Chapter Three

Waking Up

Gage

I sit up, feeling overheated. The sun is beating down on me through the wall of windows facing the east. I look over at my alarm clock, seeing it’s ten in the morning. Could have slept longer if the fucking sun wasn’t doing its thing. After all, I’m on vacation.

I grumble at the thought, throw the covers off my body, and roll over, burying my face in the white sheets, determined to sleep until a little before noon when I have to meet the property manager to go over some contracts.

I feel like hell. Haven’t drunk that much in years. Jameson isn’t my damn friend. Well, the half bottle I drank when I got back from that fucking dive bar isn’t. Had I not drank it, I would have gotten in my truck and gone back and told that little shit behind the bar that she was fucking mistaken, real fucking confused because she wasn’t pissed at me. She fucking wanted me. Guarantee I left her in a puddle. Probably still standing on that stool, trying to figure out how not to drown in the pool of her own need that was no doubt flooding the place.

“Fuck,” I grumble as I roll over, knowing damn well my dick is going to be hard as fuck thinking about her dark brown eyes that were instantly liquid when I told her what the hell I was thinking. Her plump lips that I thought of when I nearly pulled my cock off getting myself off last night, not just once, not even twice, but three fucking times. I came hard to the thoughts of her I had stuck in my head.

“That’s enough, motherfucker,” I scold my dick as I push up off the bed.

I pull open the french doors and walk outside onto the deck.

If looking out over my land and seeing all the shit I need to do on my “vacation” doesn’t make me forget about the cockblock I want to nail, nothing will.

I look down at the tire swing, and my chest squeezes at thinking about the last time I was here, with my boy, with Brand. He loves that fucking swing. Loves fishing, too. Now that the ex has gotten her shit together, he’s spending time with her.

First three years of his life we were married, he was the only thing good about a marriage that was fucked from the get-go. One-night-stand, resulting in a kid, I did the right fucking thing, like always, and married her ass. Thought it would be fine, but there is nothing fine about living a lie for years.

When we split, I didn’t want to ever look at her again. I told her that I hated the sight of her. But Brand...Brand deserved better than that bitch. I was right; he did.

I went to pick him up one morning, and some fucking drunk stumbled out of her bedroom in whitie-tighties, while she was clearly fucking hungover, possibly still drunk. Brand was three and a half.

I took him, got full custody, and she threatened to fight it. That threat went away when I told her I would pay her ass to stay away. She took thirty grand and was gone for two fucking years.

Wish she never came back. Cunt.

But the cunt went to school, got a degree in nursing, got her shit together, and went above my head. I’m a tall motherfucker, so going above my head is a feat in itself.

She went to my mom.

My own mother pushed me to allow visits, now a year and a half later, after supervised visits for a year and a psych exam. Now she has him for a month.

Not a fucking thing I can do about it. If I push, I will lose him.

That boy has been my little toolbelt for five years. If I want him to be in my life, I need to do what’s right for him and every motherfucker involved, no matter how much I hate it.

And I hate it.

I walk into Hope’s Table, a diner in town, to meet Shirley to go over the plans and grab a couple contracts.

I see her wave from the corner.

Shirley is a trip. She has been friends with my mom for years. Well, since they bought the property here years ago. She’s single, in her fifties, and looks maybe thirty-five. I’m sure it has something to do with any number of the docs she’s dated, which is about one a year since her divorce. She’s not shy about her lifestyle, not even a little. She knows what she wants, and she gets it, too.

I walk over and sit down, and she smiles.

“Ordered coffee. Didn’t know if you had your fill already today or not. Me, I live on the stuff. So, if you don’t want it black and strong, I’ll drink yours, too.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say as I shrug off my leather jacket and toss it into the booth.

“Well, look at you.” She grabs my hands, both of them, and looks at my knuckles. “Overcome.” She looks up at me after inspecting them, still holding my hands. “And what does this mean?”

“Means overcome.” I smile. I hate that people want to know what my ink means to me. I don’t tell them. Usually, I give them some shit answer to fuck with them.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I hear a very soft mumble before the clank of the cups.

I look up and smirk. Can’t help it. It’s the bartender.

“Morning.” I nod and pull my hands back and away from Shirley as I sit back with a shitass grin on my face. She looks like she didn’t sleep for shit, either.

She rolls her eyes and looks at Shirley. “What can I get for you? A burger? A clue?”

Shirley looks confused.

The little morsel leans down and whispers, “A box of condoms, because this guy...he’s what you would call a male whore.”

Shirley laughs out loud, and the tiny shit looks at her like she’s crazy.

“If he’d have me, I’d chance the STI.”

Itty bitty’s jaw drops.

