Chapter 6 #3
He only had two more balls left to sink, and with a trick shot, he could do it.
So he was going to give it a shot. Because she was playing with him, and he was over it.
He was going to help her out with her scheme, but she didn’t get to be in charge.
She didn’t get to dictate how he felt or crash his get-togethers with his friends.
He was a man who had control over his life.
The last time he’d let anybody yank him around …
He just didn’t do it. The end.
He took the shot, and knocked one of the balls against the other; then both rolled into the pocket, the white going just to the edge and resting there.
He slammed the end of the pool cue down the floor and blew across the top of it as if it was a smoking gun. “I win.”
But there was a feral light in Jessie’s eyes, and he knew that he had pushed her a step too far. That she was about to get her revenge.
She walked toward him and grabbed the front of his shirt. “I think we need to have a campaign meeting.”
And then she tugged him away from the pool table, down the narrow hall, and straight into the single-occupancy bathroom. Where she slammed the door and locked it behind them. He could hear cheering and hollering from the bar.
“What the fuck?” he asked.
She stared up at him, her breathing hard.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. She wanted him. He wanted her.
He didn’t think he could fight it anymore.
He grabbed her arm and pushed her back against the wall, his own breathing unsteady.
Were they doing this? With everybody outside, were they doing it as part of a performance?
Finally. He reached out and moved his thumb over her lower lip, and the sound that escaped her lips was something like a wretched cry.
And then she ducked under his arm, unlocked the door, and scurried out.
He went out after her, and looked toward the bar, then looked out toward the back door, which was just closing.
“For God’s sake.”
He followed her outside, into the alley behind the bar. “What the hell are you doing?”
“We can’t be taking up the bathroom. We can just cool our heels out here for a minute.”
“To what end?”
“The show, Flynn.”
“That wasn’t a show.”
“It was a show,” she said. “That’s all this is. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“My head? That’s not where it went to, Jessie, and I think you know that.”
“Darn. I didn’t realize that you were as gullible as the rest of them.”
Oh, that did it. That brat. “You are not unaffected by this, Jessie Jane Hancock.”
“I am going home, Flynn Wilder.”
“We have to leave together,” he said.
“They’ll think we did.” She picked up her phone and was on a call before Flynn could say anything else. “Gus? I’ll come by and square up tomorrow. No. I swear. I’m good for it. I gotta go. See you.”
She hung up and started to walk quickly away from him. “Now I have to leave.”
“Yeah. Guess so.” He paused. “You know, you really made this a miserable evening.”
“You’re not the first man to say that to me.”
And with that, she left him standing there in a nearly empty street staring after her hips as she walked quickly to her truck and got in.
He was not leaving. He was going back inside. He stormed back into the bar and walked up to Gus. “I’ll pay Jessie’s tab.”
He said it loudly. Loud enough for everyone to hear.
“She said she would square up tomorrow.”
“I know she did. But I’ve got her.”
Then he went back to the table, anger he couldn’t quite sort out rolling through him like a thundercloud. She wanted him; she didn’t want him. It was part of the game.
It made him think too much of his childhood, and if that wasn’t the most messed-up thing …
“You good?” Dalton asked.
“Great,” Flynn growled. He did not take a drink from the beer bottle his sister slid in front of them, because he had a feeling that right now he would end up biting the end off and chewing glass.
Somehow, he and Jessie were going to get through this. Because he had thrown his hat into the ring, and he was going to see it through. It was just a real damn shame that dealing with her made him think of … Well, all the reasons he was involved in this to begin with.
One of the reasons he didn’t do relationships was that he wanted everything to be on his terms. And that just wasn’t how romance worked.
It also wasn’t how parent-child relationships worked.
Because when you were a kid, they had all the power to make you feel wanted, unwanted …
whatever. To be invited to Christmas one year and given extra presents to assuage someone’s guilt, or maybe even because they cared, to being skipped the following year for no reason you could fucking figure out …
He didn’t do hot and cold. He didn’t do uncertainty. He sure as hell didn’t want anything to do with people who didn’t want him.
And that included Jessie Jane. His feeling for her wasn’t that deep. He wanted her, she had teased him a bit. That was all. But there was a burning something in his gut. Something that made him want to push her too. Made him want to get her to admit that this back-and-forth wasn’t part of the show.
He wrapped his hand around the beer bottle, until he was afraid he might break it.
And he realized he couldn’t even dance with one of the women here. Couldn’t even hook up. Couldn’t do a damn thing to get rid of the tension in his gut.
Damn Jessie Jane.
“I’m about ready to go,” he said.
Cassidy’s eyes widened. “Already?”
“I’ll take her home,” Dalton said.
He looked from his sister to his friend and back again. Cassidy had such a crush on Dalton. And honestly, Flynn wouldn’t mind if the two of them hooked up. In fact, he thought it was about time Cassidy hooked up with someone. Dalton was a better option than …
His gaze drifted across the bar to West, who was practically being climbed by that redhead, and at the same time, Cassidy seemed to notice as well.
Yeah. It was good to have Dalton take her home.
“Great. I gotta call it. See you both tomorrow, I guess.”
He would also see Jessie in the next couple days, whether he wanted to or not.
You couldn’t choose your family, but he had chosen a pretty miserable partner in poking at his family.
One difference between the emotional torture he’d experienced at the hands of his mother and the physical torture he was currently experiencing at the hands of Jessie was that this was his own damned fault.
Flynn Wilder, king of bad decisions.
For the first time, his outlaw status annoyed him. Because it had damn well gotten him into this situation. And the problem with being great at causing trouble was that it was kind of hard to know how to get out of it.