk Avery about a cute bartender, not from Traeger about driving duty.”
At the sound of my voice, Avery snapped her head toward me and beamed, her smile lighting up her face, and I was so fucking gone for this girl.
Her eyes were droopy, her cheeks flushed bright pink, and she wasn’t just drunk.
She was smashed. Along with Addison, who could barely stand.
And Brady had allowed it to happen in the fucking police station.
I pinned him with a glare. “I thought you said they’d only have to drink a couple for the training.”
His jaw ticked. “They did. And then Mabel suggested a drinking contest, and Addison egged everyone on. Your girl won, by the way,” he said under his breath. “Drank every single one of them under the table. Even Mabel, which I didn’t think was possible after that whole thing with Luna.”
A smile twitched at the corner of my mouth as I watched Avery dance with a coordination-challenged Addison. And then what he said hit me, and I snapped my head toward him. “My what?”
He rolled his eyes, his gaze locked on Luna. “You can drop the act. Did you actually think I didn’t know?”
Well. Yeah. I kind of had. Especially since Brady didn’t live at the resort.
Avery and I were together—but always professional—when we saw him for morning meetings, and he and I had gotten together to hang out a couple times since I’d gotten back from Vermont, but that was it.
Compared to the shit Addison saw—or attempted to see—that was nothing.
“You really did, huh?” he said, shaking his head. “Well, the cat’s out of the bag. And even if I hadn’t known, your girl finally gave in to Addison’s badgering when she was on her sixth drink.”
“Sixth? Jesus, Brady. How fucking much did you let them have?”
“Let them?” He cocked a brow and gestured toward the room.
“Have you met any of these women before? I’m just lucky a baton was the only piece of equipment they confiscated in this chaos.
” He glanced over to where Traeger was guiding Mabel down from the desk, the baton in question tucked safely back in his belt.
The station door opened then, and Beck and Ford strolled in, their gazes immediately going to Everly and Quinn, respectively.
“Oh, fuck yes,” Ford said with a fist pump, grinning at Quinn where she now sat, watching a video with Everly. “Someone’s getting laid tonight, isn’t that right, wife?”
Quinn giggled—actually giggled…something I’d never once heard come out of the woman—and smiled up at her husband.
Ford gripped her hands and pulled her to stand, except she’d, apparently, been holding up Everly.
When her bookend was removed, Everly toppled straight over, and Beck lunged to catch her before her head hit the floor.
Over his shoulder, he shot a scowl shot at Brady. “Jesus Christ. How fucking much did you let them drink?”
I raised my brows and gestured toward an angry Beck, with a very silent but very clear, see?
“Did you eat anything before you got wasted, sunshine?” Beck asked, lifting Everly into his arms.
She squinted and pursed her lips, pressing her fingers close together directly in front of his face. “Mmm…li’l bit.”
“What’s a little bit?”
“Do Starbursts count?” she asked, a hopeful note in her voice.
“No, Starbursts don’t fucking count,” he grumbled as he stalked toward the door, following Ford, who was busy evading a very handsy Quinn.
Ford shot Brady a wink and a thumbs-up at the same time Beck scowled his way. “We’re going to have words about this tomorrow.”
“Can’t wait.” Brady blew out a heavy sigh and propped his hands on his hips, surveying the devastation left behind by a group of six women. “I’ll volunteer myself if I have to, but you can bet your ass I’m never doing this shit again.”