Page 72 of When the Walls Come Down
Where the hell is he!Shane: ChicagoTen minutes of typing and only a one-word reply. There had been some serious deleting going on in Chicago.I leaned back in my chair and drew in a deep breath. Okay. He was in Chicago. Why? Ihadnofuckingidea. But that was okay. I didn’t need to know. It was fine. Just fucking fine.Shane: So, Two Ships?I might have typed the word with clenched teeth and seethed when I said it out loud, but it could be read as pleasant enough.Me: Sure.That was the last I heard from him on Thursday, but I didn’t have time to stress about it. The new mockups were due to Vic the next day, and much to my surprise, when I’d forwarded them to Casey for approval, he’d returned them with a laundry list of changes.
I was at the office until eleven. Celia had stayed with me, ordering us a pizza long after I’d told her to go home. She was good people, and at the end of the night, as she forced me into an Uber rather than letting me walk home alone, we made loose plans to go out for a drink in the near future.
I considered texting Shane for that FaceTime since I was still awake when midnight my time rolled around, but I didn’t have the energy for it. Shane and I could talk at Two Ships, where I could finally get the dirt on where he had been face-to-face.
Or so I’d thought.
I arrived at Two Ships at six on the dot. It was our unspoken meeting time. If either Shane or I got there first, we’d buy the first round while we waited. I was exhausted from working late the night before, but nothing could have kept me away.
As usual, Chris was behind the bar and greeted me with a warm smile and a cold drink. We chitchatted when I first arrived, but as time passed, the bar became more and more crowded. He put a beer in front of Shane’s stool, no doubt to keep the vultures at bay. And, for the most part, it worked.
But, as six turned to seven, the warm beer became less and less effective.
I sent several texts. They started out flirty and funny, but by the time eight rolled around without the first response, the devil on my shoulder was working overtime ranting in my ear.
By this point, I was tipsy on my third drink and done.
Done waiting.
Done with his stupid secretive Chicago bullshit.
Done with being stood up without so much as a phone call.
I mean, who did that? Maybe he’d gotten stuck at the airport or in traffic, but for fuck’s sake, the man had a phone. How hard was it to tap out a sentence to let me know he wasn’t going to show?
I guessed it was probably as difficult as it had been for him to tell me on Tuesday that he wouldn’t be around for the rest of the week.
I was digging cash out of my purse to pay when I heard his voice.
And no, not fucking Shane’s voice.
“Care for some company?” he asked in such a low, rich rumble that it made my heart stop. A thick, muscular frame filled the seat beside me without waiting for my response.
Chris was on it almost immediately. “Hey, that seat’s taken, buddy.”
I lifted a hand in his direction. “No. It’s okay. He can stay.”
Chris looked confused, but he slowly backed away.
I smiled at my new neighbor. “You want a drink?”
His blue eyes danced as his massive hand covered mine. “Or I could buy you dinner?”
Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t be going home alone after all.The week had been wild. But I guessed when you decide to quit standing in wet cement and do something with your life, shit moves pretty fast. It hadn’t been my intention to blow town like I had. Although it kind of made me feel like the actual Duke Longfellow, International Man of Mystery.
The thing was I wanted to be damn sure I had my ducks in a row before I marched them next door. As difficult as change—and evidently making huge, life-altering decisions—went I didn’t do it often or recklessly. So I’d wanted to be damn sure I knew what I was getting into before let Maggie in on the news.
Aside from that, this had to be something I did on my own terms, eyes wide open, and deliberately. In the past, I’d luckily had family that had helped move me along when I’d needed to, but I didn’t want that anymore. Not for myself. Not for them. And hopefully, in the future, not for Peach.
She deserved a man who could take control of his own life and mold it into something he was proud of.
So there I was. In Chicago.
Even though I was out of sight, it felt good to discover I wasn’t completely out of her mind. And she wasn’t far from mine, either. I’d thought about her constantly.
