I stepped up behind Andrew at the bar and finished off the beer he had sitting in front of him.
“Hey! Just because you were cock-blocked doesn’t mean you get to steal my beer.” When I didn’t respond, he smirked. I braced myself because whenever a Fields man got that look on his face, something dirty was about to come out. On Jackson, I loved it. On Andrew, I held my breath and hoped for the best. “So, how was the bathroom?” he asked, his brows waggling as he brought his fist up to his mouth, imitating a blow job.
I couldn’t help it, I laughed and the boner straining my pants began to fade.
“God, you’re a pervert,” Daniel said with his own laugh.
Andrew shrugged, unrepentant and drank from the new beer the cock-blocker—I mean bartender—sat in front of him.
Leaning to see past Andrew, I took the opportunity to talk to Daniel while Jackson wasn’t there. “Hey, can I ask you for a favor?”
Daniel leaned both elbows on the bar, giving me his full attention. “Shoot.”
“Can you cut Jackson some slack? You’ve been working him so damn hard and he’s exhausted.”
Daniel’s blond brows shot up to meet his hairline, and I should have known then something wasn’t right. But once I had an outlet for some of my frustrations, I needed to get it all out.
“We’re trying to plan the wedding, and everything is on hold until you give Jackson a firm date on when you’re opening the Voyeur in New York.”
His brows dropped low and his lip curled. “What? Is that what he said?”
“Yeah.”
Andrew’s laugh started soft and slow but soon shifted to an all-out cackle. His head was thrown back and he even threw a few slaps to the bar for good measure. When he calmed down enough, he wiped a few tears from his eyes and faced me.
“Da fuck?” When I continued to stare at him like he’d lost his damn mind, he dropped a bomb I hadn’t ever expected. “Daniel said he could take the whole year off to get married if he wanted to.”
My chest crumpled in on itself. Slow at first, just a few cracks, but as the words sank in, it became an all-out gaping hole. Andrew laughed again like Jackson lying to me—making excuses to not marry me—was the biggest fucking joke he’d ever heard.
When he noticed my dead stare, he quickly stopped. “Oh. Yeah. Not funny.”
“What the fuck?” I whispered to myself. How could he do this? Why was he doing this?
“Yeah,” Daniel said slowly, probably noticing me pulling in on myself and just waiting for the explosion after. “He can have off whenever. He’s been asking for all the extra shifts. Hell, I haven’t seen him work this hard since he was struggling to pay for Andrew’s medical bills. He’s taking anything he can get.”
“Anything?” Cold washed over my body. “Even at Voyeur?” The club where he performed sexual acts for strangers. Where he performed sexual acts with others. Was he letting other people touch him? Oh god, I was going to be sick.
“No. Not that,” Daniel rushed to reassure me. “He wouldn’t do that, Jake. He’s just managing the floor and tending bar.”
He didn’t even like tending bar, so why was he asking to do it more often? Taking a deep breath, trying to take in oxygen so it could rush to my brain and help me think rationally for a minute, I thought about it. I thought about the last few months and tried to remember everything I’d missed.
Money.
My fist curled against the bar top and my jaw clenched. This was all about fucking money. Every time my mom brought up something, that look sparked in his eyes. The one I’d been ignoring and putting down to stress.
The more I thought about all the lies he’d been telling me, all the excuses to put off setting a date, my emotions spun round and round on the roulette wheel until they finally rested somewhere between frustration and anger and guilt for not noticing it sooner. But all of this could’ve been avoided if he’d just talked to me. We always promised to talk to each other—no holds barred.
Well, he was damn sure going to talk to me tonight, no matter what I had to do to get it out of him. We were setting a fucking date.
Jackson
I’d just pulled the straws out from where I’d kicked them in a corner when the storeroom door went flying open, clanging against the wall.
“What the fuck?” I stood, ready to yell at whoever thought it was a smart idea to slam doors in my fucking bar.
The words died in my throat when I saw Jake standing mostly cast in shadow in the dark hallway. His shoulders were pulled back and his fists clenched and unclenched by his side. My lips tipped up on one side, loving to see how eager he was to touch me. But when I scanned his body and finally reached his face, I realized it probably wasn’t desire that had him holding back from reaching for me.