Chapter 10

Hating your alarm when it goes off and you have to go to work because you didn’t die in your sleep.

-Things people contemplate when they wake up and hate their life

Ellen

I couldn’t say I was proud of myself.

After nearly getting a woman I liked killed, I wasn’t so sure that staying near my brother was the best thing any longer.

Every time I was within seeing distance of either Sean or Naomi, my stomach would plummet and I’d turn around, rushing to get somewhere, anywhere, that they weren’t.

I deserved everything that was thrown at me.

The day I’d dropped her off at her car, her house hadn’t been empty like we’d both assumed. No, it’d had some psycho killer hell-bent on hurting Naomi in it, and the only thing that saved her was her dog.

I’d left her that to handle on her own.

She’d even miscarried their baby. Seriously, I was the biggest asshole on the planet.

I looked down at my hands, wondering how long I would have to stay at this club party that was supposed to be a celebration—one that celebrated Naomi’s life and health.

Tommy Tom tried to tell me that Sean wasn’t upset with me any longer, but honestly, there was no misunderstanding the anger in his eyes each time they were aimed in my direction.

Though, I had to admit that wasn’t very often, seeing as I tried to look anywhere but at him or his fiancée.

“Hey, are you okay?”

I looked up to find Jessie staring at me.

I looked away.

“Fine,” I said, standing up. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Without waiting for him to apologize or tell me ‘it’d all be okay’ again, I walked away and didn’t look back.

“Do you want to dance?”

I stopped when a man I didn’t know stepped in front of me.

He wasn’t anybody I knew, but since I could feel Jessie’s glare burning into the back of my neck, I said yes.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

I happened to take a glance over my shoulder, and my belly tightened at the pure masculine anger that was written clearly all over Jessie’s face.

He wasn’t happy that I’d been ignoring him. In fact, I knew that not by the anger on his face at seeing me say yes to a dance with another man, but by the numerous angry texts and voicemails I’d received from him over the last two weeks since that night Naomi almost died.

The most recent one had only been an hour before.

My lips tilted up at the corners as I thought about that text.

Jessie (9:30 PM): If you don’t show tonight, I’m going to come over to your place and drag you out by your hair. Then I’m going to sit you on my lap the entire night, despite your protests, and hold on to you so you can’t go anywhere or do anything. Don’t think I’m bluffing either. I’m on my last shit, woman. Don’t disappoint me.

Hah!

Don’t disappoint him my ass.

I did end up going and not because he’d demanded it of me, but because I’d already planned on it.

Not to mention I also came because my brother had asked me nicely.

He’d told me that he missed me and that I’d been working too much.

I’d, of course, called bullshit. The man was a doctor, so if anyone was working too much, it was him.

“Hey, you okay, darlin’?” the man who had asked me to dance asked.

I nodded, then offered him my hand.

He pulled me to the dance floor. The moment his hands went to my hips to pull me in closer to his body, I went.

But in my mind it wasn’t a stranger’s hands on my hips, they were Jessie’s. It was Jessie who was pulling me in close and telling me that everything would be okay.

***

Jessie

“This is my jam,” I told Fender. “Turn it up.”

Fender stared at me like I’d grown a second head.

“This is Garth Brooks. You can’t jam to Garth Brooks,” Fender contradicted me.

He also, I noticed, didn’t turn it up.

“I can do anything to Garth Brooks that I want,” I informed him loudly. “I can sing to him. I can dance to him. I can jam to him. I can even fuck to him.”

Fender stared at me for a few long seconds, then threw his head back and laughed.

I got up and turned the radio up my own damn self.

“This is kind of harsh,” Fender said from my side. “Scaring the shit out of the new man because he deserves it sounds like something you’d do.”

My eyes automatically went to Ellen where she stood next to her new friend, a man who accomplished something I’d been trying to get her to do with me all night.

Fucking A.

“Yeah,” I grunted. “Will you hand me another beer?”

And the night deteriorated from there.

Sean took a seat at my side and I looked at him in question.

“I need to apologize,” he said. “Or, at least, Naomi said that I had to.”

My brows rose.

“I’m not the one that needs the apology,” I informed him. “Maybe you should think about apologizing to Ellen.”

He sighed.

“I tried,” he grunted. “Each time I get near her, she runs away.”

I snorted. “That’s because you made her cry, and she thinks that you hate her. And she hates herself because you told her she was the reason that Naomi was in the hospital. Which, of course, she then blamed herself for Naomi losing the baby. And in her mind, all of that equates to murder.”

Sean’s mouth dropped open.

“What? You wanted me to sugarcoat it?” I asked him.

He closed his mouth.

“Wait until she can’t go anywhere else and then immediately offer her an apology. Don’t explain yourself. Just say that you’re sorry for the words that you threw at her. Tell her she didn’t deserve to be spoken to that way, no matter how upset you were, and just leave it at that. She’ll come around eventually,” I continued.

Sean stared at me.

“And how do you know she’ll forgive me?” he challenged.

I grinned.

“She’s about to accept my apology, and I’ve had fourteen years of pissing her off,” I informed him. “I definitely have the bigger hurdle to jump over, though.”

Sean snorted.

“Maybe you should offer your apology before she leaves and does the dirty with another man?” Fender drawled.

I looked up in time to see Ellen being led to the bar where the man gestured to the bartender.

“Fuck,” I growled, standing up. “Time for the big guns.”

Then, I did the most sacrilegious thing any country music lover had ever done.

I changed a Garth Brooks song.

Searching for the song that I wanted, I grinned when the familiar tune started to echo throughout the bar that we’d taken over for a celebration for the night.

The moment the familiar opening chords of Sweet Home Alabama filled the air, Ellen’s head snapped up, and her eyes immediately went to the table where Fender and I had been sitting for the last two hours, controlling the music.

Her lips thinned, but damned if she didn’t stomp away from the man she was dancing with and storm straight out of the damn building.

“Now what?” Fender asked, a smile in his voice.

“Now,” I said, standing up and finishing off the last of my beer, “I go try to figure out what has her ass chapped.”

Fender snorted. “Well, having a chapped ass is definitely something that would have me acting like a crazy motherfucker.”

I flipped him off and strode out of the bar, still smelling the scent of peaches—Ellen’s signature scent since she was a seventeen-year-old—and tried to tell my dick to behave.

It didn’t listen.