“I’m glad you called me tonight, darlin’.”

“Yeah?”

“I hate it when we argue. You know that.”

I called Dallas and asked him out to dinner to Solstice for three reasons. One, Ryan had worked me out like a maniac and I was starving. Two, Dallas complained that we had been seeing each other for weeks and he didn’t know much more about me than he did when we first met. So I figured taking him to the tapas lounge that the guys owned would be a step in the right direction. Third, it was evident that if I didn’t step out of my comfort zone and try letting him “in” that he was going to end things with me.

“Believe it or not I don’t like arguing either, Dallas, but you know I’m a work in progress.”

I’d told him a little bit about my past with Tyson.

“The two of us are very different, darlin’, but that’s what makes us interesting. Everything doesn’t need to be a battle between us. Just because you don’t agree with something I may ask from you doesn’t mean that we need to rip each other to shreds about it.”

During our argument, Dallas had called me unnecessarily combative, and that’s all I could hear him saying now. That he didn’t like who I was, and that he wanted me to be someone different. Someone I wasn’t ready to be. Someone I didn’t even know if I could be. Same negative shit I heard from my father growing up. Same crap I heard from Tyson. Just delivered differently, with a twang and a smile.

“You ready to order?” I asked uncomfortable with the direction that the conversation was going. “The appetizers are really good here, and I’ll go ask Celia to use the premium liquor for our drinks.”

“Sounds good,” he said sounding disappointed with my diversion from the conversation.

We spent the next hour ordering about four different appetizers, sampling bites off of each other’s plates, and talking about the washed up quarterback of his beloved Dallas Cowboys when the Kings sauntered in. If I could have managed to duck out of the back door, God knows, I would have.

By that point I had successfully kept Dallas away from my meddling bosses (especially Cam) for weeks, but it was obvious that someone at the restaurant had been persuaded to rat on me. Cutter might have come by once in a while to grab a drink and flirt with Celia, but Camden never ate there. It was no coincidence. They had been tipped off.

It was almost a game between us. Even before the hotel sex with Camden, if I messed around with a guy for too long, they would proceed to scare him away. They claimed it was all for shits and giggles. Harmless fun. But I think those two sadists took a very sick pleasure in spooking off my fuck buddies. If me sleeping with a guy didn’t benefit the business, then I suppose they didn’t see the point. Freakin’ hypocrites.

Lucky for them that I didn’t care when they sabotaged me, because by that point I was usually done with the guy anyway, but Dallas was different. I didn’t want them scaring him off. He deserved better than to be pitted in the middle of their childish games. Plus I wasn’t ready for him to exit my life. I was trying with him, especially because I was trying to forget someone else.

“Sharing a romantic dinner I see.” Cutter observed while picking up an egg roll off of my plate and popping it in his mouth.

I smacked his hand away.

“You boys are being very rude,” I scolded. “As you can see, I’m having dinner with a friend and you weren’t invited.”

“Dallas, right?” Cutter asked rhetorically.

My stomach dropped. I had no idea that anyone knew that I was seeing Dallas, and if they knew his name then they knew other shit too. This wasn’t good.

Camden was standing quietly to the side observing the entire exchange, leaning back against the bar, his thickly corded arms crossed in front of his chest. His eyes were keenly focused on Dallas, but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. His icy cold eyes said it all.

Dallas startled me a moment with the grating sound the legs of the table made across the floor when he abruptly pushed himself away from it. “Can I help you?” I could hear a bit more of his southwestern twang angrily reveal itself.

“Well the first thing that you can do, country boy, is sit the fuck back down,” Cutter responded in an amused voice.

“Is this somebody I should actually give a shit about?” Dallas asked me. I was shocked. He wasn’t someone who usually liked to face-off with people. At least I didn’t think he was. I honestly never thought that he was a punk or anything, but I never imagined he would have stood up to Cutter like that. He definitely wasn’t scared of my idiot bosses, or if he was, he did a good job covering it up. Another good reason to keep him around.

I threw my hand up to stop both of them from saying something else before the exchange ventured down a dangerous road. Cutter could be … unpredictable.

“Wait. Stop,” I said to Cutter.

“I didn’t do anything but ask a simple question. Your country fried friend here is a little touchy if you ask me.”

