Page 3 of Peaches

But little does he know I’ve gotten away with a lot more over the years. No one ever found out about my years-long stint pedaling pills so I could pay off some of Dad’s debt to society. I’m not sure anyone even knew he’d accrued a debt to begin with.

He made sureIknew though.

I blow out a frustrated breath and take a long pull from the Bud bottle.

“Oh shit,” Colt says, his focus now somewhere near the front door. “Dark hair, silver dress—just walked in.” I turn lazily to find the girl he’s talking about. “Dibs,” he’s quick to say, and I can’t help but smile.

She’s . . . fine. Definitely attractive, but not quite my type. “All yours.”

I glance at the girl behind her though, and my attention snares. Thick auburn hair frames her round face, only reaching the top edge of her bare collarbone. Her cheeks are flushed like she might be cold—or excited, maybe. She’s wearing a black dress with little bows on the straps, and I’m already imagining what it would be like to pull them loose. “Damn,” I whisper as my eyes trail down her body to her long, gorgeous legs.

Something about her feels familiar, but I’m not sure why.Fuck, I think.Have I met her somewhere?One of the disadvantages of my deep-seated love affair with whiskey is I don’t always remember nights when I’m looking to unravel parts of myself. Sometimes I unravel so far I leave important pieces behind—like my memory. It’s one of the many reasons I’m trying to hold back these days, from both boozeandgirls.

Colt and I both watch in a mutual transfixed silence as the girls navigate their way to the bar. I’m halfway off my stool, ready to buy them both a drink and invite them over, when the silver-clad one slides her hand up the back of some dude in a backward hat who sits belly-up to the bar’s counter.

“Dammit,” Colt mutters.

Another guy sitting next to the first one turns to look at the girl in the black dress, the one who has somehow stolen the breath from my lungs, and reaches out to hug her.

Yeah, I think.Dammit.

CHAPTERTWO

OLIVIA

“What’s your favorite position?”

Trent’s face, although objectively beautiful, is hazy with the buzz he already had when we showed up. Ivan snickers from the other side of the booth we just moved to, hiding his mouth behind both hands as he looks down at his lap.

“What?” I ask, though I heard him loud and clear. My gaze slides across to Charlotte, and I see hesitation in her pinched brows that I’m sure matches my own.

“What’s your favorite position?” Trent repeats, and Charlotte sighs. The apology in her eyes shines beneath the stained-glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling, one of several odd details I’ve spotted since we got here.

It’s my first time at Spurs, a brand-new bar in Williamson County. Despite its name and the country music blaring, there isn’t much else that makes it feel like a country bar. It actually still looks a lot like the restaurant it was before.

Italian, if I had to guess.

I give Char a soft smile—there’s no reason forherto be sorry. Sure, she may have dragged me out here for this awkward (and blind, on my part) double date, but she’s not the one asking rude questions before we’ve even ordered our food.

I turn back to Trent, finding him eyeing me with curiosity. The heat from his body so close to mine in this shared booth puts me on edge—only twelve minutes in and I already know I never want to see him again. “Who let you out of your cage tonight?” I quip.

The insult doesn’t land as intended. Instead, Trent belts out a high-pitched laugh, nodding his approval. “Sassy.” He scratches at his beard and looks down at his phone as he fires off a quick text to a contact I can’t help but notice is saved asHouston Big Tits. “I like it.”

I roll my eyes.

I suppose there areworsesituations to be in. I could be stranded in the rain with a flat tire and no one around for miles to help me. Or I could contract a violent flu that wipes me out for days. Still . . . when I agreed to drive the half hour to get here, I didn’t anticipate having to deal with such an asshole.

“I’m going to get some drinks,” Ivan says. “Do you guys want anything?” He looks nervous, and I don’t blame him. He and Charlotte only started dating a few weeks ago, and she trusted him to bring a friend tonight that I might like. Unfortunately, I think the one he chose is going to lose him alotof points.

I look back to my best friend and see the question in her eyes.Do you want to stay?they seem to ask. She met Ivan last month at a Noah Kahan concert in Dallas. Despite not being able to find anyone to go with her (I couldn’t get away from the café that weekend), she’d decided to go it alone and ended up standing near Ivan and his group of friends in the amphitheater’s crowded lawn section. At some point, Ivan realized the girl beside him was there by herself, so he ushered her into his huddle of people.

Charlotte said it was fate, and she’d been giddy the next day when she recounted the way he couldn’t keep his eyes off her when he thought she wasn’t looking. How, in the few quiet seconds between “Dial Drunk” and “Your Needs, My Needs,” she’d brazenly fisted the front of his shirt and kissed him.

I give her a discreet nod—I’m not going to let some stupid guy in aDemon SlayerT-shirt get in the way of my chance to get to know her new man better. She likes him—like,reallylikes him, I can tell—and if anyone deserves the heart-swooping roller coaster drop of a new fling, it’s Charlotte.

It’s just clearly not my turn to have that sort of thing. Not yet, anyway.

Trent nudges my knee with his under the table, and I have to fight back a grimace at the contact. “Let’s get these ladies some shots. What do you like, babe? Tequila?”

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