K. Bromberg - Slow Burn

Not a single Becks wait or Don’t go . Not a Wow this is too fast or Are you fucking crazy? She gave me nothing but guarded eyes and complete withdrawal.

I shove the hurt back down. Push away the unanswered phone calls and unread texts, the numerous times I’ve driven past her house to see if she’s home, and the time I spent pounding on her door last night because her car was in the driveway. My pleas for her to open up, to talk to me, tell me she’s okay, that she hates me, really chooses Dante. Something. Anything. This suspended state of limbo fucking sucks.

The woman’s reduced me to a needy son of a bitch, and I hate it.

My thoughts are racing faster than Colton around the track right now, and I just need to quiet my head for a bit. I shove up out of my seat, ignoring the looks I get from the rest of the guys in the view box, and grab my keys. I glance down at my cell and pretend I’m reading a text as I make my way to the door. “Tell Wood something came up, and I have to bail. I’ll call him later.”

I don’t wait for a response because I need to pull a Haddie.

Lose myself for a bit so that I feel a whole lot less. Fuck.

Listening to what my damn heart is saying is new for me. And it’s a goddamn muscle, so why am I hoping that it can give me some answers?

Muscles may not be able to make sense of something, but hell if they can’t ache with pain when they’re used and abused.

And she sure as fuck did just that.

So why do I still want her?

Fucking love.

* * *

The music is bluesy, the lighting on the dark side, and the beer ice-cold as it slides down my throat. The best part about being in my favorite pub besides being left the fuck alone is that all I have to do is raise my chin to Vivian, and she brings me another round without a single word.

It may be her first week on the job and we’ve just met, but Viv’s my new best friend for that alone.

The texts have finally stopped after two hours of constant pestering. But not a single one is from the person I want.

I’m enjoying feeling sorry for myself, wallowing in a damn ocean of barley and hops with a few odd shots thrown in here and there. My lips are numb, my head is quiet—spinning but still quiet—and I still don’t have a fucking clue how she could choose him over me.

“More her type, my ass,” I mutter to myself, thinking of the last thing she said to me. Sweet fuck. I can blame my drunk mind on why I don’t understand, but the haze isn’t strong enough to forget that I’m drinking because I can’t make sense of it sober, either.

I raise my chin to Vivian again. Might as well add to the clutter of glasses lined up on my table.

I lean back in the booth I’ve commandeered at the back of Sully’s Pub and cross my legs, which are stretched out on the bench. I run through the possible scenarios in my head, trying to figure how we went from sleepless nights and that look in her eyes when I left her after the trip to Ojai to here.

I mean, fuck, it was hard not to go to the last Scandalous event a few nights back. Took everything I had to not go sit in a dark corner of the club and watch her, make sure she’s okay. Just see her—because damn, I miss her—but then that would be stalkerish.

I refrained by drinking a six-pack and watching the game.

I thank Vivian when the bottle slides onto the table in front of me and consider calling Rylee. It’s a stupid fucking move on my part, but what other choices do I have at this point? It’s gotta be the alcohol pussifying my thoughts.

But damn, the alcohol just might have a point.

Then I realize that as much as I want to know what the hell Haddie is thinking, I also want to ask Rylee if she’s gotten the test results back yet. I know it’s nothing, but there’s that tiny bit of worry that’s still unsettling. And since Haddie won’t communicate with me in any way, shape, or form, I decide to ask Rylee.

My God, that’s pathetic.

Wait . I can’t ask Rylee about test results because she doesn’t even know about Haddie’s damn biopsy in the first place. There goes that plan.

I close my eyes, welcoming the off-kilter spin of my world right now because if life’s not going to make sense, you might as well do it drunk, right?

“Gonna drink yourself into a good mood or what?”

I snap my head forward at the sound of Colton’s voice and immediately look over to where Vivian stands. She scrunches up her face and mouths the words I’m sorry as she points the blame at Miller, the bartender who knows Colton and me as frequent customers.

Fuck. When did he get on shift? I thought I had lucked out with a new waitress and old Earl, who couldn’t care less what I was doing over here by myself.

I ignore Colton and close my eyes again, putting my head back to the same position against the back of the booth.

I hear Colton chuckle and then plop down across from me in the booth. It takes only seconds before I hear the clink of another bottle on the table and a polite thank-you as he’s served.

And I wait for it—the ration of shit—but he doesn’t say a word. So I sit with my eyes closed until the suspense of what in the hell he’s doing is so consuming that I have to look. I crack my eyes open and angle my head over to find him sitting there the same as me but he’s staring at his beer bottle, peeling the label.

“Hey,” he says with a lift of his chin, and then goes back to his label without even meeting my eyes.

“Hey,” I respond, trying to accept his nonchalance when he’s usually a get-straight-to-the-point kind of guy.

“Watcha drinking?” he asks after a bit, pointing to the empty glasses gathered in the middle of the table. “Scotch.”

“Scotch?”

“Macallan,” I add.

“Good shit,” he says with an appreciative hum.

“That it is,” I sigh out, paying attention to the label on my own beer now. “Tastes like Heaven—smooth, addictive—but hell if it doesn’t pack a punch.”

“Why do I get the feeling we’re not talking about alcohol here?”

My eyes lift to meet the intensity in his. I see concern and compassion there and want to talk about it at the same time as I want to avoid discussing it.

About Haddie.

And even stronger than my need to spew my guts is my wanting to ask him about her. Chicks talk about shit like this—guys don’t—so maybe Haddie talked to Rylee. Told her about why she’s pushing me away, that I confessed my love like a jackass.

God, this is so fucking frustrating.

“Sorry about Penzoil.”

Colton’s head startles with the whiplash of switching gears. “It happens,” he says, and I know I’ve had a lot to drink, but I’m not processing this laid-back guy responding to me very well. I feel like he’s holding back, walking on eggshells, and avoiding pushing me when that’s usually the norm.

Might as well just add a bit more discord to the eddy of confusion already whirling on the broken merry-go-round in my head.

“Nah. I fucked up. It’s on me. Got a lot on my plate.”

“You okay? Your parents and Walk okay?”

“Yeah, they’re cool…. Sorry. All’s good in the hood.” His genuine concern for my family has me immediately apologizing for the second time in mere seconds. I tilt the bottle to my lips, the flavor not even registering anymore because the potent taste of rejection is stronger. We sit there in comfortable silence before I finally confess, “It’s the goddamn Macallan .”

It’s all I give him, yet he nods his head before taking a swallow of his beer. “You don’t brown-bag Macallan, Daniels.”

“I’m aware of that,” I tell him, glad he caught the correlation between Haddie and the Scotch. “Can’t enjoy it—brown bag or not—if someone else is swigging from your bottle.”