21. Char
CHAR
My eyes fluttered open, but my body wouldn’t move.
What time is it?
I flopped over onto my back and felt something hard between my legs.
What day is it?
Crusted drool stamped itself against my cheek and I did my best to wipe it away with the back of my hand. But, keeping my eyes open proved difficult.
Jesus, what year is it?
Disoriented. That was the only way to describe my morning.
It felt like I had woken up in another dimension or something.
Drool on my cheek. Crusted up panties between my legs.
Every time I moved, I heard them crackling.
I stared up at the ceiling as I wiggled my hips, trying to jumpstart my body into moving.
The sun did its best to stream through the blackout curtains on either side of my headboard.
The wind whipped around the corners of the building outside, howling against the living room windows that rattled in their frames.
I wanted to go back to sleep so much.
But, I was slated to work.
God, I don’t wanna go to work.
I had never dreaded going to work before. Not with any job, no matter how menial or useless. And now, I found myself wanting to quit. Wanting to run, and never look back.
I hated the feeling.
“What have I done?” I whispered to myself.
The honest answer was that I had slept with one of my bosses, woken up alone, and was currently lying in my own mess wondering why the first coherent thought in my head was about the other two.
Not in a greedy way. Not in a what-is-wrong-with-me way.
Just in a quiet, inconvenient, utterly humiliating way where I laid there staring at my water-stained ceiling and thought about Deacon’s hands and Gauge’s voice and the fact that neither of those things had any business taking up real estate in my brain the morning after sleeping with Dallas.
I pressed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets.
This was a problem. This was a massive, catastrophically stupid problem that I had absolutely no framework for, because nothing in my life had ever prepared me for wanting three men at the same time and having it feel like the most natural thing in the world.
I was not going to think about this right now.
I was going to get up, get dressed, and go to work.
And I was absolutely, definitively, one hundred percent not going to spend a single second thinking about what Deacon’s hands would feel like or why Gauge saying my name in that low, quiet way of his made my stomach do something I needed it to stop doing immediately.
Great. Excellent. Totally fine.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
That shot my body out of bed. My own willpower to get up and get going wasn’t enough, but hearing that knock at the door bolted me upright. The room tilted around me as I swung my legs over my bed, and I shivered at the cool air against my bare legs.
Who the hell was at my door.
Shit, was it one of the guys?
“Phone,” I murmured. “I need my phone.”
But, when I went to reach for my cell on my nightstand, it was nowhere to be found.
“Shit,” I hissed.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
“Coming! Hold on!” I called out as I rushed away from my bedroom.
But, the chuckle behind the door caught my attention. “Dallas?”
“Why don’t you come answer the door and find out?”
Without thinking, I bolted like a bat out of hell toward the door.
Had he left something in my place last night?
The memories came crashing back. The sensations.
The warmth. The way his lips tasted against mine.
The way he played my body like a violin.
I flexed my thighs, my body seeking friction as his voice filtered through the door.
I ripped it open and found him standing there a coffee in each hand and a to-go bag hanging from his pinky.
“Something smells good,” I said as my eyes dropped to the logo on the bag.
I didn’t recognize it, and it made me wonder where he had gotten it.
“Well,” Dallas said as his gaze slid down my bare legs, “good morning to you, too.”
“Fuck,” I muttered as I backed away from the door, “hold on.”
“Hey, don’t get dressed on my account.”
I ripped the blanket off the back of the couch. “I hear the grin in your voice.”
“Good.”
I couldn’t help but giggle as I turned around, and I was shocked to still find him standing out on my pathetic little front porch.
“Uh, you barging in, or what?” I asked as I wrapped the blanket around my body.
“Not without your permission.”
Huh, that’s new. “All right, well… come on in, then, Dallas.”
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, but paused. He slowly peered over his shoulder, as if he were trying to lay his eyes on a skittish cat he’d found abandoned on the side of the road. My head tilted. My brow furrowed. Even in my half-awake state, something was amiss.
Why was he all of a sudden being so considerate?
“Why don’t you have a television?” he asked as he moved away from the closed door.
“Do you know where my cell phone is?” I asked as I started searching the floor.
“What?”
“My cell phone,” I said as I got down and peeked under the couch. “It wasn’t on my nightstand when I woke up this morning.”
