Cocky Roomie_ A Bad Boy Romance Novel(49)
“Yeah. Okay.” I get up to walk him out, but he stops me.
“No, stay. I know the way.” A charming smile flashes as he meets my eyes. “My brother likes you.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I hope we can be friends.” Fuck that hurts even to say.
“He likes you more than that, Drew. And P.S., I don’t remember him ever bringing a girl to a family dinner.” Jason bows. “WOMAN. Excuse me. Not a girl.” He spins around with style and I wait for the click of the closing front door before I breathe again.
I don’t move for a very long time. There are so many things swirling around my brain now that he’s told me his side. They were in love, he and Bernie. Or at least he was in love with her. She might have loved him. Who knows what Bernie feels anymore?
Oh Jake…why’d you have to sleep with her? Is she really that hard to resist? I saw you melting when she said thanks for letting her stay over. I saw the look on your face, the one I’ve seen on so many men’s faces when they talk to her.
Why’d you have to break my heart like this?
JAKE
“I told you not to talk to her, Jason.”
His voice is as clear as if he weren’t over a thousand miles away. “Sorry, man. Had to.”
“When was this?”
“Well, you’re coming back tomorrow so it was, what…” He pauses. “I don’t know. More than two weeks back.”
“He fucking talked to Drew behind my back,” I mutter to Jett who’s sitting beside me at Lincoln’s Road House.
Jett calls through a calloused, cupped hand, “You’re an asshole, Jason!”
Jason laughs. “Tell him I said it takes one to know one.”
“I’ll do that,” I smile. “I’d put you on speaker but the music is too loud.”
“I can hear that. The Eagles. Predictable.”
“Jason hates the Eagles, apparently,” I mutter to Jett.
Jett shouts at the phone, “That’s because Jason likes that Hip Hop bullshit.”
On an amused chuckle, Jason tells me, “Fuck I miss that guy. You’re so lucky.”
“I am. We’ve been hanging out a lot. It’s been good.” I look over at Jett who stares ahead with a smile in his eyes. Not one for sentimentality, but he feels the same as I do. I think he needed to reconnect with me as badly as I did with him. “Well, I hate to tell you this Jason, but it didn’t work. She hasn’t responded to my texts.”
Jason pauses in surprise. “What the fuck? Well, that’s weird, man, I don’t understand it.”
“Women,” I mutter in agreement.
We hang up and I lay my phone on the bar. Gwen, the bartender whose ass Jett has been tapping for the last week or so, smiles at him as she walks up. “Another round?”
“Oh yeah,” he smirks.
“Sick fuck.”
“You know it, Gwen.”
She grins over her shoulder and goes for the fridge to grab more beer. He turns toward me, and doesn’t watch. It’s this motion that lets me know he’s not that into her. He didn’t even look at her ass. I doubt they’ll hook up even one more time, knowing my brother.
“Dwight missed a meeting today.”
I stare at him, realizing what that could mean. “You’re shittin’ me.”
“I am not.”
“Did he fall off the wagon?”
“Not yet. But I think we went soft on him. Tonk’s connected with him more than the rest of us, which Scratch saw comin’. But I told Tonk he’s gotta stay tough. It’s not a man we’re fightin’. It’s the disease.” Jett glances over as Gwen pops tops off our bottles and sets the frosty fuckers down. “Thanks, babe.” He hands me mine and we tap them together. “Thank God we don’t have that bite, man.”
“Pure luck.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Because I would hate to stop the days when I enjoyed a cold brew.” He takes a good-sized gulp and sets it down on the counter, hard.
“Hey!” a guy shaped like a bear shouts. “Your name Jett?”
I glance over since the guy is in my eye-line. Jett turns around really slowly to take a look. “Yeah?”
The guy barrels over with fire shooting out of his ears. “You’re messing with my brother.”
“I’m not into men, Grizzly Adams. No matter how hairy.”
The guy reacts. “You callin’ me a—”
“—I’m tellin’ you I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re sellin’.” He motions up and down the hulking frame looming over us. “No matter how ugly.”
The guy reaches back to punch Jett. It’s on. I leap up as two more guys jump off their chairs.