Chapter 5

Scott

It was finally Friday. Half of the structural crew had been pulled to go over plans on the next building, but they left me there to work, knowing I didn’t need a refresher. I had been doing it long enough to know what to do next. Cassie hadn’t been here for the first half of the day, and I figured that she had been called into a meeting or something like that. The whole day, though, I kept one eye on my work and the other trained on every truck that came up the drive. I was looking for Cassie even though I was fighting myself on it. She had snuck into my brain again, only this time it was much worse. I couldn’t believe how badly I wanted her. I had gone home the night before and thought about her until I passed out in bed. She was running circles through my mind, and this time she was completely naked every time I pictured her.

The day before, when I had walked up to her and told her exactly what she wanted to hear, it had turned me on like nothing before. I could have hammered the nails into the wood with my own dick it was so hard after that. The whole point of me doing it was to tease her, to show her not every man was out there sweating her like Carl was. Apparently, though, that interaction had backfired on me, and instead of finding it humorous, I found it incredibly erotic. I kept thinking about all the things I would do to her if I had the chance to be alone with her.

This girl was a total enigma. I couldn’t wrap my head around how she could be working at a constructions site, getting dirty, commanding the troops, and still be as stuck up as she was. She still had that rich-girl air to her like she was better than everyone else, like she could never imagine going out with a man like me. She thought she was so different, so beyond the other guys and me, that there wouldn’t be anything we could find in common with each other. It was infuriating, but in a way, that made me want to bend her over the scaffolding and show her something we could have in common.

I shook my head, trying to get the thoughts out of mind before I got so distracted by her and the hard-on in my pants that I nailed my finger to the beam. Just then, though, Bill’s truck pulled up outside the office trailer and Cassie hopped out of the passenger side. She was carrying her clipboard and hard hat in her hands, and her long brown hair cascaded over her shoulders. I swallowed hard, watching her from afar, noticing how incredibly beautiful she was. The way she smiled, the way her green eyes shimmered in the hot sun, and the way her hair glistened as it swung around her shoulders—it was all so mesmerizing. Then Bill walked up and stood in my way, blocking my view of Cassie.

I sighed and turned back to my work, remembering who exactly she was. She was the boss’s daughter, here for a summer, and one hundred percent off-limits. She was bad news, the kind of woman that could lure me right off the deep end, and when she went back to school, I would find myself out of a job and alone again. I needed to get my head back in the game and forget about her.

After work I went home and cleaned up, deciding I wasn’t going to waste a Friday night. Besides, I needed to do something to get Cassie off my mind. I changed my clothes and headed out to Arthur’s, my favorite little dive bar across town. Landon had gone out with one his girls, so I was alone, and I was okay with that. The last thing I needed to hear was more stories about Landon’s many trysts and how he didn’t know what to do. Like I had any good advice for him. I hadn’t been out with a girl in a long time.

I sat down at the bar, ordered a beer, and shook the bartender’s hand. We had gone to school together, and our parents had been good friends. Arthur’s was the kind of place where you knew everyone but no one seemed to pay you any mind. I could sit at the bar all night and no one would bother me. I looked up at the television as the bell on the front door dinged. When I heard the chattering and laughing of a couple girls, I glanced over out of habit. My mouth fell open for a second at Cassie and her friend walking through the front door. She glanced over, laughing at whatever her friend had said, and her eyes stopped on mine. I stared back for a minute but then turned myself around and looked down at my beer.

I was trying to get her out of my head, not get her into the same bar as me. I told myself that when I was finished with that beer, I would head out and either go somewhere else or call it a night. I had gotten to the point where one girl was ruining my entire Friday night out. Cassie and her friend sat down at a table within eye range of me and started talking. After about ten minutes, a guy came over and asked her friend to dance. They exchanged some words and then her friend went off, leaving Cassie alone at the table. I watched her sit there, sipping her drink, looking around the room. Then she finally looked over at me.

