by Piper Rayne
We shoot the shit about nothing important. I fill her in on the shop. She asks about the arm and the accident. Jolie and Rian have fun making cookies.
I head into the kitchen to get Frankie a coffee, where I catch a glimpse of the cookies. “I thought they’d look like monsters?”
Rian pours out a container of sprinkles on top of the drops of batter she already has on the cookie sheets. Jolie watches on with wide eyes.
“No, they’re just big cookies with a lot of sprinkles and candies.”
She really is great with kids. Another damn checkmark for Rian.
Frankie and I chitchat the entire morning. Once Jolie gets bored baking cookies, she pours the contents of her bag on the table in front of the television. Soon the news gets replaced by a talking dog show.
Frankie and I move to the kitchen to help Rian with the cookies. Mostly Frankie though.
“So what’s he paying you to nurse him back to health?” Frankie asks Rian.
“He’d prefer to be left alone. You know how he thinks he always has everything under control.” Rian rolls her eyes.
“Oh, I can only imagine. What’s he had you do so far?” Frankie asks.
Rian tells her about the bathroom and how she had to close her eyes after my shower, then tells her about the sweatshirt situation, not mentioning the sexual tension. Unless maybe she didn’t feel the thick as smoke pull in the air.
They like to talk about me as if I’m not there. I guess Rian knows me the best out of all the girls we hang out with and Frankie is stuck with me at work, day after day. They openly complain about me when we’re all around each other.
Right before Frankie packs up Jolie because she has to take a nap, Jax walks in with his laundry bag over his shoulder. Frankie eyes him as he stops just inside the door, his large duffle falling to the floor in front of him.
Jolie runs over, her feet sliding to a stop in front of him. “Who are you?”
Jax peers down at Jolie, then at us standing around the kitchen. “Did I just walk into the wrong apartment?”
Rian laughs. “Jax, this is Frankie.” She places her hand on Frankie’s shoulder as Frankie nods a hello. “And that’s her daughter, Jolie.”
“I’m Jax,” he says to Jolie, picking up his duffle and swinging it over his shoulder. He walks to his room.
“Friendly guy,” Frankie says.
“He really is a nice guy,” Rian adds, which bothers me to a degree I’m not comfortable with.
“Oh, Rian.” Frankie puts her hand on Rian’s shoulder and shakes her head.
“What?” Rian asks, packing up cookies for them to take home.
“We’re just different. You always see the good in people and I always see the bad.” Frankie puts her purse over her shoulder.
That’s all I need to hear. Rian sees the good in me, and she won’t see my bad until I’ve already hurt her. Without even asking for it, Frankie gave me the advice I needed to hear.
“I’m going to walk them out,” I say to Rian.
Frankie hugs Rian goodbye. “Don’t let him talk you into any sponge baths or anything.”
Rian’s cheeks redden. I love that look on her. Before I was restricted to only using my right hand, I’d imagine telling her all the things I wanted to do to her and that blush hijacking her body when I beat off.
“Thanks, Rian.” Jolie hugs Rian while consuming a cookie that’s bigger than her face.
“Bye, Jolie.” Rian hugs her tightly. “You’re welcome any time you want, okay?”
Jolie nods, hugs my knees, and I tug on one of her pigtails.
Outside in the hallway, Frankie lets Jolie have her phone and sit against the wall so we can talk.
“So what’s really up?” she asks.
“If I don’t find anyone soon, I’m going to ask Jax”—I nod toward my apartment—“to come in on a temporary basis.”
“Wait.” She shakes her head. “Who is that guy?”
I blow out a breath. Frankie wouldn’t be impressed by the people Jax has tattooed. She’s strictly does it for love, not money. But she follows enough artists that she’ll know who he is.
“Jax Owens.”
Her mouth drops open. “Shut the front door!” She moves to beeline by me, but I grab her arm and pull her back. “Why didn’t you introduce me to him?”
“Rian introduced you.”
She cocks her hip. “No, Rian introduced me to a new roommate of yours named Jax.”
I shrug. “Not my fault you didn’t recognize him.”
Technically it’d be Jax’s. He’s not big on his picture being on Instagram. He showcases his artwork more often than not.
“So you’re going to have me manage him?” She points toward the door.
I nod.
“You’re insane. And please tell me why you’re allowing the business to suffer when the solution is right inside that apartment?”
I stare at her for a moment. “He went to high school with Knox and me. We aren’t exactly on the best of terms.”
She pats my shoulder. “Time to kiss some ass, Dylan. And since I was going to bring this up later anyway, you should be kissing Rian’s ass too while you’re at it. Literally.” She glances at Jolie, who’s watching something uber loud that echoes through the hall.
“My mind is so fucked up right now.”
“Good.” She smiles sweetly.
Frankie isn’t a sweet girl. She’s the girl other girls are afraid of. She’s got a sharp tongue and her insults cut deep. She can come back with a snappy retort within a second and she honestly doesn’t give a shit what you think of her.
That’s why she says, “I’m going to be your working mind for the time being. You’re going to go in there and ask Jax to come work at Ink Envy. Give him whatever the hell he wants. And then you’re going to tell Rian exactly how you feel.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Make a good deal. Tell him you want a percentage of who he brings in. It happens all the time.”