I fucking love that look.

“I’ll take a double burger deluxe, with the works,” I say before she has a chance to say a damn thing.

“Make that two. I plan on burning off some calories tonight,” Shirley says, and it couldn’t be more perfect.

“Fine, whatever,” she remarks and walks away.

Shirley leans in and asks, “Friend of yours?”

I laugh. “Nah, just some chick who seems to show up everywhere I go.”

She shrugs. “Might want to get a restraining order.”

“It’s not like that. Apparently, she has a few jobs.” I look past Shirley and at her.

“Gotcha. Well, you’ve clearly made an impression. Which is understandable. I mean, no one between the ages of eight and eighty can miss you, doll.” She winks.

I shrug. “Blessing and a curse.”

“I’d say the former.” She looks down and grabs a couple folders out of the briefcase beside her. “You have Mags and a new tenant. Your mother handled these contracts; I didn’t. Moving forward, I will be doing all of them, or you’ll never make a penny.”

“Sounds good.” I grab my cup of coffee and take a drink.

Shirley talks about her ideas. She has it all planned and seems totally fucking ecstatic. I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about, nor do I care, because cockblock is glaring at me every time I look up.

By the end of her spiel, I have no idea what I have agreed to, but Shirley is excited.

“Just put it down on paper and send me an email so I can have a final read through before any plans are executed.”

She nods. “Of course.”

When the food comes, it’s brought by the bus boy, which is complete shit. I know damn well if I had just made an ass out of myself, I would probably be hiding out, too.

I eat slow, expecting her to come out, refill a cup, ask if we need anything else, but she doesn’t. In fact, as I look around, I don’t see her at all.

What the hell? People don’t just disappear.

Another waitress brings the check. I take it and ask, “Where did the other waitress go?”

“Oh, she left.” She smiles at me.

“Really? How does your boss feel about this?”

She laughs like I’m joking. I’m not.

“Oh, you’re serious,” she says when she finally gets it. “Phoenix only does breakfast. Usually, she’s gone by now, but we were busy today. She works at the bar tonight, so she needed to get home and catch a nap.”

I pull out my wallet and hand her some cash. “She get the tip?”

Now, I try not to laugh, but I’m pretty damn sure the tip is all of me she could handle.

“Of course she will.” She smiles and takes the cash. “I’ll be right back with change.”

“No need,” I say, grabbing the files on the table. “It’s hers.”

When I stand, Shirley scoots out and gives me a hug. “Great seeing you again, Gage. I’ll get you that email by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Thanks.” I give her a quick squeeze, then walk toward the door with a name.

Phoenix.

Outside the diner, I sit in the truck and hit the app, trying to set something up for the night. It’s not hard. In fact, it takes less than five minutes to score a sure thing to meet for drinks, and yeah, we are meeting at the bar.

If Phoenix wants to dish out shit, I can give it back. And fuck, I want to give it back hard.

Walking into the bar on a Friday night is a hell of a lot different than it was last night. The place is packed, not an empty barstool in sight.

I stand back and watch her. She and the other girl are smiling and laughing, a totally different look on her.

They are both wearing red shirts that say Fireball. The other girl’s kind of hangs off her, but not Phoenix’s. It hugs her little tits much tighter than the clothes she wore last night or at the diner today. She is wearing lipstick that matches the shirt color, and her hair is down, unlike the other two times I saw her.

She looks goddamn fuck-able. Too fuck-able.

Fuck.

I make my way up to the bar. Her back is to me as she sets a beer down in front of a guy wearing a cowboy hat who is ogling her tits. She then grabs his cash and rolls her eyes when she stuffs it in the register. Then she walks over and looks up, her fake as hell smile fading. She’s back to looking angry.

“What’ll it be tonight? Ceftriaxone? A shot of Penicillin? The number to the local shrink to help you figure out why the hell you need to fuck with a different woman’s emotions every day?” She pauses and looks beside me. “Scratch that. A shrink won’t help. You need shock therapy.”

“Are you Gage?” I hear and look beside me.

I smile and nod. “You must be Tonya.”

“Tammy,” she says, looking mildly annoyed.

Phoenix laughs.

I look back at her. “We’ll take two shots of Fireball.” I point at her tits. “And a couple buttery nipples.”

“Oh, I love buttery nipples,” my date says, her voice actually squeaking.

Fucking annoying.

Phoenix huffs and looks at Tonya—I mean, Tammy—and shakes her head. “Your blonde didn’t come out of a bottle, did it, babe?”

“Nope, my hairstylist uses a bowl to mix the bleach.” She smiles as if she was just given a compliment.

I bite the side of my cheek when Phoenix looks at me.

