Gibson Boys Box Set

by Locke, Adriana

  “He still should’ve called me. What would’ve happened if I’d come in here guns blazing? Then whose fault is it?”

  “Mine. It would’ve started with my bad choice.” She gulps. “I’ve had to endure consequences of bad decisions before.”

  As we stand across from each other, close enough to touch if we tried but far enough away to remember all the reasons why we can’t, I just want to hit something. Hard. Destroy something worse than I’ve destroyed her. Feel the pain on my knuckles, the shots of fire that radiate up my arms when I nail something as hard as I can. Anything to distract me from the hurt bubbling up inside me.

  I hate that I can’t reach for her. I despise that it will always be this way between us. Our wounds are like the black eye that never quite heals, leaving traces of purple in the corner that you can see if you look at it in just the right light.

  She coughs, bringing me back to the little room above the bar. “I’ll be out of here in a few minutes.”

  “Is there anything else I need to know?” I ask, not quite ready to part from her.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. You’re a drinker now. You perform breaking-and-enterings. Did you join a biker gang or something?”

  She laughs, shaking her head. “No.” Light streams in farther into the room, washing Hadley and me in the bright morning rays. She squints as she looks at me. The wheels are turning, and that makes me a little more nervous than it should. “Cross was telling me Nora put in her notice.”

  “Yeah. Sucks because everyone loves her. But she has to do what she has to do.”

  “I know you trust her a lot.”

  “She’s better off finishing her degree. We’ll make do.” I stretch my arms overhead, the adrenaline from thinking I was going to war earlier making them ache. “I’ll be a little short-staffed for a while because no one can do all the things and work all the shifts Nora did.”

  “Hey! I could help you.” Her eyes light up like a Christmas tree. “I mean, I don’t know how to be a bartender, but I have some time to kill.”

  “You must be out of your mind.”

  Even as I say the words, the idea of having her beside me every night appeals to me. I could keep an eye on her, make her smile. Feel her brush against me and hear her laugh.

  “I could do it,” she says. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”

  “It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.” I chuckle. “You hate the bar. You hate me, for fuck’s sake. What in the world is going on here?”

  The fight in her eyes soften. Instead of answering me, she turns slowly toward the futon and starts making the bed.

  “Uh, that wasn’t rhetorical,” I say.

  “Maybe,” she says, jerking the blankets in place, “I’m trying to evolve.”

  “Into what? Bonnie and Clyde?”

  She glares at me, and it’s the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. “Maybe that was the wrong choice of words.” She goes back to making the bed. “Maybe I’m trying to move on.”

  That causes a chill to rip up my spine. It cascades down my legs, rolling down my arms, covering my half-sleeve of tattoos with goose bumps.

  “Trying to move on from what?” I ask.

  “What do people move on from? The past. Old habits.” She sits on the edge of the bed and looks at the wall. “Life goes by so fast. It’s easy to hold onto things and ideas that aren’t the best things to cling to.”

  Like me. My heart drops as I watch this girl almost wince as the words fall from her mouth.

  Her sigh spills into the room. She tilts her head to the side until her golden eyes find mine. “I didn’t drink until last year because my mother was killed by a drunk driver when I was fourteen. What’s the sense in that, really?” Her lips form a small smile. “Except that night with the rhubarb moonshine.”

  Words are on the tip of my tongue—explanations and promises and apologies. Probably a few profanities too. But they’re stolen by her soft laugh.

  “It’s time for me to go on with my life. Stop living in the past.” She grabs her phone off the nightstand, gives it a quick look, and stands. “It’s time for a lot of things, one being breakfast.”

  She walks in my direction, stopping a few inches in front of me. The smell of her body floods my senses. There’s no distracting myself from her, here, engulfed in the sunshine.

  “Thanks for letting me stay,” she says, “even if you didn’t let me per se. I honestly just didn’t know where else to go. This place just feels like … Well, you know.”

  I bite my lip, knowing I’m going to say something I’ll regret later, but such is life. “You know you can stay here anytime you want. Just tell me first.”

  She grins. “Oh, I should’ve felt comfortable asking because you were so personable yesterday?”

  “No. You should’ve asked because it’s mine.”

  She presses her lips together and lets her gaze drift down my body. A path is seared by her eyes, scorching my skin beneath the clothes that now feel way too tight.

  Her gaze lingers on my cock for a long second. It’s hard as a rock, and there’s no way she doesn’t notice. There’s also no way for me to try to hide it at this point.

  When she finally looks back at my face, she doesn’t even try to hide her grin either.

  “We still taking about the apartment?” she teases.

  I’m only a man. I step toward her, my blood running hot, but she steps back with a laugh.

  “You better get out of here,” I warn. My headache slides back into place as the pent-up aggression I live with on a daily basis reminds me it is, in fact, still present.

  With an easy shrug, she steps around me and heads for the door. “What time should I be at work?”

  “Not happening, Had.”

  Her laughter, and a soft one of my own, is all she leaves me with as I watch her go.

