by Blair Grey
All without really trying, from what I could tell. She was sexy in ways that she didn’t even know.
I’d thought about going to see her again on Sunday night, or at least calling her. But in the end, I’d decided that maybe this time, I should let her come to me. You know, in the interest of making her feel comfortable and in control. Besides, I didn’t even know if she was working on Sunday nights. No sense in swinging by the bar and making Candice wonder if something was going on between Mia and me.
I wondered if she already knew. We’d been pretty discreet about things so far, but then again, I knew that Candice was Mia’s best friend, and I knew that women liked to gossip. Not only that, but I knew Candice was a savvy bar owner. She could read things in a person’s body language that no one else would ever even guess at.
She probably knew that I’d been attracted to Mia forever. I wondered why it was only now that we were finally hooking up. I still couldn’t figure that out, but hey, as long as we were here now. I’d take it.
I got to the clubhouse for another Monday meeting. I was a little earlier this time, even though I knew it probably meant I’d have to spend some time chatting with Grant. I was starting to find that he didn’t bother me as much as he had before. I didn’t know if it was that he was changing or just that I was getting used to him. But either way, I kept thinking about what he had said about feeling like an outcast. And about how no one in the orphanage had liked him all that much.
There were definite parallels between his story and mine. He hadn’t been quite as lucky as I had been, to have a brother there to watch my back and give me all the companionship that I had ever needed. So maybe he needed someone to act like his brother.
At the clubhouse, Grant was already there, as were a couple of the other guys. But the other guys were clustered on one side of the room. Grant was sitting by himself a little away from them, and I could tell that he was listening in to whatever they were talking about, but that he didn’t dare just join their conversation. Typical. But again, I felt bad for him.
I walked past the couch that I normally sat on and instead chose a seat next to Grant. He gave me a surprised look, and I could tell he was this close to saying something that would have had me moving back to my normal seat. But he managed to bite his tongue.
To be honest, it was kind of nice to pick a new place to sit. That couch had felt way too empty at the last couple meetings.
Ray entered before we could say anything to each other, and he started the meeting after giving me what I thought was an approving look. God, I hoped the rest of the guys didn’t notice that. Not least of which, Grant. I didn’t want him to think that the only reason I was hanging out with him was because Ray wanted me to.
Even though that was technically the truth. Or at least, it had been the truth in the beginning.
“There was one disturbance this week. And actually, I’d like you two, Braxton and Grant, to go check it out,” Ray said finally, after discussing all the good things that Red Eyes was up to at the moment.
“What kind of disturbance?” I asked.
“I got a call from one of our businesses. They had a window broken last night,” Ray explained. He shrugged. “It’s nothing major, probably just some stupid kids or else some drunk. There was nothing about the incident that would link it to Red Eyes. It’s no doubt some random act of violence. But I think we should check it out just to be on the safe side. You can never be too safe.”
I frowned, thinking about Mia’s car window. I’d wait until after the meeting to talk to Ray about that, though. I didn’t need everyone in the club to know that I was sleeping with her at the moment.
When the meeting was over, everyone started to clear out. I caught Ray’s arm.
“What’s up?” he asked. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” I told him, hating the way his brows knit together with concern. He probably thought I was still all broken up about Landon. I felt like I was starting to get back to normal again, though. I still had weird pockets of time where I really noticed that he wasn’t there and wasn’t sure what to do with myself, but for the most part, I was working to fill that void.
I had to wonder, too, if he would be quite as worried if I were just some other member of the club rather than his flesh-and-blood son. But I shrugged those thoughts off for now.
“The window thing,” I said.
“I’m afraid I don’t have any more details,” Ray said apologetically, shaking his head. “The owner was pretty upset over the phone.”
“That’s fine; I don’t need more details. We’ll check it out,” I said. “But I just wanted to mention that Mia’s car window was smashed the other night as well. Friday night. While she was at work.” I shrugged. “It might be nothing; the two incidents might have nothing to do with each other. But I just thought you should know.”
Ray nodded gravely. “Yes, it’s good to know. If we get more of these incidents, it could mean that someone’s trying to send a message.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “I trust you to look into it. If you need my help at all, though, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks,” I told him.
When Grant and I got to the business with the smashed window, I just wished the owner could be half as calm as Mia had been when she had told me about her car window the other night. Instead, Eric was distraught, almost to the point of pulling his hair out. “I just don’t know who might have done this,” he said as soon as we had identified ourselves as being from Red Eyes, there to check things out on behalf of Ray. “Do you have any idea?”
The main trouble was, he didn’t seem to want to listen to either of us, no matter how Grant and I tried to phrase things, so we just kept going around and around in circles. I could tell that he was upset, and the last thing I wanted to do was upset him any further. But at the same time, I couldn’t help wanting to give him a good shake to get him to calm down and listen up.
