She took a second to let that sink in, as if giving us a chance to change our minds, but when we all just stared down at her, she grinned. Holy hell, she was even hotter when she smiled like that.
“Well then, we have things to discuss, but that can wait. I want you five to keep your noses clean until your year is up with Harris, and then we can start turning your lives upside down. And I mean that literally as well as figuratively. No drugs.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jace assured her. “We don’t mess with that stuff.”
“Good. Because I do regular piss tests. You fail, you go to rehab. No exceptions.”
“We understand,” Cash confirmed.
“Great. I’m looking forward to working with you guys.” She smiled again and turned to leave. “I’ll be in touch,” she called over her shoulder, and Harris followed her out of the room.
The five of us stood there for several long minutes, trying to absorb what had just happened, each of us wondering if maybe we had just hallucinated the last fifteen minutes. Then Jace shook his head and we all seemed to come out of the daze Emmie Armstrong had put us under.
“Fuck yeah!” Kale yelled.
Beside me, Sin didn’t look like he was completely out from under Emmie’s spell yet. “Did that just happen?”
A grin pulled at my lips. “Hell yeah, it did, brother. You know what this means?”
“It means I get to rub it in my bastard father’s face,” Cash muttered half under his breath before he laughed wholeheartedly. “We’re going places, dickheads. Emmie fucking Armstrong is going to take us straight to the top and beyond. Just wait.”
My earlier buzz was gone, but it had been replaced with the millions of possibilities the little redhead had just given me.
“Let’s go get a drink,” Jace suggested, grabbing his wallet and his keys. “We need to celebrate.”
The others agreed, and five minutes later, we were upstairs, beers in hand as we got lost in a crowd of chicks who wanted to talk to us. But I no longer wanted to find a girl and work off the high I was on. I wanted to share the excitement of what had just happened with only one person, but she wasn’t there to celebrate with me.
I pulled her name up on my phone. It was only eleven back in Virginia, so I didn’t hesitate to call Kassa. It rang a handful of times before she finally answered, sounding groggy.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, I was only starting to doze off,” she assured me, sounding more awake now. “How did it go? Did you rock their socks off?”
I leaned back against the wall and grinned up at the ceiling. “Tonight was the best night of my life, Kas.” The smile dimmed a little though as I realized it was missing something. “Fuck, I wish you had been here.”
“Tell me about it,” she encouraged.
I closed my eyes, imagining her lying in bed with her head on her pillow and her favorite pillow hugged to her chest. I wished I had been right there beside her so I could see her face when I told her about what a firecracker Emmie had been.
“Oh my God!” she screamed when I got done telling her everything. “Gray! That’s amazing. I’m so proud of you and the guys.”
“Is that Kas?” Jace asked as he approached me. “Did you tell her?”
I glared at him, not wanting to share this moment with him and my little caterpillar. There were hundreds of people in the club, a whole slew of chicks ready to jump on his dick if he would give them ten seconds of his time. Instead, he wanted to take time away from my call with Kassa.
“It’s her.”
“Hey, Kas!” he called loud enough for her to hear him. “Love you.”
She laughed softly in my ear. “Tell him I love him too.”
“You tell him when you call him later,” I grumbled. “Or, better yet, tomorrow. You can talk to me all night.”
“Gray,” she gently scolded.
“Fine. She loves you too, dickhead.”
She sighed, but Jace only smirked.