  Eight

  Hadley

  “I have to say,” Emily says, picking up a breadstick, “it is so much easier seeing you when I don’t have to drive all the way to Vigo to do it.”

  “Like the old days, right?”

  I lean back in my chair as the server from Peaches checks on us. Emily tells him we’re good and to please bring the check, so away he goes.

  “Sorry I wasn’t home last night,” Emily says. “Josh wanted to go to the Mud Boggs over in Greene County, and we were there until almost three in the morning. I ended up staying the night at his house and coming home today.” She looks at me over her breadstick. “What did you end up doing last night?”

  Flipping my gaze to my water glass, I shrug. “Oh, not much. Just drove around a while. Ran into Peck and—”

  “Ooh. What’s he doing these days?”

  “What’s it matter to you?” I laugh.

  “I’ll have you know I drive by Crank sometimes just hoping he’s working on a tractor or something in the parking lot without a shirt.”

  “He’s like my brother.”

  “A BILF.”

  “Oh my God!” I laugh. “That’s so gross, Em. Peck’s cute, but that entire BILF thought process is wrong.”

  “He’s not cute.” She shakes her head, her long, black hair shining under the restaurant lights. “He’s seriously one of the best-looking guys I’ve ever seen.”

  I make a face, trying to imagine Peck in the way she’s describing him. “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway because he’s all up Molly McCarter’s ass.”

  “I hate that bitch.”

  “Tell me what you really think.”

  She shrugs. “I will. I think she’s a terrible human being that has no class or couth. She’ll suck anything that gets put in her mouth.”

  I lift a breadstick and inspect it as though it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. “Seen her around much?”

  Emily’s gaze is heavy on my face, but I don’t look up. If I do, she’ll call me out and ask me why I didn’t just ask if she’s been in Crave … or with Machlan. I didn’t ask because
I don’t want to know in the same way I do want to know.

  I toss the breadstick back in the basket.

  The waiter reappears with our checks and tops off our water glasses. Emily swipes up both tickets, pointing a French-tipped fingernail my way in warning not to argue with her, then hands her credit card with the checks to the waiter. They get into a conversation about credit card companies, and my thoughts drift to Machlan.

  If I hadn’t put my guard up immediately this morning, the day would’ve ended up going a whole different way. I would’ve been sitting here crying, having been shut down by him again or fired up from one of our infamous arguments. Lucky for me, lucky for us both, I saw him before he realized it, and that bought me a few seconds to get myself together.

  Well, as much as I can when he’s around.

  It’s hard with him because it’s not. Not really. Not about anything besides being together.

  “Earth to Had.” Emily rests back in her seat, the waiter long gone. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s fine. You can lie,” she says. “I actually already know you’re thinking about Machlan.”

  “And what would lead you to believe that?”

  “Because I’ve been your friend forever, and I know the look you get on your face when you’re thinking about him. What did he do now?”

  “He didn’t do anything,” I protest. “I actually, um, I stayed in his apartment last night.”

  She sits upright, forcing a swallow. “With him or without him?”

  “Without him. Obviously.”

  “Yeah, of course. Otherwise, you’d still be there.” She sighs. “Why did you do that, Had?”

  Although I know she’s not judging me, it feels like it on some level. I wad up my napkin and set it on my plate before looking at her again.

  “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” I point out. “Cross and Kallie were … occupied. You weren’t home. What was I supposed to do? Stay with Peck?”

  “That’s what I would’ve done,” she jokes.

  “And Mach would’ve killed him.”

  “And why would he have done that?” She waits for an answer I don’t give. Then she grins. “Of course, we both know the answer to that.”

  “Because he’s an overbearing asshole?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Not where I was going with that.”

  “But it’s the truth,” I push. “He doesn’t want me. He—”

  “He loves you. He just doesn’t know what to do about it.”

  It’s not true. I know it. But just hearing it postulated into the universe does something to the pulse of my body. Everything hums. Everything electrifies. Everything seems brighter and happier for a split second—until I remind myself she’s wrong.

  “Well, that’s too bad because I’m here to convince myself to fall out of love with him.”

  I really don’t have to explain it to her because I know she’s reading between the lines. She knows about Samuel and how he wanted to talk marriage before we called everything off. How that conversation, the one about me being emotionally unavailable and in need of figuring out what I want out of life, was the saddest and angriest I’ve ever seen the otherwise sweet, sober man. Emily knows my storied history—most of it, anyway—with Machlan and how he’s the one I can’t get out of my mind.

  She was there the night, years ago, when I cried so hard I almost passed out. It was her shoulder I leaned on when I decided to move to Vigo eighteen months ago. Emily has heard me fight with myself over every little decision in my life because … what if?

  The what-if is not happening.

  “Has Samuel called?” she asks.

  “He texted me last night to see if the dog sitter is scheduled for the rest of the month. I just texted back yes, and he left it at that.”

  “So responsible.”

  I groan. “I know. We had our life in such sync. I did these things, he did those. We didn’t even live together, and it was like we were on the same calendar.”

  “His calendar,” she points out.

