Page 36 of Love Me Steadfast
I race to the other side of the truck and yank on the door. The guy in the passenger seat doesn’t move to get out, forcing Morgan to crawl over his lap. His lewd look and the way his hands brush her ass as she does makes me want to punch him.
When Morgan steps down, I grab her hand and pull her up the narrow ramp of cars and into the parking lot, the gravel crunching under our shoes.
“What the hell, Mo?” I say once we’re far enough away.
She yanks her hand from mine, her eyes blazing. “I was just getting a ride.”
“A ride?” I donotwant to think about the innuendos right now. “What happened to our plan to meet after the game?”
“You were taking too long. What’s the big deal? They said they’d take me home.”
Eventually, maybe. Or the nearest ditch once they were through. “Do you even know them?”
She shrugs. “They’re friends with Yolanda and Greer.”
I don’t even know who these two are. Keeping up with Morgan’s social life is...exhausting. “You realize the second you get in someone’s car, you’re putting your life in their hands?”
She rolls her eyes. “He’s a senior. I think he’s trustworthy.”
I stare at her, wide-eyed. “I’m not talking about his driving capabilities.”
To my frustration, she laughs, throwing her head back. “Oh Char, you’re too much, you know that?”
“Look, in a perfect world, every guy you meet will act like a gentleman, but until their species evolves, you have to look out for yourself.”
Her smile turns coy. “What if I don’t want a gentleman?”
“You don’t actually mean that.” I shake my head. “You could get hurt, Mo. Like, really hurt.”
She must hear the undertone of terror in my voice, or maybe the buzz from being those two gorillas’ newest shiny object is starting to wear off because she sighs. “All right.”
“Let’s go find Theo.”
When we turn toward his truck, I catch William’s concerned gaze from across the parking lot.
Thank you, I mouth.
He gives a reassuring nod before turning away.
I watch for a moment longer, my stomach in knots. I don’t easily ask for help, so why was it so easy to accept it from William?
Chapter Twelve
WILLIAM (NOW)
It takesme an hour to haul all the shit from the office into the alley. I make two piles. One for Habitat for Humanity, the other for the dumpster that was supposed to be here already. The dumpster pile is definitely bigger.
The crappy banquet table being used as a desk and the squeaky, uncomfortable office chair are the first to go. How Ray never upgraded to basic office furniture is a mystery. Yeah, it costs money but so does back surgery. Most of the stuff on the shelf goes into the dumpster pile. There is no logical reason to keep a broken mixer, outdated fax machine, or what I think is the remnants of an old hammock. Oscar agreed to make a place to store the linens, so I carry those bundles to the empty kitchen and pile them on the prep table for him to deal with.
Ideally, we should close for a week so that I can get to the repairs and upgrades like fresh paint, new carpet, and updated acoustics that this place so badly needs. Maybe after the holidays—the bar’s slowest time of year–I will. But we have a solid show schedule until then, and I don’t want to do anything that would kill momentum. In themeantime, I’ll fix what I can. Trim off whatever excess the business can do without, until I can build it back up again.
Laughing to myself, I break down the giant shelf unit and carry it to the donation pile.
I don’t know shit about doing any of those things.
Finally, I have the office stripped down to just the safe and the computer, which I set in the middle of the floor. I’d like to replace it, but it’s one of the few things in here that’s not broken, so it’s on my someday list. Then I grab a bucket of warm water, a rag, and some cleaner, and return to the office to prep the walls for painting. Not that I hope to scrape off three decades of grease, but it’s a start.
I’m just finishing scrubbing the final corner, my fingertips sore and sweat trickling down my back, when there’s a knock on the back door.