“Not yet,” I told him, not for the first time. “But we’ll let you know as soon as we know anything. We’re going to find out who did this, though. You can rest assured of that. And I’ll have the replacement window brought over this afternoon.”
“Is this some sort of gang fight?” Eric asked. “I’ve been a member of the Las Cruces business community for longer than half the city has lived here, and I’ve never had any problems. My prices are fair, and I haven’t made any enemies.”
“We don’t even know if this was a targeted attack,” I reminded him, even though I still couldn’t stop thinking about the similarities between this broken window and the one in Mia’s car. “For all we know, this was just some hooligans who picked your place at random. It doesn’t mean that you have any enemies. Or that there’s some sort of gang who knows you’re under our protection.”
What I didn’t know how to tell him was that this wouldn’t make sense from a gang perspective. Sure, it might be an easy enough way to let us know that there was someone moving in on our territory. But broken windows didn’t net our rivals anything. They wouldn’t get any money by breaking windows, and they definitely wouldn’t endear themselves to the local business owners.
So maybe it would make the local business owners think twice about being under our protection if they thought that the only reason they were targets was because this other gang knew they were loyal to Red Eyes. But that wouldn’t really buy them anything if they couldn’t get the same business owners to trust this new gang and pay their dues to them.
No, this just didn’t make any sense. It had to be hooligans at work, picking targets at random. That was the only way I could make sense of this.
We finally managed to get Eric calmed down enough, especially when I reiterated for the dozenth time that the guys would be there to install the new window that very same afternoon. “This isn’t going to affect your business,” I promised him, even though I had no idea if it would or not. “And I promise you, as soon as we know anything more, we’ll let you know. We’re going to
catch these guys.”
Those promises, at least, weren’t empty platitudes. We were going to catch whoever it was. Even if they were just kids picking targets at random, they had to learn that this behavior wasn’t okay.
As we left Eric and his shop behind, I noticed Grant grinning over at me. “What?” I asked suspiciously.
“Nothing,” Grant said. “I’m just amused. You weren’t your usual abrasive self. You get laid particularly well this weekend or something? Got that stick out of your ass finally?”
I rolled my eyes. “Watch what you’re saying,” I snapped without any real venom. As a matter of fact, I had gotten laid “particularly well” that weekend, but he didn’t need to know that. “I’ll be plenty tough when we find out who did this,” I continued. “And so will you.”
16
Mia
Candice and I met up for lunch on Monday before work. I was in a really good mood. I hadn’t seen Braxton again since Friday night, but I had felt good all weekend, and it had shown in my productivity. I had not only made bank in tips on Saturday’s and Sunday’s shifts, but I had also cleaned up around the house and done a few of the projects that I’d been putting off and putting off.
On Monday morning, I woke up feeling just as chipper and refreshed. Maybe I needed to get laid more often. Who knew it could have this sort of an effect on a person?
I tried to wipe the goofy smile off my face as I got out of my car. Candice already knew about Braxton and me, and I had no doubt that she was going to ask me about him. About if we’d had sex again yet. This time, away from the bar, she was probably going to want all the details too. I was prepared for that. But I didn’t want her to start laughing at how excited I was about this. I didn’t need her to start asking if I was developing feelings for him or anything like that.
Did I like him? Sure. But I knew better than to start treating this like it was a relationship. We were just using each other for a release. Friends with benefits. We weren’t in a relationship, and we never were going to be. The terms of this thing were very clear. I didn’t expect Candice to understand that, and I still wasn’t sure how to explain to her that I just couldn’t go down that road again.
She wouldn’t understand, despite how well she knew me. She just wouldn’t get this the way that I needed her to. And the more she pressed, the more upset I was going to be until I decided that I was better off deliberately sabotaging this thing with Braxton.
I wasn’t ready to quit having sex with him. Not just yet. So I didn’t want to feel like I was being pushed to that point. Candice meant well, but she didn’t always understand the consequences of her actions, not where feelings were involved. In her world, everything was black and white. Everything was easier. It wasn’t like that in reality, though.
But Candice wasn’t asking about my incessant grin when I got out of my car. Instead, she was staring in horror at the vehicle. She marched right over, her fingers touching the edge of the plastic sheeting that I had used to cover the jagged edges of the glass.
“What the hell happened?” she demanded immediately. She looked over at me, putting her hands on her hips. “Were you in an accident without telling me?” She was staring over my body like she expected me to suddenly start bleeding out of every pore or something.
“I’m fine,” I told her. “No accident. I wasn’t anywhere near the car when the window was broken.”
“When did this happen?” was the next question.
I sighed. “Friday night. While I was at work. I came out and found it broken like this.” I really should have told her about it sooner, because now she was going to grill me about why I hadn’t told her, why I had let her find out like this. Because I was her employee and we should have filed some sort of incident report right when it had happened.