  “But it was a joint calendar. One where my presence was wanted.” My shoulders sag as my spirits sink. “But, yeah, his calendar. Which is why, I guess, it’s a good thing we split up.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  I think back over the past couple of days and what’s been on my mind. Coming home, seeing Machlan, starting my job, seeing Emily—that’s what I’ve been thinking about. Not Samuel.

  “You don’t even have to answer that,” Emily says.

  I look at my water glass and wish it was vodka. “I need a therapist.”

  “You need to get laid.”

  “Em …”

  “Orgasms paint the world rosy. You’re in need of a good painting.”

  “That’s what got me in this mess,” I point out. “It was in a tent on Bluebird Hill, and the stars were almost magical. The orgasm was magical.”

  Emily snorts. “Thinking about Machlan delivering orgasms isn’t going to help you.”

  As she says it, I can almost feel his palms on my skin. Taste the sweetness of his breath. Feel the heat between my thighs.

  “You’re right,” I say, shivering. “It’s definitely not going to help.” I grab my purse and find a few bucks for a tip, then put them under the salt shaker.

  “If I loved someone like you love Machlan and he didn’t love me back, I think I’d hate them.”

  “Let’s not embarrass me, okay?”

  She sighs, grabbing her purse. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re brave. Much braver than I would ever be.” She takes out a tube of red lipstick and strategically paints it on her lips. “I see your predicament. He can be a complete jerk, and then he’s the first to jump to your aid or fuck you real good.”

  “Emily!”

  “Just going by what you’ve told me.” She smacks her lips together and puts the lipstick away.

  “Anyway,” I continue, “I think I need to change my plan. I need to figure out how to be around him without loving him or hating him. Just look at him like another guy I’m friends with. Like Peck,” I add, proud of myself for the comparison.

  “Peck is boy-next-door hot. Machlan is front-cover-of-women’s-porn-magazines hot. Good luck with that.” She laughs as she climbs out of her seat, taking her credit card from the waiter.

  I follow her out the door. Once we’re in the parking lot, Emily stops and turns to me. Her arm goes around my shoulder as we head to our cars. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m glad you’re not with Samuel anymore. He’s so lame.”

  She continues her opinions as I climb into the car. Despite all the confusion in my life and all the questions I don’t have answered, I can’t deny it’s awfully nice being home again.

  Nine

  Machlan

  “Just the man I was looking for,” I say.

  Peck stops in his tracks, and the door swings shut behind him. The thud sounds ominous as it echoes through the bar, sealing the sunshine out and him … inside with me.

  “I’m gonna need to know how pissed you are before I come any closer,” he says.

  “What an interesting thing to say.” I shove my tongue in my cheek. “Why would I be pissed off?”

  “Oh, I don’t think there’s anything to be pissed off about. You, on the other hand …”

  Tossing the rag down on the bar, I slap both palms flat against the wood. “Cut the shit, Peck.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s right,” he says, tapping his temple. “Letting her stay at my house was a better idea. Or would you have rather I let her sleep in her car?”

  “I would rather you had called me like I fucking told you to do.”

  “And then she would’ve been pissed, which I know really doesn’t bother you, but I don’t like the look in her eye when she’s mad, okay?” He sighs. “Besides, I left the window open so you’d know something was up. I did you a solid, bro.”


  “You did me a solid?”

  He shoots me his stupid, goofy grin that makes it hard to be pissed. “I did. You just might not see it yet.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  “You will.” He starts to move forward but stops. “Before I come any closer and grab a beer, how pissed are ya?”

  “What’s the scale?”

  “One to ten.”

  “Oh, about a seven point three.”

  Peck’s laugh is quick and loud. “Hell, I’ve made you madder than that without trying. Now grab me a beer, will ya?”

  I shake my head, grabbing the rag I had a few moments ago to finish cleaning the area where I cut the limes. Peck takes a seat across from me. When I don’t get him a beer, he hops over the bar.

  He rummages around the liquor bottles and helps himself to the contents of the candy dish by the cash register. I’d bust his balls on a normal day. Lucky for him, today is as abnormal as they come.

  I love this bar. Coming in here every day isn’t work to me. It’s not just entertainment as Lance assumes it is or just a paycheck like Walker thinks. It’s not even some attempt to stay young and half-assed irresponsible like my sister, Blaire, points out every other time we talk.

  I’ve seen people come in here ready to drive off a cliff and leave with a smile on their face. Why? Because I poured them a shot and listened to whatever bullshit they had to say, or they ran into a friend they haven’t seen in a couple of weeks and got distracted. People let their guard down here, admitting their feelings. Others cut loose and enjoy Friday night because it’s fucking Friday night. This place brings people together in a way most don’t understand, and being a part of it makes me feel as if I’m doing something worthwhile.

  Today, I can’t remember any of that. I can’t find the good this place usually brings. There’s only a wobbliness that started when I walked into the apartment earlier.

  It’s as if I’ve forgotten how calming Crave is to me and the only way to get that peace is to skip back in time to this morning. To her lying upstairs on my futon. To the sleepy look in her eyes.