“Well, I guess I’ll have to step up my game,” I tell her.
The hostess leads us through the private entrance of the modern design dining area. The place is packed, but, other than a few curious glances, we remain ignored mostly. It works out better than I hoped.
We are seated in a private dining room. The long oval table is surrounded by ten rust-colored chairs in the same modern theme as the rest of the place. We are handed menus and asked for our wine choice. I let her order what she wants because I don’t drink wine. “Jack single barrel please,” I say.
“I can’t drink an entire bottle of wine alone,” Tori tells me with a smirk.
“I bet that’s not true,” I smirk. “You strike me as the type of girl that can hold her liquor.”
“Know many girls like that do ya?”
I laugh with a shake of my head. “No, actually I only know one. My sister. She used to match Jax and I shot for shot.”
I feel a twinge of sadness and guilt. My sister now gets to go through several weeks of therapy and drug rehab.I have a feeling she won’t be sharing a drink with me again. I guess the change of my mood is pretty apparent because Tori reaches across the table for my hand.
“You and Zoey are close?”
“And Jax,” I nod. “The last year has been fucking hell.”
“Tell me about it. About her.”
And I do. I tell about the time that Zoey punched me in the face for scaring her with a mask at Halloween. I remember the time the three of us snuck out to watch a meteor shower in the back yard after my parents went to bed.
I ask her about herself. I know she has a brother. Maddox told me that’s the drummer she was hanging onto the other night.
“I never knew my dad at all. My mom was a drug addict. She dumped me when I was seven and I haven’t heard a word since, so I spent my entire life in foster care.”
“Shit,” I say dragging my hand over my mouth. “That’s rough.”
She waves me off. “It’s okay actually. When I was thirteen, I ran away from my foster parents. I spent a few weeks on the streets until one day I ran into Pete. He brought me home with him. He knew a few people and became my foster dad, but he’s more than that. Pete is my dad.”
“He just took you in. Wow, he must be some kind of saint.”
She laughs with a nod. “Yeah, I think that sometimes myself.”
She tells me how she met Dane by total accident. How he’d been looking for her for years, and how he found their younger sister and got custody of her.
I tell her more about my parents and Zoey and Jax.
“So Jax’s parents just let him stay with you guys all the time?” she asks with surprise.
“Yeah. Either he was with us or we were with him. They saw the bond between us. And Zoey and I got a couple of older brothers out of the mix.”
“Jax has two older brothers?”
“Just one. And their cousin Sebastian.”
I don’t say too much more about Rory or Bastian. I don’t delve into the relationship I have with them outside of the normal stuff. I definitely don’t talk about River City mafia or my involvement. But we do talk football, that she tells me she knows nothing about. She just knows I play.
I think I have shared more about myself than I have shared with a woman in years. The last person I shared all this with was Lacy. There hasn’t been anyone else I’ve wanted to share with since her. Until now.
“Would you like to go somewhere else or do you need to go home?” I ask her as we walk out of the restaurant.
She looks me over for a minute with a smile. I can already see in her eyes what she wants to say, but I also can see what she’s going to say.
She’s the kind of girl that is fine with sex on the first date. She’s perfectly comfortable with a one-night stand too. But that’s not what’s going to happen tonight.
“I should probably go home,” she finally answers.
