Page 48 of Clean Finish

“Heidi and Val are here.” Taylor approached with a can. “And Gabe and Biff. Ludo, Brian and Kenneth are in the hot tub.”

Seb wasn’t here yet? He was definitely coming, right? I hadn’t actually outright asked him, just assumed he would be.

“Anyone not coming?” I asked nonchalantly, accepting the soda from Taylor and cracking it open.

“One of the maintenance guys has a family thing.” Holt took a more measured sip of his margarita and sighed in pleasure. “And obviously Carl can’t get here until it’s dark.”

“Right, right. Vampire.” I sipped my soda and licked my lips. It tasted like pineapple and something. Maybe lemon. “But… everyone else said yes?”

“Uh-huh.” Taylor beamed at me. He’d returned to Holt’s side and slipped his arm around his waist. “It’s gonna be fun.”

“It’s going to be something,” Holt muttered, which made Taylor laugh and kiss his cheek, almost nailing him in the eye with the brim of his cowboy hat. But Holt just smiled kind of dopily and gazed over at him like nothing else existed.

Ugh, they were disgustingly cute.

“Go and relax, Lark.” Holt waved his glass toward the patio, spilling his drink over the side of his hand and making the wise decision to lick it up instead of getting a napkin. “There are plenty more sodas in the fridge when you finish that one.”

“’Kay.” I didn’t move, darting another look at the wrestlers. I was kind of… really freaking nervous, for some reason. This was outside my comfort zone. It was easier talking to wrestlers at work because it was a familiar setting, and I always had the excuse of escaping back to the office if I got overwhelmed.

I wasn’t sure whether Taylor noticed, but he left Holt’s side and rounded the bar with a reassuring smile. “Come on, let’s go sit by the pool. Claim our spots before more folk show up.”

“Okay.” I followed him outside, clutching my towel and sunglasses, which were my dad’s old ones from the eighties or something. But they were pretty cool, so he’d given them to me. Dad was a sentimental dork who never threw anything out, so he’d also given me all his crop tops and tiny shorts from that era, but I was too self-conscious to ever wear them.

I was wearing a ball cap, because my hair always bleached to a paler pink in the sun, which I didn’t much like. After setting my stuff down on the lounger next to the one Taylor perched on, sipping his iced coffee, I fiddled with it, curving its brim over and over as I looked around.

“Hi, pretty boy.” Gabe sauntered over, eyes tracking all the way down my frame from my hat to my socks-and-slides combo as he sipped his beer. “Gonna get in the pool today?”

“Um, nah. Maybe.” I laughed a little too loudly and forced myself to lower my hands. “Depends. Um… I get cold easily, so…”

It was a weak-ass excuse, especially because the day was already hot, the sun beating down on us. But Gabe just nodded, his smile turning less salacious and more friendly, as if he could sense my discomfort.

“Well, there’s no way in Hell that Corey or Crossbody will be getting in the pool and letting chlorine touch their hair, so you can always chill out with them.”

“Yeah.” I relaxed a little and sank down onto my lounger.

I didn’t really get nervous around Corey—The Tasselled Tussler—because there wasn’t any kind of attraction between us. I mean, yeah, he was ridiculously ripped and pretty, but we were definitely just friends without even an inkling of any sexual chemistry. I liked sitting in his dressing room with him while he got ready, playing with Cora and listening to him gossip about literally everyone in his life. He loved to gossip, and I loved hearing gossip.

High Lord Crossbody didn’t make me nervous, exactly. More… timid. Probably because he was fae royalty, which meant it felt like I had to defer to him. I didn’t really like that feeling, so we didn’t talk all that much. There was a reason my ancestors had moved away from Otherworld and all the court politics and settled here instead—the Fairchilds obv weren’t all that good at listening to authority figures. My dad was pretty punk in a laid-back hippie kind of way. He did what he wanted. So did my mom.

Like getting married in a meadow three weeks after meeting. My nanna often shared the story of fainting onto her chaise longue when my mom had told her she was marrying the eccentric dude who’d recently been hired as their gardener and held slam poetry nights in a nearby apple orchard every Wednesday. And who’d also been spotted by my grandpa drinking the nectar from the honeysuckle growing in the yard.

He still did that. The front of our house was covered in climbing honeysuckle, and every summer he could be found out there drinking the nectar from the flowers. Our human neighbours thought he was such a weirdo.

“Hi, folks.”

My head snapped up to see Vince sauntering onto the patio with Dan, Kit and Mads—aka Lady Victoria Venom—following behind, all of them dressed appropriately for a pool party. My belly clenched with something, I wasn’t sure what, as I took in all the exposed skin—Dan’s miniscule shorts, Vince’s bare chest, Mads’ cleavage and slender neck. It felt… different from seeing them in their wrestler outfits. More intimidating, almost. Maybe because they weren’t dressed as their Goliath personas.

Or maybe because I would be expected to get as underdressed as they were, if I wanted to go in the pool.

I smiled and said hello to each of them, but my gaze kept darting back to the living room through the open doors.

Seb was coming, right?

Ludo was already here, and I would’ve assumed they’d come together, because they were buddies and it would have meant one of them, at least, could’ve drunk without worrying about driving home. Brian was already here too, although Seb had told me that they weren’t really friends outside of work, which had… kind of relieved me, for some reason. I didn’t know why. Brian was a super sweet guy.

More people arrived—the folks who worked the bar at the club, the maintenance guys and cleaners, David the commentator and Coach Boris, who everyone called Hogbody. He was a pig shifter, and it’d been his wrestler name back in the day, before he retired to train others instead.

I sipped my soda, chatting to Taylor and Holt, who’d come outside with a fresh margarita and draped himself on Taylor’s lounger, resting his feet in his boyfriend’s lap. Mads took the lounger on the other side of me, wearing her big dark shades so she didn’t accidentally turn anyone to stone. I tried not to pout about it. I’d been hoping it’d stay free just in case Seb wanted to take it when he got here.