As much as I wanted to, I had to beat back calling him an asshole even in my head. I'd promised myself I wouldn't do that anymore. Another promise I'd lined up neatly in a row along the way.
"That's just the way he is," yia-yia had said time and time again despite how much mom and I had wanted to fight his true nature.
So, so ignorant to the fact that you can't fight a person's instincts even if they were awful, even if they caused bad and painful things to those they should have cared about.
"I knew you'd be the one to make it through the whole day," Sonny claimed in his own individual voice that resembled nothing like our dad's gravelly draw. Thank God.
Wait a second though.
"What do you mean?" I suddenly had a feeling that my brother had fed me to the heavily tattooed wolves—well, one wolf in particular. On friggin' purpose.
Sonny looked at me, his hazel eyes—the color that we'd both inherited from our sperm donor—narrowed. And then he coughed. "There were a few people before you, kid."
He'd been calling me kid for so long that it didn't even faze me anymore. Even if it did, he'd probably call me that more often. What did faze me was the gnawing feeling he was hiding something. "And?"
"Most of them didn't last past the introduction. Much less a couple hours." He flashed that lazy grin again. "I knew you would though."
It was my turn to narrow my eyes at him. Sonny had never lied to me before. He was unapologetic about everything he did. If anything, it'd been me who had kept things from him until the absolute last minute. Even past the last minute, and yet, he'd always forgiven me for lying. At least eventually he did. I wasn't going to think that he'd start spouting crap now.
"I don't think that he likes anything very much."
Sonny snorted. "Last I heard from Trip, he'd called six people into the shop to get interviewed for that job."
Six people? Oh boy.
Before I could focus on the idea of six individuals before me getting the boot, he thrust a game controller into my hand and tilted his head toward the massive flat screen mounted to the wall. If it was strange that he was changing the subject so abruptly, I didn't catch onto it. "You can survive anything, kid, right?"
Damn him. Those were the same words I'd thrown back at him each time the rabbit hole had seemed to pop out of nowhere.
Chapter Three
"So you just moved from Florida?"
I smiled out of the corner of my eye at Blake, who was sprawled out on the empty couch by the reception desk, casually.
It was only my second day at Pins and Needles. Dex had already been waiting when I'd shown up ten minutes until four. Under the natural sunlight, his tattoos seemed to pop out even more starkly against the smooth, lightly tanned skin beneath the ink. Blues and reds and blacks fought a battle I didn't think any of them were capable of winning on the majestic scale.
Especially not when they were stamped onto the nearly flawless, somewhere around six foot three form.
Why couldn't he have been ugly at least? For some reason, dealing with an impatient, unattractive person seemed easier to swallow than a smoking hot one.
He was standing outside of the building—why, I didn't have a clue. He had a key, he could have gone in but I wasn't going to bother asking. The less interaction we had the better, it seemed.
His fit frame leaned against the stonewashed walls that separated Pins from the real estate agency. He had a cigarette nestled between two fingers, taking deep drags as he faced forward. Just like the day before, his black t-shirt stretched across his chest and arms, the only light color on him was the faded denim jeans that molded to his legs.
Nice legs. Thick thighs. But most importantly, the thighs of a jerk.
“Good afternoon.” The words had barely left my mouth and I was cringing. Had I really just said good afternoon? Awkward, so friggin’ awkward, Iris. I had to shake myself out of thinking about his thighs and how uncomfortable I’d made myself feel as I pulled my purse closer to my chest and forced a tight smile on my face.
The moment I was close enough to him, he flickered his gaze over in my direction and glanced at his watch. "I don't like waitin' around." Dex took another pull from the cigarette before dropping it on the ground, crushing it with the sole of his motorcycle boot.
What?
For a split second, I got the urge to check my watch but I didn't. I knew what time would be on the face. Three-fifty. Not four o'clock. Three-fifty. What in the heck was this psycho babbling about?
"I'm ten minutes early," I told him, standing five feet away so that I wouldn't come in contact with the fumes from his smoking.