But I knew, I just knew, that this incident had nothing to do with work. And even though it would have been nice to have a record of it on file, the fact remained that my car hadn’t been parked in a position where the cameras would see it, and there was no way to get proof of who had smashed the window.
Even if there was a way to get proof, did it really matter? What was done was done. I’d get the window replaced, and I would move on.
Sure enough, though, Candice was immediately worried for me. “You talked to the police already, right?” she asked. “I bet it was that crazy-as-shit ex-boyfriend of yours.”
“We don’t have any evidence that it was him,” I said patiently. “No point in telling the police.”
“What the hell do you mean, ‘no point in telling the police?’” Candice asked.
I shrugged. “If it was Darren, telling the police is just going to piss him off. We don’t have any evidence for them to hold him on. I could maybe get a restraining order, but that’s about it.”
“Who else would it have been, though?” Candice asked, narrowing her eyes at me. “He checks up on you at work. He would have known that you were working on a Friday night. And he knows which car is yours.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that it for sure was him,” I pointed out. “It could have been anyone. They might not even have been targeting me; they might have just picked a car at random. It was probably just some kids. They won’t do it again. I’ll get the window fixed, and it’ll all be over.”
“I’ll still don’t like it,” Candice said, shaking her head, but she let the subject drop, at least for now. I had a feeling I hadn’t heard the end of it, though.
Sure enough, as we were heading into work, Candice brought Darren up again. “I’m going to block that fucker from ever coming back in here,” she declared. There was no question of who she meant. She held up her hand. “I know you think we don’t have any sort of evidence against him, but I don’t want him in here.”
“I hope you’re not talking about me,” someone said from behind us. When we turned around, Ray was standing there with his arms folded casually across his chest, smiling at the two of us. But there was something dark in his eyes, something that I had never seen before.
Candice was all smiles, though. “Oh no,” she said, shaking her head. “Definitely not you. You’re more than welcome here.” She paused. “But what’s going on? It hasn’t been a month already, has it?”
Ray laughed. “No, it hasn’t been,” he said, following us inside. “But I heard a rumor that there might be something going on. Something about Mia’s car?”
I groaned, realizing that Braxton must have told him. I hadn’t thought about that when Braxton had said he was going to keep an eye on my car while I was working. Of course he wouldn’t be doing that on his own. He would enlist Red Eyes help in the matter. And that meant going to Ray and explaining that some idiot had put a hole in my window.
“Someone put a serious hole in her driver’s side window,” Candice told him. She gave me a look. “And we’re pretty sure we know who that someone was.”
“We are not,” I protested. “Again, we have no evidence.”
“What are you thinking?” Ray asked, hopping up on one of the barstools. Even though we weren’t open yet, Candice poured him a drink and handed it over.
“Mia’s got this ex-boyfriend,” Candice informed Ray. “He’s the absolute worst. Definite trouble. Comes in here from time to time just to check on her. Always threatens to fight the guys that she’s talking to, even if they’re just customers at the bar. My bet is that he got pissed off with the fact that Mia told him to leave last weekend and he decided to take it out on her car while he knew that she’d be in here.”
I was thankful that she at least didn’t tell Ray that it was probably because Darren had found out that I was sleeping with Braxton. I didn’t know if Ray knew about that yet, and if Braxton hadn’t told him, I didn’t want Candice blabbing it to him.
Ray frowned. “Who is this guy? What’s his name?”
Candice gave him all the details he could ever want about Darren, and all the while, Ray just nodded along. He wasn’t taking any notes, but I knew that he
would remember everything. He always seemed to.
“Well, it might have been this guy. It certainly sounds like he might have a motive, unfortunately,” Ray said when Candice was finally finished.
“I keep telling her that she should get a restraining order against him,” Candice said, giving me a look.
Ray shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” he said. “That might just piss him off and make him more aggressive.”
“That’s exactly what I said!” I exclaimed.
“That said,” Ray continued, “it sounds like he’s a piece of work, and I don’t like the idea that he can just come around the bar whenever he wants to. You should at least think about getting the bouncer to keep him out of here.”
“But?” I asked, hoping he was about to say that he had a better theory. I just wanted to stop thinking about Darren. I didn’t want to think he was involved in all of this. And Ray wasn’t saying that he was.
There were plenty of reasons I didn’t want to hear that Darren was involved. Not least of which because if it was him, it was kind of an “I told you so” moment against myself. I had brought this upon myself, everything that I had to deal with from Darren. I was the one who had agreed to go out with him. Candice had never liked him.
What’s more, I liked the way things were heading with Braxton, and I couldn’t help worrying that something with my ex now would totally derail this friends-with-benefits relationship that Braxton and I were so carefully building. I wasn’t ready to give up on this just yet. I still wanted more.
So it was a relief to hear Ray say that he didn’t necessarily think it was Darren, either, despite all the evidence that Candice had laid out for what a creepy guy Darren was and how much of a basket case he might be.
