Page 110 of On the Double

I stabbed the elevator button and waited as the numbers slowly came to this floor. Scottie stepped up beside me, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ve been assigned to help you,” he sighed. “Apparently, it takes more than one person to get Fox under control.”

“Should have sent Rae,” I grumbled.

“I heard Harper went back to work today. How are you dealing with that?”

“What are you talking about?” I frowned, not understanding his meaning.

“Well, just that it has to be hard. Her accident probably freaked you out. I mean, you really haven’t been around for weeks. And now she’s going back to work. She could get hurt or overdo it.” He shrugged. “I’m just saying, it’s gotta be freaking you out.”

It was. I really didn’t want her going back at all, but it wasn’t my decision. “Nope,” I answered, shoving all that crap down.

“Man, you don’t have to hide it from me. It’s not like I’m gonna run out and tell everyone you’ve developed feelings for her.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What?”

“I get it. You don’t want to feel this way, but it’s not like you can help it.”

“It’s just fucking,” I reminded him, stepping onto the elevator as the doors opened.

“Sure, I know you tell yourself that.”

I punched the button and turned to him, crossing my arms over my chest. “No, I’m not telling myself that. That’s the way it really is.”

“Edu, you haven’t been to work in weeks. Are you really trying to tell me that she means nothing to you?”

“She does. She’s a fucking fantastic lay. I like having her in my bed.”

“But it goes no further,” he chuckled. “Sure.”

“Believe what you want. I don’t give a fuck.”

As the doors opened, I stepped out, my skin prickling with irritation at the way he laughed at me. He thought he knew what was going on in my head, but he didn’t have a fucking clue. I wasn’t falling for her and I could kick her out of my bed whenever I wanted.

“So, if you don’t give a fuck, why are we going to stop Fox from doing his thing?”

“Because we need him for the job,” I retorted. “If you had been in the meeting, you would know that.”

“If you had been here at all over the last few weeks, you would know that this has been going on for at least a week now. Why the fuck are you fighting this? What the hell happened that you can’t stand to admit that you have feelings for this woman? Are you really going to just walk away after everything you’ve been through with her?”

Anger washed over me and for a moment, I thought of knocking him out. But that would only prove his point. “Yeah, I really intend on walking away.”

He didn’t say anything else as we made our way to my truck, but I felt him judging me the whole way. He had the perfect life with Quinn. Everything was just as he wanted, just like everyone else around here. And they all thought I needed to have the same thing. But what they didn’t get and never would was that I didn’t want what they had. I couldn’t care less about family and kids. I didn’t want a white picket fence. I didn’t want a family dog or a woman to come home to every night.

I wanted a woman to spread her legs for me, and that was it. And I had that with Harper. She was well aware of what our situation was, and she wasn’t trying to change that. Yeah, from time to time, I caught her daydreaming, but it was usually about something I was going to do to her in the bedroom. If it was anything more, she was keeping that to herself.

Still, as we drove into town and pulled up in front of the IGA, I couldn’t help but think that maybe it was time to end all of this. If not only for my own sanity, so the guys would stop thinking that I was going to fall in love and settle down, but I also needed to do it so Harper didn’t get too comfortable.

“Fucking hell,” I grumbled as we pulled into the IGA parking lot. “He has a following.”

Fox was marching in a line in front of the IGA with twenty other people who were all holding signs, chanting about saving the avocado farmers. “Where did he find all these people?”

“And why are they protesting in front of the store?” Scottie pondered. “It’s not like the grocery store that can help the farmers.”

I shoved my door open and got out, marching toward the crowd.