I sigh in exasperation.

“Cutter, this is my friend Dallas. We’ve been seeing each other for a while now, and I’d like to continue doing so. You’re making a bad first impression. He’s going to think that you guys are unfriendly,” I said while giving him the side eye.

Cutter turned and looked towards Camden. “Little bit here says that this guy is her friend. I thought we knew all of her friends.”

“Guess not,” Camden replies with a stoned face.

Cutter points to Dallas’s chair. “Sit.”

“Cutter, please—”

“I said have a seat, country boy. No need to get all huffy.”

Dallas looks at Cutter, then Camden, and then looks at me. Still not sitting.

“Who are they, Jade?”

“Well you wanted to know more about me. I guess you should have been more careful what you wished for. These two baskets of sunshine are my employers.”

I hadn’t talked much about my job with Dallas. It’s hard to explain what I do with regular folks. Sometimes I stretch the truth, and say we’re private investigators if I’m forced to talk about it at all, but Dallas never pushed the topic.

“You need to think about getting a new job,” he said still standing while Cutter worked on my second egg roll.

“We’ve got a comedian, Cam,” Cutter said while licking his fingers.

The temperature of the room dropped ten degrees as soon as I looked at Camden’s face. This was going to be so bad.

“Let’s just go, Dallas.” I decided while pushing my chair back and standing up.

“Sit the fuck back down, Jade,” Camden ordered in a seriously scary voice.

A bent out of shape Dallas slammed his hands on the table. Some of our appetizers went flying in Cutter’s lap, and some of them ended up on the floor. People started to stare.

“Stop talking to her like that,” he said to Camden through gritted teeth.

Cutter looked to Camden as if he was requesting permission to sucker punch Dallas first. I knew that look. I’d seen it many times.

“Wait—” I tried to intercede.

“I’ll talk to her however, wherever and whenever I fucking please,” Camden stepped up closer to the table and said in a deadly tone. “You’d do best to remember that shit.”

I just wanted to get Dallas out of there, because he was very much outnumbered. Not just by those two, but because Solstice was full of kitchen staff who were ex-convicts. Everybody in the kitchen would have no problem coming out to fight if they thought the Kings needed back up. As if the two of them ever needed back up.

“Let’s just go, Dallas,” I pleaded. “I’m serious. Let’s just go.”

“He can get the fuck out of my restaurant, but you are going to sit back down. You’re not leaving with him.”

“You’re being ridiculous, Cam. What’s wrong with you?”

Cutter’s body began shaking with silent, obnoxious laughter.

“What are you laughing at?” I practically screamed. Spit flying out of my mouth.

Camden walked over and stood directly behind me bending his head down by my ear and caging me in completely with his long, thick arms and large body. His palms flat on the table.

“Calm down, you’re causing a scene,” he quietly requested.

I tried escaping his hold, but I couldn’t make him budge. I was pretty sure Dallas was about to punch him in the face when Cutter gave him a warning glare.

“In about ten more seconds this isn’t going to end well for you, country boy. I highly recommend you leave now. It’s not worth it. She’s just entertainment for you, but she belongs to us.”

They had taken their game entirely too far. I mentally started plotting a thousand ways that I was going to get my revenge. I’d make sure every woman in the club wouldn’t come within ten feet of either of their dicks for a long ass time. I just needed to concoct the perfect rumor. Disease? Impotence? Bankruptcy!

“Just leave, Dallas. Let me deal with them, and I’ll call you later. I promise,” I said while still being smothered by one soon to be dead King brother. “They must want their mommy’s attention really badly if they’ve resorted to acting like this.”

Dallas was red as a beet as he watched me squirm under Camden.

“I don’t care who they are to you. I’m not leaving you here with these assholes.”

I tried my best to turn around and knee Camden in his balls, but I still couldn’t move freely inside of his tight grip. The big fucker.

“He’s not who you think he is,” Camden said loud enough for everyone to hear but in a very low, deep and thick timbre that rumbled through my entire body. I imagined it was a voice he used right when he was about to cut a guy’s balls off although it was eerily similar to the one he used when he was just about to come inside of me.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I said angrily. It was pretty clear he’d done some digging into Dallas’s personal life and found something that I didn’t want to hear. I wish he would have just minded his own business for once in his life.

