Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
I hesitated, chewed my bottom lip, then nodded to myself. I knew my studio inside and out, and there was a pretty easy way to get in through the bathroom window. Did it matter that Jax owned the place now?
No, of course it didn’t. It wasn’t as if I’d run into him there or anything.
Chapter 27
Jax
The woman still hadn’t called me. She still hadn’t damn well called, and I wasn’t the man who sat around with a thumb up his ass for someone else to make a move. It’d been three fucking days since we’d last spoken, and I’d caught myself glancing at my phone too many times.
This would end now.
I forced myself up from behind my chromed-out desk and charged toward the misted glass door that let out of my office.
Fuck, for the first time since Bane had bought the damn building, this felt like my office. I’d never spent as much time in it as I had since Riley had left my apartment. The place was empty to me without her there. And walking into the guest room was out of the question.
Her smell was on everything. It was a lavender-and-vanilla-scented hell in there, peppered with memories of her naked body supple and willing beneath my fingertips. I’d have her again. I’d have her all fucking night.
I reached for the door handle and froze mid-grab.
A shape appeared on the other side of that misted glass.
It can’t be her.
I turned the handle, my pulse racing for the first time in my life—hadn’t done that out of nerves since I’d picked a fight with Jimmy No-Hands out on the streets after the first time I’d run from home. The fucker had gotten the nickname for breaking hands, not because he didn’t have any.
The door swung inward, and all the hope or excitement disappeared as quickly as it’d come on. Frustration replaced it. I flexed my fingers, raised an eyebrow. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Cole.” Veronica stood on the threshold of my office, arms across her chest, her blue eyes nearly identical to mine, blonde hair the same shade. She was a mess. She had a rip in her T-shirt and a look on her face that would’ve terrified a hardened criminal.
“Where’s your kid?” I asked and peered past her.
“Nessy’s with a babysitter,” she replied. “Not that you’ve ever given a shit about your niece.”
“As far as I can recall, no one told me I had a niece until a month ago.”
Veronica hissed. “Well, there sure were plenty of things you didn’t tell me.” She was insistent I’d never made an effort to reconnect with her, and sure, I probably could’ve done more than a few voice messages and missed calls, but at least I’d fucking tried. It took a lot for me to try for anyone, least of all a sister who clearly had a stick rammed so far up her ass it’d become her spine.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“To come in,” she replied, then licked her lips. “Please, Cole.”
“Jax,” I replied. “My name’s not Cole anymore, Veronica. Cole was a person who wound up on the street, who got lost in the prison system. That facet of me was learned from, it was absorbed. This is who I am.” I stepped back and let her into the office then shut the door. I walked around to the windows and leaned my forearm against one, looked down on Miami, again. “Where’s Riley?” I asked.
“I think you know where she is,” Veronica replied. “At my apartment.”
“How would I know that?”
“Oh, come on, I wasn’t born yesterday. I know what kind of man you are. You’ve got your fingers in every pie and your ear to the ground, and that tells me one thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you don’t want her. That you’re using her. Why else would you have let her move out? Or rather, why else would you have kicked her out? Why else would you not have come to see her by now?” Veronica was on a roll now. I eyed my sister askance. She was puffed up, trembling, and red as a fucking tomato. “You don’t care about her. You used her to get what you wanted and threw her out. I’m surprised you haven’t bought her studio yet and—”
“I did buy her studio,” I replied evenly.
“I knew it.”
“And I didn’t kick her out.” Why the hell would she even say that? “Riley was insistent on distancing herself from me for no good reason other than that she was scared of what being with me would entail.”
“Being with you? Being with—?” She cut off, shaking her head. “I don’t understand. You’re that guy. The one who fucks women and leaves them in the dirt of their regret. You don’t want to be with anyone, and that’s exactly why this thing with Riley is a disaster.”