“Kayla?”The voice I was expecting the least asks.
"Yes. What do you need, Justin?" I sigh loudly. Now he has my phone number as well. Double torture, fantastic.
“We need to talk.”
“Okay.” We do need to talk, but I’m so not in the mood for him today. Hard to believe that if he said that to me yesterday, I’d drop everything and jump at the opportunity to spend some time with him, where we can talk like humans without throwing insults at each other. Or more like him throwing them at me and me deflecting them.
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“I’m not going to talk about anything with you today. I'm tired, and I'm going home. Come tomorrow." I hang up on him. In my wildest dreams, I’ve never hung up on Justin. I always thought when he'd be ready to talk, I'd be there. But he took too long, and now I have nothing to say.
“Boyfriend troubles?” Archie gives me a lopsided grin, popping that sexy dimple again.
I laugh. I’ve never had a boyfriend, so I wouldn’t know what those specific troubles are. “No. Just fighting over turf.” Assuming Freya and Alex are that turf.
He laughs. “I’m scared to ask.”
“Yeah, don’t.” I bite my lip because it does sound weirdly funny. I give my phone to Archie. “Go ahead.”
“Thanks.” He punches something in, and his forehead creases. “Huh.”
“What?” I ask, seeing his confused face.
“You know Alex?” His eyes are trained on my face.
“What? Did you check my phone log?” My hackles rise.
“What? No!” His voice rises an octave, defensive. “I dialed my friend’s number, and his name showed up.” He shows me the phone. “See?”
“So, you know Alex, too?”
“Yeah. We served together. Our last two tours.” His tone is light, but his eyes say there are not many light memories in there.
“Oh!” My IQ is astonishing.
“I’m actually here to see him. And I almost made it.” He laughs, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Oh!” Again with that high intelligence. “I can give you a ride.”
“Really?” He looks so hopeful it’s almost funny.
“Yeah. I need to drop something off for Freya, so it’ll be on the way.” I shrug my shoulders.
“That’d be cool. I don’t want to call ahead and give Alex a chance to escape somewhere.” I chuckle at his statement—that does sound like Alex. “He invited me in a moment of weakness, and I took the chance.”
“I bet the moment was Freya,” I suggest with a chuckle.
“She was.” He smiles. Freya was what Alex needed to cure himself from that typical survivor’s guilt and PTSD. He wanted to be better for her and left to get help. We never talked about that, but I’m not blind. A man can’t come back whole after what he sees out there, and Alex’s been hiding in his shell for far too long. Freya’s got some big balls on her feminine frame, and she’s not scared to show them.
"Let me lock everything up, and I'll be ready." I speed up my cleaning so we can go.
“Do you need help?” He offers, rubbing his hands together.
"That's sweet of you to offer, but I'm good. Thanks, though."
I’m about to take my apron off when the door bursts open, and the mass of Justin bursts in. When I say a mass, I mean it. He’s rushed like somebody’s chasing him. All his finesse is lost.
When he sees Archie standing next to the bar, his eyes squint. He walks to us and takes a seat at the bar, eyeballing Archie and me. I stop moving and look at him. "What are you doing here?"