“You mean, that bright purple sparkly thing against the wall?”
I looked up at Dallas and found his arm outstretched.
I gathered myself back onto my feet and followed the point of his finger, and I found my phone right where we were the other night.
Memories flooded my mind once more. The smell of him lingered beneath my nose.
A shiver worked its way down my spine as heated memories of his teeth against my shoulder made my arm twitch.
“Thanks,” I said as I walked over and scooped it up.
But, when I checked the time, a groan escaped my lips.
“Goddamn it, I’m sorry Dallas, but I have to take a rainch?—”
“Don’t worry,” he said as he placed the coffee and bag of food down on my coffee table, “we’re not opening today.”
That whipped me toward him. “Wait, why not?”
He eased himself down onto my couch. “Last minute decision on Deac’s part this morning.
We’ve got some heavy renovations that are starting today, and when we tried to curtain off that part of the bar earlier this morning, it didn’t work too well.
So, we’re closing it down until that particular renovation is done. ”
I blinked. “Wha—what are you guys, uh…”
He plucked a to-go drink from the carrier he brought in. “Sit. Drink.”
I took the coffee from him and perched on the couch next to his strong, comforting form. “Thanks.”
He nudged me playfully. “If you’re curious, we’re removing the stage to make way for a really nice dancefloor.”
My eyebrows rose at that. “That… actually isn’t a bad idea. There isn’t a formal dancefloor anywhere in Layborn.”
“That’s what we figured.”
“Unless of course, you count Mr. Vega’s old barn he used to fuck around with before the roof caved in.”
I took a long pull of my coffee as so many questions bombarded my mind. How were we getting paid? How long would the bar be shut down?
Dallas seemed to sense all of that, though, because he started feeding me answers without my lips asking questions.
“Yes, you guys are still gonna get paid as if you’re working. Think of it as paid time off.”
I nodded slowly. “Right, right.”
He leaned back against the couch cushions. “We figured that if we were gonna have empty nights, then we might as well get a jumpstart on the renovations before we do a grand reopening. That way, we stand a chance at showing the town that we’re not here to tear shit down, but build things up.”
It sounded almost too good to be true, but the coffee had arrested my lips and they stayed connected to the lid of my cup.
“You know, bigger and better and all that,” Dallas added.
I held my coffee with both hands. “You guys really have yourselves convinced that this will work, huh?”
He snickered. “All right, I get it. Look, Deac is on the rough side. He’s a bull in a china shop and he doesn’t give a shit about it. But, he’s here to do good.”
“No offense, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Well, in that case,” Dallas said with a grunt as he sat up, “care for a cinnamon roll, or a blueberry muffin?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Blueberry muffin. Always.”
“You like them with the little crusty sugar specks on top?”
I scoffed. “Who the fuck doesn’t?”
He chuckled as he dipped his hand into the bag. “So, are you going to make me ask again?”
I took another long pull of my coffee. “Ask what?”
He pulled out the muffin and handed it to me. “You’re useless before caffeine, aren’t you?”
I took it from him. “Yep.”
He pulled out the cinnamon roll and placed it on his thigh. “Why don’t you have a television? I figured we could turn one on while we were eating breakfast or something.”
“I don’t like them.”
“Why?”
I simply shrugged. “Once your father’s face is plastered on every national news channel known to mankind, it kind of turns you off to the whole concept.”
He fell silent, and I was thankful for it. I needed more caffeine in my body for those kinds of questions.
But, he didn’t stay that way for long. “How bad?”
I unraveled my muffin in my lap. “How bad what?”
I felt his gaze on the profile of my face as he sat next to me. “How badly did he beat you and your mother before you finally spoke up?”
I shot to my feet with my coffee and muffin in my hands. I didn’t even care that the blanket had fallen from my bare legs. I didn’t care that I was on display for him in whatever way that he wished. All I wanted was for him to shut the fuck up.
“That’s way too personal of a question,” I said as I stared him down.
He placed his coffee and cinnamon roll down before standing to his feet. “Fine, let me rephrase it, then. My kid brother got hooked on crank in his teen years and destroyed every relationship he had with every single family member before overdosing in our fucking basement.”
I was reeling from his words. “Jesus, Dallas. I’m—I’m so?—”
“So,” he said as he took a small step toward me, “how bad was it before you spoke up and did the right thing?”