I sighed and turned back, shaking the beer in my bottle. After a few more looks, Cassie got up from the table and made her way over to the bar, sitting down next to me and turning toward me. I stared forward, trying to ignore her, but she was right there, her perfume wafting into my nostrils.

“Why did you call me stuck up?” she asked.

“What?” I said, glancing over at her.

“Yesterday you called me stuck up. Why do you think that?”

I fought off the urge not to answer her question and instead buy her a drink. “You think you’re better than us, and I guess in some ways you are better than the dirty, dusty, good ole’ boys, I said finally. “But you can’t go around saying it to people.”

“I never said I was better, just different,” she said. “We live in two totally different worlds.”

I tilted my bottle back and took the last sip, not wanting to leave but knowing I had made myself a promise to do so when I was done. This was dangerous territory, and I knew it, but before I could grab my tab, the bartender set a fresh beer down in front of me. I sighed and put my head down, figuring the decision had been made for me. I nodded at the bartender and pointed at Cassie.

“Whiskey and Diet,” she said to the bartender before turning to me. “Thank you. See? That wasn’t so bad.”

“What wasn’t?” I asked.

“Being nice to me.” She smiled and sipped the drink the bartender put in front of her. “I’m not that bad, just not part of the crew. That’s all.”

“I’m not really part of the crew either,” I said. “I grew up here, my dad was a crewman, but I think differently than everyone else. I kind of keep to myself.”

“I saw that in you when I first met you,” she said. “I could tell you were different in some way. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.”

“How ‘bout you?” I said. “What makes you so different?”

“I guess I’m not that different than my family,” she said, looking down. “But I think I am a little more open to the world around me than you give me credit for.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, thinking about how I had never met someone like her. “So, tell me a story about growing up as the boss’s daughter.”

“Let’s see,” she said, taking another swig of her whiskey. “I used to go to the sites a lot,” she said, finally. “When I was a little girl, I found out my dad had hoped for a boy, and I wanted to show him I could be tough. So, I would go out on the sites, dressed in my little work boots, and tried to show him.”

I smiled. “Did it work?”

“Kind of, but he still treats me like a doll sometimes,” she said with a shrug.

We sat there talking for the rest of the night, trading stories about growing up. She was right that we grew up in two drastically different ways, but I was starting to think we weren’t as different as she might see us as. We were both ambitious, motivated, ready for a change, trying to live up to our family’s expectations. We both wanted something more out of our lives but were trapped in the world we’d been born into. At some point her friend left, and when the bar started to shut down, we walked outside to grab an Uber.

“We can share one,” she said, walking up to the car. “We can drop you off, and they can take me up town.”

“All right,” I said, opening the door for her. “Ladies first.”

We climbed into the Uber, and I gave the guy my address. He nodded his head and drove out of the bar parking lot. I looked over at Cassie sitting there in her tank top and short little shorts, and I could feel my cock harden in my pants. I wanted her. There was no way around that fact, but I knew I shouldn’t. She was bad news for me, and sleeping with her could bring serious consequences, especially from her father.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said without looking at me.

I laughed. “What?”,

“I know,” she said turning to me with a smirk. “And I am telling you right now that I am not going to go home with you.”

“Oh yeah?” I laughed as she crossed her arms. “Why is that? Because I work for your daddy or because I’m a roughneck and that scares you?”

Her indignance, her refusal to give in because of her preconceived notions, didn’t turn me off at all. In fact, I looked at it like a challenge—a challenge to see if I could get her into my bed. Part of me thought from the look in her eyes that was precisely the reaction she was looking for. She was telling me she wasn’t going home with me, but in reality, I think she was trying to convince herself. I smiled and leaned toward her, putting my face next to hers and my finger on the bare skin of her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered. “You aren’t interested in knowing what it feels like to wrap those legs over my shoulders? Or are you not interested in fucking all night until the sun comes up?”

“You,” she said, trying to look shocked. “I—you—whatever.”

“You know, if you just took a minute, got down off your high horse, you would see,” I said, rubbing my finger across her skin.

“I would see what?” she said with an attitude.

I smiled. “What it’s like to be fucked by a real man.”