Wait For You

Chapter 5: The Outrageous Pride

𝔸𝕕𝕠𝕟𝕚𝕤 ℂ𝕣𝕖𝕖𝕕

Goddamn it, I've lost my fucking mind.

I went back into the bedroom, ensuring I had my wallet phone, and room key, and I headed down the hall to Duke's suite.

"About time, motherfucker," Duke said as he opened his door. "I was wondering if you were going to show up."

I pounded his fist and replied, "I've been busy."

"I hope that means you've been with Miss Therapy Specialist?"

When I'd returned to the sportsbook several hours ago, I'd shared a few small details with the guys. They hadn't given me a choice—the questions had started the moment I sat my ass down.

"You know it," I told him.

He gripped my shoulder. "Fuck, man. Get it in on your second day in Philly, and now you're falling head over heels with the new girl."

Women didn't take up real estate in my brain.

They left as quickly as they came. I didn't have time for them to stick around. My life moved far too fast for that—traveling, work, traveling for work, a vicious cycle that repeated weekly. Since graduating from law school, I didn't ask for phone numbers. I didn't memorize addresses. Women were like a bold, heavy cabernet while eating a five-hundred-dollar Kobe steak. They enhanced the experience, but they weren't the star of the show.

The star was working.

It always had been; it always would be.

Except this little beauty with long black hair and glittering brown eyes was etched in a space I couldn't erase.

And I didn't know what the fuck to do about it.

I looked at Manny. "Do you have something you want to say to me?"

He smiled. "Do you want to hear it?"

I laughed.

I knew where this was going.

Since Manny was dating Jacqueline now and Duke was engaged to Georgia Ryne—the most popular actress in Hollywood—they thought they knew it all. They had every goddamn answer. Like they were fucking psychologists in any situation that involved women.

I couldn't wait to hear this.

"Sure, bring it," I told him.

"You like her, and you don't know what the fuck to do about it."

Now, I laughed. I laughed so hard that my head fell back.

" You have no idea what the hell you're talking about. She lives in LA, and she's married,"

" But, what she's not married, You've still be deeply in love with marriage or no marriage, " Manny told me.

No, I wasn't putting my brain there.

"You seem to be forgetting all the hell you and Manny put me through when I kept rejecting the idea of dating Georgia," Duke said.

The start of his relationship had been a rocky ride. And Manny and I had been there for it all, holding his damn hand.

"I get it," I told him. "But this is premature."

"I thought that, too, at the beginning," Duke admitted. "Except the second I laid eyes on my girl, deep down, I knew she was going to be mine. That feeling came over me, and I fought it for as long as I could, but I couldn't get her out of my goddamn mind."

Fuck me.

The only thing I wanted at this moment was to wrap my hands around her waist and haul her body up against mine, make her mine.