The Best Shot (Whitlock Hills #2)

1. “Nah, I’m good.”

“NAH, I’M GOOD.”

HALE

The great thing about having female friends is that they give a damn and aren’t afraid to show it.

They’ll appear with soup when you’re dying, remember exactly how you take your coffee, and never once side-eye you for knowing every word to Jazmine Sullivan’s “Girl Like Me.”

The downside?

They give a damn about you and aren’t afraid to show it. Which means they’ve got opinions. Loud ones. And they will drag your ass in the group chat about them.

Case in point, the messages that blew up my phone the second I left Ricochet with a woman I’d met an hour earlier.

Spice Cabinet — Main chat

Annie: not one to slut shame but that’s three this week, king

Hale: I’m single. They’re single. We’re all grown and consenting. Relax.

Ava: Babe, seriously?

Tabby: please hydrate and get tested

Hale:

Annie: lmao. she’s 100% going to rob you.

Hale: It’s not that deep. Chill.

Ava: Ok friend.

I was thinking about that while pretending to be asleep and listening to the woman in my bed try to ghost me before sunrise.

She was smooth with it, I’ll give her that. Slow, practiced movements in the dark. The kind that said she’d done this dance plenty of times.

I kept my breathing steady, heard a zipper, then a rustle of fabric. Her phone screen flared briefly, then went dark. The mattress dipped as she reached for her shoe, and cool air hit the side of the bed where her body heat had been warming the sheets.

When she bent down, the tattoo at the base of her spine caught the thin morning light. It was a skull with a blunt in its mouth, smoke curling up alongside actual flames licking at the edges, the whole situation rendered in ink about two inches north of her ass crack.

Classy.

I made a show of stretching. “No need to rush off, sugar. Let me buy you breakfast.”

She snorted, still bent over her shoe. “Nah, I’m good.”

“You sure?” I said. “I was just getting attached.”

“Maybe next time.”

The door opened and closed with a soft click, and just like that Natalie of the skull-and-flames tattoo left my life.

Morning light came through the hotel blinds in strips. I lay there longer than I needed to, staring at the ceiling fan. Not hurt, exactly. It was more the low-grade embarrassment of reaching for something in the dark and realizing it was never there to begin with.

She’d been bright and loud and alive. Threw darts like she meant it and laughed with her whole mouth. When I asked if she wanted to leave, she’d said yes without making me work for it.

From the outside, it probably looked like winning.

My phone buzzed again. Then again.

Missed call from Ava (6:47 a.m.)

Ava: I know you’re reading these. Your read receipts are on.

Tabby: that woman you left with had a Tinkerbell tramp stamp, Hale. I need you to sit with that.

Ava: Tinkerbell? It was a skull with a blunt.

Annie: both worse somehow

Ava:

Annie: it was definitely a skull with a blunt. how’d you see Tinkerbell?

Tabby: margaritas. IDK

Annie: there was also fire. it was a skull with a blunt AND fire.

Ava: Sighs.

Those women didn’t miss shit, not a damn thing if they could help it.

I sighed, still baffled how I’d ended up in a group chat where my one-night stand’s butt art was the topic du jour.

Nico.

This was his doing.

He and I built our friendship the old way.

Show up, shut up, buy the next round. Handle business when it got ugly.

Feelings stayed in the trunk with the spare tire, and that system had worked just fine for more than a decade.

Then he fell hard for Tabby, and Tabby came with both Ava and Annie welded to her hip.

I can still remember the night I looked up mid-conversation and realized I was the only man at the table, three women deep into opinions about my life, and that I’d somehow agreed to all of it.

Yasmine used to balance the scales. But she was gone more than she was here, off somewhere chasing grizzlies in Montana, or eagles in Alaska, or whatever northern light was performing over whatever frozen tundra she’d decided she needed to be standing on.

When she was around, though, the chat ran cooler.

Like she absorbed some of the chaos just by existing in it.

I scrolled up without meaning to.

Her last message was three months old.

Yasmine: Leaving cell service tomorrow. If y’all burn down the town while I’m gone, at least film it.

Flame emojis from Ava. A heart from Tabby. No promises from Annie.

A thumbs-up from me. Because what do you send to a woman who’s always halfway out the door before you’ve figured out what you want to say?

The phone buzzed in my hand.

Ava.

I stared at the screen for a second before answering.

“Hey.”

“Morning, Hale.”

“What’s up?”

“You alone?”

I looked at the indent in the pillow beside me. “No.”

“Hale.”

I sighed. “What can I do for you this early, Ava?”

“Mm. Many things. But right now this is a heads-up. We’re staging an intervention.”

“Oh yeah?” My brow lifted. “For who?”

“Guess.”

A small smile pulled at my mouth. “Annie catch another charge?”

“Nope. Guess again.”

It took me all of two seconds to understand.

Well.

Fuck.

“And what exactly am I being intervened for?” I asked.

“Your whole… situation. Whatever this is you’re doing. We had a meeting.”

“A meeting,” I repeated. “About me.”

“Yup.”

I got up, moved to the window. The street outside had that early hush, like the world was still deciding whether to start. “I don’t need help meeting women, Ava. We’ve been over this.”

“Not the right ones.” Her voice softened. “You’re lonely, Hale.”

That voice in the dark came back to me. Nah, I’m good.

“I’m not lonely.”

“Nico says you are.”

“Nico needs to stay in his lane.”

“Nico’s your best friend. He’s doing his job.”

I watched Whitlock Hills start to wake. Outside, a man and his dog moved slowly down the sidewalk, stopping whenever the dog found something worth investigating.

“We want to set you up,” Ava said.

“No.” The word came out automatic and too defensive, even to my own ears.

“You need somebody, Hale. Someone real. Somebody who knows your middle name and how you take your coffee. Someone without flames coming out of their ass crack.”

“It was Tinkerbell,” I lied.

“That’s worse.”

Yeah. It was.

I looked back at the empty bed. Room service would erase every trace of last night like it never happened.

I rubbed a hand over my face. Part of me wanted to tell her to fuck off. The bigger part, the one that had been staring at the ceiling fan wondering why the hell I kept doing the same shit, knew she wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Fine,” I said.

“Fine?” Her voice went up, surprised. “Just… fine? Just like that?”

“Set it up. But I’m not promising anything.”

“Thursday. Six o’clock. Grant’s making brisket.” I could hear the smile she was trying to keep out of her voice. “Don’t be late.”

She hung up before I could reconsider.

I stood there with the phone in my hand, aware that I’d just agreed to something I couldn’t fully explain. It wasn’t Ava wearing me down. It wasn’t the group chat or Tabby’s judgy eyes at Ricochet.

It was the snort. Nah, I’m good.

Their concern bothered me. The idea that they might be right bothered me more.

I checked the group chat again out of habit.

No new messages, but Yasmine’s name sat there at the top. Quiet.

I wondered where she was right now. Whether she’d gotten the shot she was chasing.

I wondered why the hell I kept wondering.

I moved to the bathroom, got in the shower. Ran it hot enough to sting and stood there until it went cold.

You’re lonely, Hale.

The problem with having female friends?

They don’t just hear what you say. They hear what you’re not saying. They watch what you do. They connect dots you didn’t even know you were leaving behind. They see straight through you, and they will not look away, no matter how long you stand there hoping they might.

Male friends had the decency to let you stay stupid in peace.