Wild Forces: A Friends to Lovers Romance (O-Town Book 2) by Karen Renee (summer reads .TXT) 📕

me he was talking about me. I flicked him my middle finger, and went to put on some gym clothes.

CLINT STOOD BEHIND my head as I bench-pressed the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bar. I wondered if I was taking my life in my own hands when he spotted for me, because his attention was always split between me and any women walking around the gym.

Before I could give him shit about it, as I did every time we worked out, he gazed down at me. “How many gigs do you have lined up at Club Eclectic?”

I moved the bar to the stand and sat up. “Three more before Pruitt gets to renegotiate my contract.”

“Know you aren’t there often, but what’s your take on that place?”

I shrugged. “He needs to specialize. He’s not targeting LGBTQ, but he isn’t going full throttle to target heterosexuals either. He also isn’t hitting the college kids hard enough. He wants to see what the club will be. Wants it to play out like the name, let it be eclectic. That shit won’t work since he’s just starting out. Every business needs a target customer, you know.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“No, but I asked how long before he’ll focus his efforts. He couldn’t or wouldn’t say.”

Clint nodded. “You are a contractor to him. I can see him keeping tight on that.”

I tilted my head toward my shoulder and back. “Yeah, but it helps for any DJ to know the crowd they’re playing to.”

“What do you mean?”

“My first gig there, he had a completely mixed bag. There were people in their forties there, and college-aged people. A well-dressed whiskey-drinking man wants me to play nineties hip-hop, I’m not gonna say no. That’s bad all around, right?”

“Right,” he drawled.

“End of the night, Ryan gave me shit about it, since he watched groups of twenty-somethings walk out the door while the song played.”

“Yeah, but did he see your point?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. He asked how I knew Cassie.”

Clint’s chin dipped. “What’s Cassie got to do with it?”

“She’s working there. In the office, but she worked late the night of my first gig, and I ran into her.”

Clint’s lips twisted skeptically, but he motioned for me to get up, and he took my spot on the bench.

I moved behind him. “Not gonna add more weight?”

“Not today,” He muttered and gripped the bar. “What are you gonna do with the cash?”

His abrupt subject change caught me off guard. “What cash?”

“Don’t play dumb. Brock told me about the inheritance.” He grunted as he lifted the weight.

“I don’t know, except I really don’t want it.”

Clint snorted. “Damn, Brock wasn’t joking when he said you weren’t smart. Some bitch wants to give me two-hundred and fifty grand, I’m all over that. Besides, you damn sure need a new truck.”

I sighed since the latest repairs had set me back over five hundred dollars. “Yeah, but I’m not getting a new truck because she gave me the money for it.”

He racked the barbell but didn’t sit up. “To hear Brock tell it, she’s been providing—”

“I don’t care. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna give in now.”

He began another set. “Stubbornness don’t pay the bills, Gabe.”

“Yeah, well, resentment isn’t healthy either. And a truck would fill me with resentment every day.”

When he rested the weight on the rack, he said, “Must be nice to turn down so much money.”

“Whatever. I’m outta here, man,” I muttered.

I made a quick trip to the locker room and drove home.

Cassie

“WHAT ELSE DO YOU HAVE to tell me?” I asked my sister.

“Oh, yes, your cat died,” Sera said off-handedly.

I gasped. “No! Mom died?”

She sighed. “Mom the cat, yes. Not our mother.”

I blew out a breath as tears welled in my eyes. “Of course, because God forbid, I call my mother anything but what you call her.”

“If there’s nothing else, Cassandra...”

“Where is she? Is Dad burying her?”

She sighed again. “I don’t know. You’ll have to call him to find out. Now, I’m sorry for your loss, but really, if it were that important to you, you’d have chosen to live somewhere where you could take your precious animal with you.”

How was I related to two of the coldest bitches in Florida? Maybe the nation?

“Bye, Sera,” I said, and hung up before I could hear her outraged response or admonishment.

I laid my forearms over the steering wheel and put my head on top of them. Tears rolled down my face.  After a few minutes, a sharp knock on the passenger window made me jerk up my head.

I looked over and saw Gabe crouched and peering into my car. My lungs froze, as they always did when his deep blue eyes looked at me.

Rather than roll down the window, I unlocked the doors, and he slid into my car.

“What is wrong, Cass? Jesus, are you crying?”

“Mom died,” I said.

I realized how that sounded, shook my head, caught his super-concerned gaze and quickly added, “Mom is a cat. Her name was Mom-cat. My mother didn’t die. She also never allows me to call her anything but ‘Mother.’” I stressed the last word with a deeper tone of voice and a proper pronunciation.

He blinked at me twice and I noticed sweat along his hairline. He was wearing a black tank-top and basketball shorts. Whoever said the struggle is real never sat next to Gabe Sullivan, because that clichéd slang saying fell short of exactly how difficult the struggle happened to be. I wanted to launch myself at him, but since it wasn’t the first time and likely wouldn’t be the last time, I tamped my desire down.

After a successful failure to launch, I caught his eyes again. He looked annoyed.

“She makes you call her ‘Mother’?”

I nodded, but wondered why his voice dipped an octave as he said ‘mother.’

The side of his mouth tipped up. “You heard of Danzig?”

“Are we talking about a band?” I asked, because eighty percent of our conversations revolved around music.

He nodded once. “Yeah, but the band name is the lead singer’s