Page 32 of Scatter the Bones
“Look who’s actually here for once.” Rooster opens the back door before I even have a chance to knock. “Where ya been, cock-knocker?”
I yawn and scrub my hand over my face. “It’s too early to be so chipper.” I lift my chin, scenting the air. “But I smell coffee.”
“Help yourself.”
I fix a cup and join him at the kitchen table. The rest of the house seems still and too quiet. “Where’s our little songbird at?”
“She’s down in the city.”
“What? Why? By herself?”
He slowly sets his mug on the table and lets out a long sigh. “No,” he says with barely hidden restraint. “She’s with Angelina and Mallory.”
“You let your ol’ lady go into another club’s territory with the wife ofanotherMC’s president and his daughter? Are you nuts?”
He cocks his head and glares at me. “They’re doing a ‘girls’ weekend’ as civilians. No one’s going to bother them.”
“Surprised Chaser let them go.”
“Let them.” He rolls his eyes. “They have a driver taking them everywhere. It’s not like they’re riding the subway alone or hanging out in dark alleys.”
It sounds like he’s trying harder to convince himself everything’s fine than convince me, so I ease up on the questioning. “You okay?”
He stares at me as if he’s having an internal battle. While he’s working out whatever he wants to say, I sip my coffee. It’s nice to worry about someone else’s problems instead of my own for a few minutes.
“If I tell you this, can you please promise to keep it to yourself?” Rooster asks. “Shelby will kill me for telling anyone.”
Normally, a statement like that would make me hound him for the info but since I’m keeping a pretty hefty secret of Margot’s, I shrug. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t, then.”
He presses his lips together and frowns.
A new worry hits me. “She’s okay, right?”
“She’s fine. She just…”
“Wait.You twoare okay, right?”
“Fuck. Yes, of course.” He runs his hand over the back of his neck. “She…there’s a therapist in Manhattan who works with celebrities. Very discreet. Understands creatives supposedly.”
“Wait,therapist?”
He sighs. “All the attention she’s getting lately, the album blowing up, the award she just won…the amount of people constantly picking her appearance apart’s only gotten worse. More intense. It’s getting to her.”
“What? How? She’s gorgeous and talented. Who cares what a bunch of losers think?”
He taps his phone, setting on the table between us. “You’ve helped me comb through her socials. The shit people are comfortable saying behind the safety of their screens is?—”
“Brutal. I know, but she doesn’t actuallybelieveany of it. Besides, there are more comments praising everything about her than there are nasty ones.”
He lifts his shoulders. “I know that. And you know that…”
“Obviously she’s hot. For fuck’s sake, you never take your hands off of her.”
“Yeah,” he says in a slow, sarcastic tone. “I don’t think having me explain how hard my dick gets every time I catch her scent is the cure for what she’s going through.”
I curl my upper lip in fake disgust. “I didn’t need that image in my head.”
“Then stop being dense.”