“Give me a draft, too, Phoenix.”

She shakes her head. “How much did you pay to get that information? And whose name do I need to add to my list of people who I want to off for giving it to you?”

“I’ll never tell.” I wink.

This time, she doesn’t flip me off. She actually smirks a little.

When she comes back, she sets the beer and four shot glasses in front of me, then pushes two to the side to...

“Tammy, you mixing your shots up like him, or you gonna stick to one or the other?” Phoenix grabs two bottles from under the bar and holds them up.

“I’ll take the butter nipples,” she says in that same annoying fucking voice.

Phoenix gives me a sideways glance and pours the shots.

I grab my first shot and hold it up to toast with my date. “To balls on fire.”

“And butter nipples,” she says, hitting her shot glass to mine.

When she shoots it down, she spills a little down her front. “Oh, dammit, where’s the bathroom, hon?”

Phoenix points to the sign that says bathroom. “Right over there.”

When she leaves, I sit back and cross my arms over my chest, waiting for Phoenix to give me hell.

She doesn’t disappoint.

“That woman clearly doesn’t have a brain in her head. What the hell is wrong with you?” she says it, then looks around, her eyes stopping on someone.

I look to see what got her attention. A man.

“That your boyfriend?”

“Gross.” She laughs. “That’s my boss.”

“Sure about that?” I ask, because the fucker keeps looking at her.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” she says with a smile on her face and in her voice. “But I’m sure. And I have to be nice to assholes like you because you got me in trouble last night.”

“How did I get you in trouble?” I half joke, damn sure wanting to know.

“Because you pushed buttons. Pissed me right the fuck off.” She keeps that smile in place. “Actually, you kind of make me sick.”

Now I laugh. “Squirt, the moisture pooling between your legs isn’t an illness. It’s the fact that you need to get fucked...by me.”

Her smile drops.

“Smile, little morsel. He’s watching. Women like you, who act all fucking angry, haven’t had it in a while. I’ll dare say you’ve never had it good at all.”

She turns to walk away then turns back. “You’re disgusting.”

“I’m a man who admits what he wants. I don’t hide shit.”

“Oh, so you want to fuck Tonya—”

“Tammy,” I correct her, laughing while I do.

“What’s so funny? How the hell do you expect me to keep their names straight if you can’t?”

“It’s funny because, for someone who thinks I’m disgusting, yet looks at me like she wants me to split her in half, you sure know a lot about my personal life.”

“Well, you keep shoving them in my face,” she snaps.

“Easy, tiger,” I say, leaning forward. “Your boss is still watching.”

“Right now, I give zero fu—”

“Because your little pussy is wet and so hot for me that, if we were alone, you’d be on your knees, begging to get fucked right.”

“Is that so?” She crosses her arms in front of her.

“It is. But, at this point, the only thing I’d let you do is suck my cock. I wouldn’t even give you my cum. I’d pull out and walk away, leaving you so fucking worked up you’d be lying in bed tonight, getting yourself off to the thought of me tearing you apart.”

“Oh, please,” she says with a fuck of a lot less conviction than I’m sure she wanted to exude.

“And I’d be staring down at my dick, looking at the fireball red lipstick ring around it while I fucked my hand because, at least it knows what it wants.”

“Hey, you ready to get out of here?” my date asks.

“No, I plan on closing this bar down.”

“But I thought we were going to—”

“Change of plans,” I say, still looking at Phoenix. “I know what I want. I want to get fucked up on Fireball.”

“Okay, but I can only leave Timmy home for a few hours. If he wakes up and I’m gone, he’ll flip.”

I turn and look at her. “Who’s Timmy?”

“My kid.”

“How old is he?”

“Eight.”

“And he’s home alone?” I ask.

“Well, it’s late and he’s sleeping.”

I feel my hands fist into balls. “How far are you from home?”

“An hour.” She smiles like she has no clue why the fuck that’s wrong.

“Tammy, go home to your kid.”

She opens her mouth to say something, and I cut her off.

“Before I call the fucking cops.”

She leaves in a hurry.

I’m so fucking pissed I can’t even sit still.

“She’s a piece of work,” Phoenix says as I stand.

I throw a hundred on the bar. “Goodnight, Phoenix.”

“Wait, do you want change?” she asks.

“No. What I want is, the next time I walk into this fucking place, you stow the bitch and admit what you want. In case you can’t figure it out, it’s my dick.”

I walk out of the bar, pissed at myself. First for meeting up with some bitch whose need to get laid makes her leave her kid home, and second because I didn’t even want to fuck her. I wanted to piss off the bartender. All I can think about is how much I want to give her what we both want. A fucking release.