Chapter 22 #2
“The guys ordered pizza for lunch. I’m gonna grab a quick shower.” I nodded, still distracted by the sight of the veins popped out on his arms, and all those delicious muscles on display.
We sat down to eat with Bull and Irish in the common room. King came in as we were piling pizza onto our plates to let me know that the doctor said that Uncle Bill had pulled a muscle in his back.
“He keeps aggravating the same injury, so the doc gave him some muscle relaxants and put him on bed rest for the next two days. He wants him to take it easy for a couple of weeks after that. No lifting anything over ten pounds, no climbing stairs, and no motorcycle. He’s fuckin’ thrilled about that, as you can imagine,” he said sarcastically.
“He’s gonna stay with Ella and me since we have a guest room on the first floor. She’s already making him a batch of brownies, and has promised to make fried chicken for dinner, since it’s his favorite.”
“Shit, Prez, you’ll never get rid of him if she keeps that up. He’ll end up as your permanent house guest,” Jase joked.
King just glared at him and flipped him off, then grabbed Jase’s plate of pizza and took it with him as he stalked back to his office. The look on Jase’s face was priceless as he watched his lunch disappear down the hallway, and I laughed until I could barely catch my breath.
He snatched the piece of pizza from my plate and devoured half of it in one bite, using one long arm to hold me back as I tried in vain to get it back from him.
“Jase,” I whined. “I can’t believe you stole my pizza, you jagoff.” He leaned over and booped the end of my nose, then got up to get more pizza for both of us.
I looked across the table to see Bull and Irish staring at Jase as if he’d grown a second head. Oops. It was a good thing we’d agreed to stop hiding, because I had a feeling we’d just outed ourselves in a big way.
We finished our lunch, both of us pretending not to notice that Bull and Irish were watching us like hawks. Afterward, I headed back to the room while Jase stayed in the common room with the guys. He came in about an hour later, clearly pissed off as he flopped down next to me on the loveseat.
“I just got a call from a client at the gym. We’re arranging an event for him, and he insists on meeting tonight to go over the details. I tried to get out of it, but he’s not the kind of man you can argue with.”
“Is there anyone else available to go with me to the studio?”
He nodded reluctantly. “I can send Tony with you, but I would really prefer if you reschedule your session.”
“Jase,” I sighed. “You know I need to get my chapters completed. Besides, Bull confirmed that Beau is working, which means he’ll be at the fire station until at least seven tomorrow morning.
The building is kept locked now so nobody can get in without an access code, and Tony will be sitting right outside the booth the whole time. I’ll be perfectly safe,” I assured him.
He tilted his head and looked at me for a long moment, then nodded again. “OK, but you stay within Tony’s line of sight at all times, and I want him to ride over in your car, instead of on his bike.”
I kissed him, and just as he pulled me onto his lap his cell phone rang. “Dammit to hell,” he grumbled as he fished it out of his back pocket. “It’s Hawk…he’s covering the gym for me, so I need to take this, darlin’.”
I picked up my tablet and continued making notations while Jase talked Hawk through some kind of issue he was having with two fighters who were apparently demanding the use of the same equipment at the same time.
“Tell them I’m not running a goddamned kindergarten class, and if they can’t share their toys like big boys, they’ll be banned for a week. If that doesn’t stop their bitchin’, tell them they can take it up with me in the octagon, and neither of them have the balls or the fuckin’ skills for that.”
The mood was broken by the time he ended the call, and I needed to get ready to leave soon anyway.
Tony insisted on driving us to the studio in case we needed to “take evasive action” on the way. I decided that he’d watched the Fast a blank stare that seemed to be looking through me, rather than at me.
“Why don’t you ever call me Damian anymore?”
I froze at the unexpected question, trying to make sense of it since I’d never called him anything other than JD.
A niggling thought wormed it’s way into my subconscious as the name Damian registered. The only Damian I knew of was the hero in my last audiobook.
“I…I don’t understand,” I responded hesitantly.
“I always loved that you called me by my middle name, instead of Johnny like everyone else did, but you don’t do it anymore.”
His voice had taken on an eerie, almost dream-like quality that I couldn’t quite define, and my mind raced, trying to work out what the fuck was happening.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked softly, sounding very much like a young boy afraid of being scolded.
I slowly shook my head. “No…why would you think that?”
“You act like you don’t know me sometimes,” he explained, sounding hurt. “I thought you were just teasing me at first, you know? Pretending we were strangers, like it was a game. But then you brought me breakfast, and later we had our lunch date, and it seemed like everything was OK again.”
I was confused until I remembered that I’d brought him donuts to thank him for changing my tire, and a few days later I’d eaten lunch with him in his office because the odor of paint was too strong to stay in the break room.
“But then you went out with Dustin. Twice.” His voice hardened, and a dark look passed over his face.
The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and my unease and confusion changed to horror in an instant.
Beau wasn’t my stalker.
JD was.