Will threw his arm around my shoulder, pulling me in a bit tighter to him, and I inhaled deeply, smelling the musky, manly scent of him.
I turned my face and pressed a kiss to his inner bicep, groaning when I tasted the salt on my lips.
His muscle spasmed, causing my lips to brush his skin again, this time right against my wet lips.
Jane’s eyes caught the move, and she smiled, her eyes kind of sad.
My eyes must’ve held some sort of question, because she started to explain before anyone could answer Ashlie.
“You remind me a lot of my daughter.” She paused. “Not in looks or anything. Just your age and body type. If I squint, I can still see her.”
My heart melted.
“This place used to be here back when I was a kid,” Dick explained, his voice a bit rougher than it was earlier. “Back when I was fifteen or so, a couple started it up out of their mother’s old house. It used to be a whorehouse, actually.”
“What’s a whorehouse?” Petra frowned.
Will choked on his sweet tea, and Jane made a sound underneath her breath close to that of a dying giraffe.
I was the only one not freaking out enough to answer.
“It’s a place where a man goes to meet a woman.” I went on. “The man pays the woman to spend time with them.”
Hopefully they didn’t read any more into it than that.
“I want to be a whore when I’m grown up!” Petra declared. “I hate spending time with boys. But if I got paid to do it, I just might be willing.”
Instead of choking this time, Will straight up spewed tea across the table, all over the wall directly across from him.
Luckily no one was sitting there.
I patted Will’s back, causing him to suck in a breath of air, then start coughing when he got sweet tea with his air.
“I’d rather be something other than a whore. Being a man’s anything makes me want to scream. Can you imagine having to spend time with Billy from class?” Ashlie asked. “Even if I got paid to do it, I’d still want to shoot myself.”
“Ashlie,” Jane admonished. “That’s not very nice.”
“No,” Ashlie agreed. “But he’s also a big bastard. I can’t believe that we’re going to have the same teacher again next year. I’ve spent the entire year telling him that I couldn’t wait to be rid of him and look where I will end up all over again.”
“Anyway,” Dick said, ignoring Ashlie’s words like we always did every time she said something she wasn’t supposed to—something Will told me was to be expected upon meeting them. “They built this place out of an old whorehouse.” He continued, waiting for any extra commentary, but was rewarded with silence. “They decorated the entire place up real nice, but in the end, there were a shit ton of rooms. This place looks way better now. Breaking up all the rooms added so much space. And light. Only a few of the rooms had windows, and it was such a dark place. But now I feel like I can breathe.”
“Dad was a cop, too,” Will explained, tugging me so close that there wasn’t a single sliver of space between us. “He doesn’t like when he can’t see.”
That made sense.
Now, I didn’t like when I couldn’t see, either.
It sucked.
Even worse, I didn’t like when I could see, and saw danger, and my panic attacks started to kick in.
“What’s with that look on your face, ma’am?”
I blinked, looking across the table at Petra.
“Sorry?” I asked.
Petra pointed at her eyes. “Your eyes had this faraway look to them. Are you mad?”
I thought about that for a moment.
Mad wasn’t quite the right word.
Antsy. Perturbed. Worried.
But not mad.
“Um, no.” I paused. “I was thinking about something. Oh, look. They brought rolls. I love rolls.”
I was a roll addict.
Actually, more accurately, I was a carb addict.
I loved me some carbs.
Sweets and breads were my two main vices.
They’d been something that I couldn’t have for over a year. A year of no sweets had been one of the worst things that I could think of.
Even worse, the moment I was able to have a sweet again after that, it’d hurt my stomach so bad that I couldn’t gorge myself like I’d wanted.
“I like rolls.” Petra hesitated. “But I only like it when those rolls have lots of butter.”
I snorted. “Who can eat a roll without butter?”
“Amen,” Dick concurred, pulling his butter knife out and ready to dig in the moment that the waitress set the rolls in front of us.
Dick started to spread butter on his roll before anyone else had even reached for a roll themselves.
I was just about to peel mine in half when an achingly familiar voice assaulted my ears.
“One big happy family,” Brianna narrowed her eyes at us. “Didn’t think you wanted kids, Cannel?”