Overtime Read online

  She beamed. “It is, but just wait. After dinner, we are going shopping.”

  Letting his head fall back in a dramatic fashion, he groaned loudly. “I don’t want to!”

  She kicked him under the table, grinning as he laughed, picking his phone back up. Scrolling again, he said, “Hazel?”

  “Hell no,” she shot down with a full mouth, and he scoffed as he scrolled some more. “So, I think I found a place for the gym.”

  He looked up, his phone falling to the table. Before he could say anything though, he noticed that she had guacamole all over her chin. Chuckling, he reached over, wiping her chin before she smiled sheepishly and he asked, “Where at?”

  “Actually down the road from Audrey Jane’s,” she said and Jordie smiled.

  “What, stalk the place for overweight people?”

  She gave him an annoyed look. “I was actually thinking that maybe I could do a thing—buy five classes, get a cupcake.”

  “Doesn’t that counteract your mission?”

  “No, everyone has to cheat sometimes or they’ll binge. Plus, Audrey has a couple healthy…okay, one healthy cupcake.”

  “No one wants a cupcake that’s healthy.”

  “Well, duh, but they could go and try.”

  Jordie laughed. “Yeah, okay. When can we go look at it?”

  “Tomorrow, if you’re not busy.”

  “I’m never busy for you,” he said with a wink before looking down at his phone. “How about Raleigh?”

  “I like Kaleigh more,” she said and he rolled his eyes as he kept scrolling. As he said every girl name he liked and she shot it down, he decided he might as well accept that this was going to be hell.

  “Are you excited it’s a girl?”

  He looked up, grinning. “I’m just excited that she is healthy, that I am marrying you, and that we are happy.”

  She shot him a grin as she leaned on her hand. “When are we getting married?”

  He shrugged. “Whenever you want. Do you want a big wedding or a small?”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, I’ve been watching Say Yes to the Dress a lot, and I think I want to do the whole big wedding production thing.”

  His mouth pulled up at the side. “I think you spent too much time trying to act like a boy and now you are making up for it.”

  She shrugged, her eyes falling to the ring he had given her. It fit her large, beautiful hands perfectly now and shined, even in the dim restaurant. “Probably, but I want my dad to give me away and all that sweet shit.”

  “Sounds good to me. Just set a day, and I’ll show up.”

  “Probably not in what I pick out for you,” she scolded and he nodded.

  “Probably not,” he agreed before he paused. “How about Avery Mae?”

  She tested the name a few times and shrugged. “I don’t like Mae with that, but I like Avery.”

  “Cool,” he said as she typed it out on her phone. As he looked for another name, his phone signaled a text, and he was surprised when it was from Natasha. He hadn’t heard from her in months and not for lack of trying. He had sent her a few texts, checking in, but she was always very short with him, one-word answers or sometimes not even answering him. Clicking on the text, he felt Kacey looking at him as he read it.

  Natasha: I’m in town.

  Licking his lips free of dip, he typed back quickly.

  Jordie: Cool, what for?

  Natasha: Medical conference at Vanderbilt.

  Jordie: Cool. I haven’t heard from you lately.

  “Who’s that?” Kacey asked and he smiled.

  “Just a friend,” he answered. “Just a second, babe.”

  Natasha: Yeah, been busy, but I want to see you.

  Jordie: Well, I’ll have to see when I can. Season’s in full swing and I have a lot going on.

  Natasha: What you mean is that your girlfriend won’t let you out of her sight.

  He rolled his eyes.

  Jordie: You mean my fiancée? And she would, she’s not crazy.

  Natasha: She looks it and sounds like a bitch.

  His brows came together in confusion, as Kacey asked, “What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer her, looking around, and then spotting Natasha rising from behind a booth across the restaurant. She looked beautiful of course, but that was Natasha. She was a hot chick, just not the chick he wanted. Brushing her dark hair off her shoulders, she was wearing a killer black dress that showed every curve of her body and a whole lot of leg, strappy heels completing the outfit in a way that would have had him in knots before. But now, he felt nothing.

  She was a friend.

  “Who’s that?” Kacey asked, smacking his arm as Natasha made her way to their table. Natasha’s eyes locked on his, mischief and anger in the depths of her brown eyes as she strutted toward him. Something in her eyes though told him that this wasn’t going to be good, and when she opened her mouth, his assumption was correct.

  “I’m the chick he was fucking to forget you.”

  Well. Fuck.

  “Excuse me?”

  Kacey’s eyes widened as she cut a look at Jordie, heat creeping up her throat.

  “Oh, did you not hear me?” the gorgeous chick, who had obviously just stepped out of a magazine and into her favorite Mexican restaurant, said, her eyes dark and malicious. “I said that I’m the chick he was fucking when he was trying to forget you.” She said it like Kacey was dumb or didn’t understand, but she fully understood. She just didn’t understand why she was coming to their table with that.

  “I mean, there is no need for that. Natasha, what’s your problem?” Jordie said as he set his phone down, his brows furrowed.

  Kacey tore her gaze from his and back to Natasha’s, since she was staring at her almost as if she were sizing her up. “I heard you good and well. But why would I care?”

  Natasha laughed, and even her laugh was a soft, raspy sound that one would hear in a porno. “Because he loves me.”

  Kacey’s eyes widened more as she whipped her gaze to him, but he scoffed. “No, I don’t, and I told you that plenty of times.”

  “So you know her?” Kacey demanded and he shrugged.

  “Yeah, I hooked up with her in New Orleans,” he said simply, and she swore her blood pressure rose even more.

  “Remember, when you were texting him every five seconds, begging him to be with you?”

  Kacey’s head whipped back to Natasha, her eyes narrowing. “I never begged, and you don’t know me or my relationship with him. You were just a night of fucking.”

  “Oh, it was more than a night, and we’ve kept in touch ever since. So obviously I meant something to him if I was going to rehab to visit him.”

  Kacey swore her eyes couldn’t widen any more. Looking across the table at a gaping Jordie, she glared. “What!” she roared, and Jordie shook his head.

  “You are my friend, Natasha, or were. Because the way you are acting is not okay. I don’t love you. I never have, or will.”

  “She went to rehab to see you?” Kacey asked incredulously.

  “Oh yeah, girl. All those nights he needed someone to talk to, he called me and we’d talk for hours. I know everything about you two’s relationship and his alcoholism. And I helped him through that while you had no clue about anything.”

  Kacey’s heart was pounding in her chest because, surely, this wasn’t happening. Jordie couldn’t reach out to her, but he could to the porn star who was standing in front of their table.

  “He does love me. He’s just fighting his feelings, not realizing how good we are together and how he’s breaking my heart not wanting to be with me,” Natasha said then, her eyes falling on Jordie. “I know I haven’t been in contact, but it just hurts. You really mean something to me.”

  Kacey was sure she was having a panic attack as her heart jumped up and down in her throat, her belly turning. He trusted this person he didn’t even know—someone who started out as just a fuck—over her?

  “