I shake my head because the Jax thing I can handle. And she’s right—I’m sitting on my gold mine, fiddling with my limp dick.
“And the Rian thing.” She places her hand on my heart. “It’s a good thing. You’re a good guy. Stop pretending you don’t like her, because if I had to guess, this experiment of the two of you together day in and day out, alone? It’s gonna blow up in your face if neither one of you will talk about it, and it’ll kill the friendship. Be mature and talk it out.”
“You seriously want me to tell her ‘I like you’ as though I’m some twelve-year-old adolescent boy who just got his first boner?”
She laughs and shakes her head. “You have to get out of your own head first. For now, save your company. No one wants to date an unemployed loser,” Frankie playfully smacks me on my cheek. “Let’s go, Jolie.”
They disappear into the elevator, and I walk back into the apartment. Frankie’s words aren’t helping me in the slightest. When I get inside, all the baking stuff is put away, replaced with her work stuff on the kitchen table now. Rian smiles at me, and I beeline across the apartment, knocking on Jax’s door before I lose my nerve.
“Come in,” he says.
I open it to find that he hasn’t really made the room his. It still has Sierra’s cream-colored bedframe she left behind. There are no posters or pictures or anything personal, and his clothes lay in piles on the floor as though he’d just have to stack them together to pack into his bag to leave.
He tosses his book aside and pulls his Air Pods out of his ears. “What’s up?”
“Ever think about taking some shifts at Ink Envy?” I should ask nicer.
He glances at me from the corner of his eye and his smirk shines bright. He knew this day was coming. “I have been kind of bored lately. Who was that girl here with the kid?”
“She works there. We can do this one of two ways. You work and she’ll manage you, or you rent a chair.”
“I’ll rent a chair.”
“Okay.”
After we negotiate price, we reach that awkward point where I should probably thank him. He knows exactly why I came in here. I’m screwed and we both know it. He’s my only hope of keeping Ink Envy.
He says, “I’ll post on my Instagram and tell them by appointment only. Can they book through your place?”
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll take over the schedules. I can at least do shit like that.” I raise my arm.
“Sounds good,” he says.
“Okay then. Are you starting tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Any days off you want?”
He shakes his head but then stops. “I’m good as long as Mondays are always off.”
“Yeah, shop’s closed Mondays so no worries.” I’m actually impressed we’re being so civil to one another.
I go to leave, and my hand is on the doorknob when I look at him over my shoulder. “Thanks,” I say, not nearly loud enough.
“Happy to help your sorry ass out.” He grins.
I huff. One day we’ll have to converse more than we are right now, but I’m at max capacity for touchy-feely shit today.
Chapter Seventeen
Rian
Five days after he came home from the hospital, Dylan is fully wallowing in his own self-pity.
“Look at you,” I say, coming out of the bathroom.
Every day he comes out of his bedroom and plants his big body on the couch, where he watches daytime television. Yesterday I stole the remote when he put on the soap opera channel.
“What?”
“You should be at the shop. You’re not unable to walk. It’s just a broken arm. That adorable scruff you love so much is now a full-on mountain man beard. And the whole not showering thing?”
He stares at me as though he can’t understand the words I’m saying.
I pick up a pillow and throw it at his head. “Hello?”
He whips it back at me as though I’m his annoying younger sister. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s all he sees me as.
“Want to help me make up math word problems?” I sit in the chair by the couch, cross-legged with my computer on my lap.
“Sure. If I sleep for five hours and Rian sleeps for zero hours for the next six weeks, how many more hours of happiness do I have?”
“Now your lazy mood has affected your brain because that’s a stupid word question.”
He glances at me then looks back at the television. “Aren’t you kind of like an educator? There are no stupid questions?”
“There are stupid questions, and I’m not an educator.”
He props up his head on his good arm. “Fine. How about if I lay here for ten more hours and do the same thing for the next three days, how long until the couch smells like ass?”
“The couch already smells like ass. Plus there’s not enough information to logically answer that question.”
He grunts and his head falls back on the pillow. I pull the pillow out from under his head and his head crashes to the arm of the couch. I hate this whole “feel sorry for myself” version of Dylan. Not to mention being alone with him in our apartment day in and out kind of sucks. Jax is working at Ink Envy now. Other than when he pops in between clients to grab something to eat, it’s just Dylan and me. Time I would have cherished before he turned into this man I don’t recognize.
“Well, if I didn’t have a concussion before, I have one now.” He sits up and rubs the side of his head, staring at me like a confused boy.
“Why don’t I start a shower for you?” I close my laptop. “We could go for a walk or go visit Ink Envy. Get lunch.”
“Or I could sit here and find out if Jake really is the father.”
I shake my head, concentrating on my computer as I try to find some other way to get to him. I’m not strong enough to get him into the shower. Even if I did manage that feat, how would I keep him there? Then there’s the whole thing about wrapping his arm in plastic.
“Can I bribe you?” The words fall out of my mouth as soon as they pop into my mind.
“Bribe me? I never figured you for bartering sexual favors, but…” He laughs, hooking his thumbs into his track pants.
