Page 199 of The Last Good Man

He seems unaware of my presence here, and nothing in his demeanor suggests this is a repeat of what happened at that bar on Friday night.

That was different, and although we never discussed it, I felt he wasn’t there by chance.

But this is not that.

They walk with purpose and are all about business. The man striding next to him is older, beefy, and has a stern glint in his eyes.

None of them smile, and they have mafia written all over their scarred faces. Jax is the only one unmarred.

The other three look like they’ve been grazed by bullets and felt the edge of a knife against their ribs once or twice.

My mouth stays open as I try to get a grip on myself.

“Something happened…?” my mother murmurs, shifting in her seat to peer over her shoulder.

I snap out of my trance and slide my hand over hers.

“I’m sorry. I was thinking about something else,” I say quickly, removing my eyes from the men.

Luckily, Jax has his back turned to me, and the others have no business with me.

They all sit and order drinks and food. They speak in hushed voices and start discussingimportantmatters when the waitress collects the menus and walks away.

Their brows are furrowed, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out these are the people he is working with.

They’re not blue-collar, white-collar Wall Street types, doctors, lawyers, or cab drivers. They’re not teachers, and I wish they looked like bouncers.

While they have the athletic build of a bouncer, they lack that unimpressed look on their faces.

If anything, they have fierceness in their eyes.

And this is just another reason I can’t have this man in my life.

As perfect as our sex life is, and as much as I like him as a person, I know nothing about him.

And there’s a reason for that.

Three big reasons who sit with him at the table right now.

I’m convinced he is here with business, and it is just my luck to learn things about him in the silliest way, staring wide-eyed at him and his company and having my mother here, shooting suspicious looks at me.

“What exactly were you thinking about?” she asks, reading my eyes while I struggle to keep my gaze away from his table.

I can’t gape at him without clueing her in that something’s going on.

This is my mother.

She knows me better than anyone else in this world.

So I try to keep my eyes in check, still fretting over the possibility that she might see him or we might run into each other, and that would be awkward as fuck.

He might pretend he doesn’t know me. Or he might get angry that his secret is no longer a secret.

We never talked about these things, like what he does for a living or his plans for the future, and now I wish we did.

But I was the one who said no to the idea of him, so now I have to roll with it and adjust.

I shift my focus to my mother and give her the truth about the apartment.

---