Boss Daddy: A Secret Baby Romance by Black, L. (good books for high schoolers .TXT) 📕

I had no clue. I reached for my gun and realized it wasn’t there. I was naked. What the hell was going on?

Slamming my hand on the nightstand produced a crashing sound as the alarm clock was swiped away and a glass with some sort of liquid spilled, but eventually I found a lamp. I crawled my fingers up it until I found a switch and clicked it on. The room filled with a white-yellow light.

In the corner of the room was a coatrack. My coat hung from it as well as an apron. It had The Hollow’s logo on it. Suddenly, it all came rushing back to me, and I fell back into the pillows.

I was in Portland. And I hated it.

The nightmares had returned and were mixing with my current reality. Sometimes I woke up, like just then, thinking I was still in the desert. Other times I woke up thinking I was in Astoria and horrible things were happening. When I did sleep, it was fitful, and rest wasn’t happening. I hoped that I would sleep better during the morning hours when the sun was up. In the dark, the shadows came.

Hannah was on my mind often. I worried about her and hated being away from her like I was. We hadn’t talked since I got in and told her I was there safe, aside from text messages simply saying good night. My mind raced as I tried to think of a way around all this. I couldn’t just ask her to move with me. Uprooting her life again, right after she had just started to settle down, to move with me, a person who she was barely just getting to know, seemed like an insane proposition.

That left finding out if a long-distance thing could work. It would be stressful, and I would hate not seeing her in person as much as I had been, but at least we could video chat and I could see her on my days off. If we scheduled the same days off, one of us could come to the other and spend our time there. While I would most certainly do that, considering how recently she had gotten out of her relationship with Ethan and the drama that still surrounded that, I felt like a long-distance relationship might be too much for her.

A few hours later, I was in the new restaurant with Matt. The building was really interesting and looked clean and new on the outside, but inside needed a lot of work. It had previously been another bar that had been very successful for some time, but the inside of the building came into disrepair and the owner retired. With no family and all his business partners uninterested in running a bar, he just sold it to Tom as it was. It had closed its doors for the last time under its old name only a week ago, and we had a lot of work to get it ready for us.

Matt was pissed and stomping around with two by fours and hammers in various areas of the building as we found new things that needed to be fixed. I ducked into another room to get away from him, presumably the office, though it was junked up with ancient barstools and glassware. Sitting gingerly on a stool I wasn’t sure would hold my weight, I called Mom to check up on Hannah.

Apparently, Hannah had decided to stay at her own place. Mom was still keeping a room open for her in case she changed her mind, but as it was, she hadn’t seen her since we left dinner. After promising I would call her again soon, I hung up with Mom and dialed Hannah, relieved when she answered on the second ring.

“Hey, you,” she said.

“Hi, Hannah,” I said. “I was just calling to check in.”

“I’m fine. I decided to spend a little time at my place. I’ve got all the doors locked and the windows barred, just so you know,” she said. There was a hint of teasing in her voice, but I didn’t feel very humorous.

“Good,” I said. “I don’t want to push you, but if you feel like you might not be safe for any reason, Mom’s keeping the room open for you.”

“That’s very sweet,” she said. “Ava and Mason also offered to put me up if I need it. But I haven’t seen any sign of Ethan, and I think he probably went home. I think I’m okay here.”

“If you say so,” I said. I loved that Hannah was so independent, but I was worried.

“It’s okay,” Hannah said sweetly. “I’m safe.”

Matt’s mood didn’t improve throughout the day. In fact, the entire drive up there the day before he had been a bear, and it hadn’t gotten any better with a night’s sleep. He was apparently handling being told to leave Astoria even worse than I was, and as I stood at the bar, wondering why in the world board game pieces were glued underneath the taps, he kicked a cardboard box across the room.

“Hey, Matt, chill,” I said. “That box didn’t do anything to you.”

It was meant as a joke, but Matt seemed to miss it.

“Fuck that box,” he said. “And fuck Portland.”

“Well, that’s certainly a take,” I said, giving up on the figures on the taps and moving to more pressing issues. Like the wood coming up from the floor.

“It’s bullshit,” Matt continued. “We shouldn’t be the ones having to do this. If Tom wants a second bar so bad, he should be out here with us.”

“I know you’re frustrated,” I said. “I am, too. But we don’t have families. And both Tyler and Mason thought this was a good idea, too. So, suck it up, Buttercup. Besides, Portland won’t be too bad. It’s Portland.”

“It’s Portland,” Matt repeated mockingly. “Like you give a crap.”

“Hey.” I put down the tools I had picked up and coming around the bar toward him. “I left Hannah back in Astoria.