“Let her go,” Dallas warned Camden again.

“Pretty please, Cam?” Cutter interrupted with a facetious request to hit Dallas, but it was pretty obvious that it was Camden’s show to run.

“Afraid of what I may have to share, Dallas?” Camden said his name like it disgusted him.

“Hell, no. Say whatever you have to say.” Dallas prodded him on with confidence. “I want to hear it. Who do you think I am?”

“I told you I don’t want to hear it,” I said again. My ears covered by my hands.

“Sorry, tiny tot.” Camden gently pulled my hands away from my ears. “But you need to hear this. Your new friend here filed a joint tax return this year. He’s married and has a three-year-old kid.”

I immediately looked up at Dallas for any sign that what I had just heard was wrong, but his face revealed the truth. He had been completely exposed. And in that moment I started to really despise Camden.

Didn’t he understand I would never survive the two of us being fuck buddies? That it wasn’t healthy or normal for either of us really? Now that they had uncovered Dallas’s secret, there was no turning back. I couldn’t fuck a married man, and even if I could, those assholes would never let it happen.

“We’re separating.” Dallas quickly offered up a typical married man’s excuse.

“You’re separating?” I parrot back slowly wanting to believe it but knowing more than likely it was a lie.

“Bullshit,” Camden whispered harshly in my ear.

“I should have told you, but I knew it’d be a deal breaker for you. You’d think it would be too messy, but I swear that I haven’t been with Mikayla for over two years.”

Hearing her actual name said out loud made me cringe. It made it all the more real.

“You filed a joint return,” I countered.

“Because we’re still married, but we’re separated. We live separate lives.”

“Did you fill them out married filing separately or married filing jointly?” I asked grasping at straws.

“Jointly,” Camden eagerly added.

I remember thinking how I couldn’t wait to kick Camden’s ass once this was over.

“I guess you haven’t been over his house?” Cutter chimed in.

I looked at Cutter’s still face. He stopped munching on my dinner, and he wasn’t amused anymore. I was so busy trying to stay in control of everything by making sure he came to my house, that I didn’t even consider the fact that he never even invited me over once.

“No, I haven’t.”

How could I have been so stupid to fall for the oldest game in the book?

“You know why I didn’t ask you over, Jade.”

“Why?” Cutter asks. “We’re dying to know.”

“Jade—” Dallas says.

I know what he’s claiming. That he didn’t ask me over because we agreed that sex was off the table for a while, and that when it happened it would be on my terms and probably at my place. But I damn sure didn’t want Camden knowing that. He needed to think I was fucking other people.

“Do you live with her?” I ask cutting him off, so that my own secret isn’t exposed.

“I don’t. I swear. I have my own apartment, but divorce is long and expensive, it’s just taking us a while to settle everything.”

“Liar,” Camden whispered in my ear.

I already knew Dallas was lying. I could hear the desperation in his voice. I just hated that it was ending this way. Badly. In front of an audience.

“And your kid?” I asked.

“A boy,” Camden added smugly.

“Wait are those tears welling up, country boy?” Cutter chuckled.

“Things with my son are … complicated.”

“I bet,” Camden said in my ear again.

I’d had enough. I needed to end this.

“You should go, Dallas. I do a lot of dumb shit, but I don’t fuck married men. Especially ones with babies.”

“That a girl!” Cutter cheered.

“Shut up, Cutter, and you,” I turned my head, “stop talking in my fucking ear!”

I tried wiggling out of my human Camden cage once again.

“Jade, please—” Dallas tried appealing to me one more time.

“No, Dallas. I can’t do it. Lose my number and have a nice life.”

After a dejected looking Dallas finally walked out of Solstice, Camden finally released me, and I promptly turned around and smacked the hell out of him.

I put my whole body into it and got a good smack in. My palm was burning, and his face was even turning red under that five o’clock shadow of his, yet that asshole didn’t even flinch.

“If you think I’m going to sit idly by while you try to fuck me out of your system, then you’ve sorely misjudged me.”

I was speechless by his words and by the venom in which he spewed them.

Then Cutter raised his arm to get the server’s attention.

“Garlic wings and a round of drinks over here please. We’re celebrating!”

“Celebrating what?” I almost whisper.

“Progress,” he answered.