My eyes betray me before I can look away. Damn them. “I was thinking more with my baking. Chocolate cake with Oreo crumbs between the layers with the chocolate frosting.” Surely that will make him stand and take a shower.
“Eh.”
I swear I’ve entered another dimension. Dylan loves chocolate more than sex. I think. I’m not exactly sure, of course.
“Seriously?”
He glances up from the television. “You think you own me when it comes to your baking, don’t you?”
I roll my eyes and concentrate on the same question I’ve been trying to form for the past hour. “No.”
“You do.” The familiar lilt to his voice that’s been void since the accident is present and my stomach flutters.
“Well, you usually do go gaga over my chocolate desserts.”
He laughs. “So all these years, you’ve been using them to get what you want?”
I scrunch my eyes. If I got what I want, I would have him and I would have used my naked body to persuade him to get into the shower. “You act like I’ve swindled money from you.”
He shakes his head. “No, but remember that time we were arguing about what new series to start watching? You wanted Blue Bloods and I wanted Hawaii Five-O. What do we watch now? Blue Bloods.”
“You’re absurd. We put that to a vote.”
“You made chocolate on chocolate cake that night.”
“How do you even remember that?” I close my laptop because I can’t concentrate right now.
He snaps his fingers and points an accusatory finger at me. “And what about that time we were talking about going on a weekend trip? And it was a split vote between skiing in Vermont or Portland, Maine?”
I bite my lip to not smile. “Those are just coincidences,” I say with as straight of a face as I can manage.
“Bullshit. You use your baked goods like a pair of brand new tits.”
I cough out a laugh. “You’re delusional and that’s disgusting. I would do no such thing.”
He shakes his head in a joking manner. “To think I thought I could trust you, that you were different, but all women use tactics against men to get what they want.”
The buzzing of someone calling up from downstairs interrupts us.
I place my computer on the coffee table and make my way over to the door. “You’re very wrong. Cake is not the same as sex.”
“Maybe to me it is. Maybe I like your chocolate cake as much as I love tits.” He winks.
I pretend to roll my eyes. But the idea that Dylan thinks about my tits does weird things to my insides.
“Imagine if I licked chocolate frosting off a pair of tits. Best of both worlds.”
Thank goodness I’m no longer right in front of him because my entire body feels as if an inferno is ready to engulf me in a ball of flames.
I press the intercom button and say hello.
“Hey, it’s Lyle. Is Dylan there?”
I pretend to laugh. “Of course he is, but plug your nose when you come in.”
I press the button to let him in downstairs, then I open the door and walk back to the chair, picking up my computer.
Dylan’s hand lands on my upper thigh, way too close to the center of my legs. “Your chocolate cake doesn’t control me anymore.”
I stare at his hand, his warmth leaking through my leggings and spreading across my skin like a brush fire. I set my computer on the table again and lean toward him. “Okay, so if I bake one right now, you wouldn’t take a shower for one slice?”
His fingertips grip my inner thigh a little tighter and all I can think about is how if they inched a little higher, they’d be exactly where I want them.
“Not on your life.”
“Only one way to test the theory,” I singsong.
He wraps one
arm around my waist and pulls me into his lap. With only one arm, he still manages to tickle my ribcage as I squirm out of his hold.
“You’re going to hurt your arm,” I say.
Between his track pants and my leggings, I’m sliding around his lap. His lips are right at my ear, my body over his. It’s then a hard ridge slides against the seam of my ass.
We both freeze in place.
“Is this what you guys do for fun?”
Our heads whip up to Lyle gawking over the couch. I scurry off Dylan’s lap. He grabs the pillow and places it over his crotch.
“Rian,” Lyle says, his eyes scanning my body as if he has X-ray vision.
“Lyle,” I say, though not in the same flirtatious tone he said my name.
Not that he’s a bad kid, but he’s just that—a kid. Lyle’s nineteen and has followed Dylan around since he was sixteen, begging for him to take him on as an apprentice. Dylan finally had a moment of weakness last year and took him under his wing.
“You two could add Jell-O or oil to your wrestling routine,” Lyle says with a smirk.
“What do you want?” Dylan asks.
Lyle sits on the opposite end of the couch as I busy myself in the kitchen, trying to convince myself that my ass wiggling didn’t give Dylan a hard-on.
“You gotta come down to the shop. Frankie and Jax argue nonstop. It’s bringing back memories of my childhood, man.” Lyle’s voice cracks as if he’s going to cry.
“What are they fighting over?” I ask, my interest piqued. I thought for sure they’d work well together.
“Everything. His clients. Her clients. What’s for lunch. The candy Frankie brought in for clients. The magazines in the waiting area. Everything and anything. It’s like they secretly enjoy it.” Lyle pinches the bridge of his nose.
“And you’re here why?” Dylan asks.
“Because you’re the boss. Fix it. I can’t be creative in that type of environment.”
Dylan looks at me and I shrug.
“Jax actually says things?” Dylan asks, which would be my question.
Frankie definitely speaks her mind and I can see her going crazy about certain things. But Jax is pretty laid-back, allowing stuff to roll off his shoulders.