Hold On (Page 97)

“Merry,” she called.

He lifted his head. “Get out.”

“But…Merry—”

He leaned her way and clipped, “Get…the fuck…out.”

She studied him, and when his body shifted, she said quickly, “Maybe we should find a time to talk when we’ve both calmed down.”

“Fuckin’ shit,” he muttered and moved, taking the only option she was giving him.

He went to his jacket and shrugged it on. He grabbed his phone, shoved it in his pocket, and nabbed his keys.

He then went to the door and looked back to his ex-wife, who had only moved a few feet from the wall.

“I’m goin’ out,” he shared. “I don’t got much I give a shit about, though it’d suck havin’ to buy a new TV. Now you can either get out so I can lock up and keep that TV, or you can stay until you finally catch my drift. All I ask is you close the door. If you’re here when I come back, I’ll go to a hotel. What I am not gonna do is spend more time with you. You got five seconds. What’s it gonna be?”

“Merry, you can’t just…”

She kept talking, but Garrett didn’t listen.

He counted to five.

Then he walked out, closing the door behind him while Mia was still talking.

* * * * *

Garrett got fast food for dinner, trying to calm down before he hit J&J’s.

He would find he didn’t succeed when he opened the door, his eyes going behind the bar to see Cher there with Jack. She took one look at him and her face shifted from the grin that was starting into a freeze.

She began walking down the bar.

He moved in, taking it in.

It was relatively early on a Saturday night, but the place was in full swing. Darryl was there and Dee was working the floor.

Jack and Cher had the bar.

But the stools at the end were all empty, waiting for the men who usually claimed them. None of them were there mostly because all of them had women they preferred to be with on a Saturday night, so they wouldn’t be at a bar unless their women were with them.

Except Merry.

Like Colt, his woman worked there.

He hit a stool and she was right in front of him.

He barely had his ass on the seat before she remarked, “I’d say this was a nice surprise except you look like you wanna kill somebody.”

“Mia’s heard about us.”

She stared at him before she turned and reached to the top-shelf whisky.

Yeah, they knew each other. This wasn’t just starting out. They’d laid the foundation. They’d just added fucking fantastic sex and expensive dinners and him getting more of Cher’s smart mouth.

And her sweet.

“Baby, aim lower. I got a taste for the good stuff, but my budget’s bein’ revised,” he said.

He saw her body jolt, she gave him a look over her shoulder, then she reached lower.

As she poured him his drink, he took in her tight red top, her ass in her jeans, and her high heels. Finally, he felt himself calming.

“Good news is, the talk me and her had to have is done,” he shared.

She set the bottle aside and leaned in to her forearms. “Yeah?”

“Not the way I wanted it to go,” he said.

When he took a sip of whisky and didn’t elucidate, she prompted, “Talk to me, gorgeous.”

Garrett shrugged slightly.

“Said what I had to say,” he told her. “Seein’ as she came in pissed as all hell, thinkin’ me goin’ out with you was me testin’ her, not sure she heard. She said a few words. I returned a fuckuva lot more. Not thinkin’ she got me seein’ as I told her to get her ass out, but she didn’t leave, so I did. She might still be at my place. Or, alternately, she left, leavin’ my pad wide open and I’ll get home later to find I need to go out and buy a new TV.”

As he spoke, he watched her eyes get big, and when he was done, she asked, “You left her there?”

“Yeah. Closed the door on her, she was still talkin’.”

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

“She wouldn’t leave and I was done, so I had no choice.”

Her lips twitched.

He might be calming, but he found not one thing funny.

“It wasn’t the way I wanted it to go, Cher,” he reminded her.

“You walked out with your ex-wife in your place,” she stated.

“Couldn’t strong-arm the bitch,” he pointed out. “She was okay with shovin’ me, but man’s any man at all, he’s got it in him to check it even if he’s itchin’ to shove back.”

Her lips were no longer twitching.

“She shoved you?”

“Twice.”

He saw that he might be calming, but Cher was not.

“You’re fucking shitting me,” she spat.

No, she was not calming, and as cute as she looked, preparing to turn into a hellcat for him, it was time to focus on calming her.

“It’s done. May take a while, but if the words don’t sink in, my actions will. Only thing I gotta worry about now is hittin’ my place later and findin’ it cleaned out. I got a plan to take my girl’s boy out with her and her mom to celebrate his birthday at Swank’s. Won’t be able to do that if I gotta drop two large on a TV.”

That did it. All the anger vanished when he talked about taking Ethan to Swank’s for his birthday.

But her lips parted when he talked about dropping two grand on a television.

“Two large?” she asked, her eyebrows going up.

“Gotta get a new one, not gonna fuck around. Trade up. Eighty inches.”