Page 9 of Sweet Surrender

He’s ruined the button-up dress shirt and Oxfords look for you. The clean-cut hair and the unmarked skin.

However, as I force myself to focus back on my design sketches, I catch myself glancing up now and again to check the doorway. Did that really just happen?

CHAPTER FOUR

Gizmo

Because being an adult means you sometimes have to do things you don’t want to.

Hendrix’s words repeat in my head. Sure, they were meant for her husband? Boyfriend? Whoever the prick was that cheated on her, but right now, as I clomp my way up the stairs and into my brother’s practice, that’s what I keep hearing.

And fuck if they don’t feel like a rope slowly tightening around my neck.

I take a deep breath and trace the line of the pink heart on the inside of my wrist. The rebel in me fights conforming, struggling against proving my brother right.

But the band member in me knows I can’t risk everything my friends and I have worked so fucking hard for.

I pull open the door and walk through the reception area like I own the place despite the dread that drags its way through me.

My brother looks up from his desk and takes notice of me through the glass wall of his office. I have to give it to him. He doesn’t lift his eyebrows or smirk like I would if the roles were reversed. He just drops his head back down and finishes writing whatever it is he’s writing while I open the door, step inside, and prove his parting words when I left earlier to be right.

I stand there for some time with the pen scratching across the paper being the only sound in the room. He sets it down and then looks up, his blue eyes meeting mine.

“Tell me what I need to do,” I say, hands out and resignation like a knife in my chest.

“Did you sleep with her?”

“Who? Hendrix?” I ask, thoroughly confused.

“Who’s Hendrix?” No sooner are the words out of his mouth than I realize what I just said. No doubt we have the same confused expressions on both of our faces.

Where the fuck did that come from, Jase?

“She’s no one. Long story. And sleep with who?” I ask.

“Lori. The journalist. The pot stirrer.”

“No.” I shudder.

“You didn’t touch something that moves?” He snorts. “Impressive.”

There’s the snark and condescension. That didn’t take long.

“So then why is she so pissed?” he continues.

“Because I wouldn’t?” I shrug, remembering the endless hints she dropped expressing her interest. “Fuck if I know.”

“But you do know, don’t you?”

“No. I really don’t. It could be because I didn’t sleep with her. It could be because like we’ve previously discussed, she’s an opportunist. It could be that she gets promoted depending on how many articles she writes and how much interaction they get. And for some fucking reason, the ones about me are a goldmine for her. I don’t fucking know. Then again, people choose to do a lot of things in this godforsaken town and none of it really has to do with me.”

“And you think that answer is going to satisfy Judge Watkins?” he asks stoically.

Judge Watkins. So the prick has a name. Perfect.

“If I don’t know, Nathaniel, then I don’t know.”

He leans back in his chair and steeples his hands in front of him, fingertips touching and Rolex glinting in the overhead light. “You need a new image.”