When he nods, gulping down half his wine cooler in a single swallow, I add, “Tomorrow should be pretty exciting for you guys.”

“It’s gonna be good. Oliver is the best boss. Or, I can tell he’s going to be. He’s just so laid-back.”

I look across the room at where Oliver is concentrating so hard on the cards in his hand I fear they might incinerate. Unlike Finn, who doesn’t seem to worry much about his appearance, but tilts the odds in his favor by keeping his hair cut short, his face usually clean-shaven, Oliver is hot in an accidental sort of way. I haven’t really decided if he’s as oblivious about it as he seems, but I do know he’s a pretty intense guy, and given that he’s only thirty and opening a high-profile comic store in the hippest area of San Diego, I don’t think he’s quite as laid-back as Not-Joe is hoping.

I look back to the hippie boy. “What are you going to be doing there?”

“Selling comics and stuff.”

I laugh. This guy unsupervised must be a sight to behold. “Oh, you mean working the front?”

“Yep. Working the front. And sometimes the back.” He laughs to himself. “The re-gis-ter,” he sings.

“Exactly how high are you, Not-Joe?”

He stops moving and seems to do a lengthy mental inspection. “Pretty high.”

“Want to do some shots?”

Because really, there’s no way I’m ever having sex with Not-Joe, but my second favorite thing to do with guys is watch them get drunk.

We line up a couple and toss them back, just as I see Finn stand from the table. He tosses down his cards, clearly folding as he pulls off his cap, scratches his head with the same hand, and then slips it back on again. I hate that I find the maneuver so completely sexy. When he looks up and sees me in the kitchen with Not-Joe, he narrows his eyes for a beat and then starts to walk toward us.

“Oh, shit,” I mumble under my breath.

“Does the Hulk belong to you?” Not-Joe asks, tilting his head.

“Not even a little.”

“Still. Look at the intensity in his eyes,” he whispers drunkenly. “The lion prowls.” With a little shiver, he seems to clear his trance and chirps, “I’m headed to the little boys’ room.”

“Thanks,” I grumble to his retreating back, as Finn slides between me and the counter, leaning a hip against it.

Tonight I’m missing my usual armor—my social enthusiasm, my confidence, and the ease that comes with knowing life is okay for everyone I love. A tiny alarm in my brain signals that talking to Finn right now might be a terrible idea. We will either end up fighting or fucking, and Finn does neither with any sort of tenderness. But I refuse to step back and can feel the heat coming off his chest. His hat is pulled low over his eyes, so I have to rely on the curve of his mouth to interpret his mood. So far, he seems . . . bored, angry, pensive, or asleep.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

“Finn.” I acknowledge him with a little nod.

His smile starts at one corner and twists across his lips. Damn him and his amazingly flirty mouth. “Harlow.”

I saw my teeth over my bottom lip as I consider him.

Mindless chatter won’t work here, but I’m not entirely sure I can handle his rough edges tonight when I’m feeling so threadbare myself. Finn doesn’t fit into any of my easily predetermined boy-categories, and maybe there’s a challenge in that.

He is hard to read, easy to look at, and no matter how bad an idea it may be, it’s nearly impossible to resist pulling him closer.

Fighting or fucking.

Both of those options are starting to sound pretty good.

Chapter TWO

Finn

I DON’T REMEMBER THE last time I was at a house party surrounded by a bunch of obnoxious twentysomethings on their way to varying degrees of hammered. I am not a party guy, but I agreed to come along because Ansel is in town, and the last time we saw each other was Vegas, when the end of a fun reunion crumbled into matrimonial chaos. But somehow tonight I end up nowhere near the kid, with a keg cup in my hand, and halfway to buzzed for the first time in months, standing close enough to Harlow Vega to touch her.

It doesn’t surprise me that we’re standing this close or that I’d really like to touch her.

What surprises me is that Harlow is the one separated from the rest of the party, hanging out in the kitchen with Oliver’s stoner employee. Despite our Vegas nuptials and Vancouver Island bangfest, it’s fair to say I don’t really know much about her. But I do know her type, and if there’s a table at a party, girls like her are usually pounding, lying, or dancing on it.

“Why are you in here and not wiping the floor with us at poker?”

Harlow shrugs, placing her hands on my waist so she can move me aside and open the cabinet overhead. “I’m distracted tonight.” She frowns up into the crowded cupboard. “And why is this such a mess? Dear God.”

“You going to rearrange their kitchen for them?” I ask, smiling at the clinking sounds as she moves glasses around. “In the middle of a party?”

“Maybe.”

Dark auburn hair frames her face, which she tucks behind her ear as she stretches for the top shelf, exposing her long neck. I immediately think of sucking little marks into her skin, from her ear to her collarbone.

“Preoccupied this morning,” I say, drinking in the sight of her bare shoulders. “Distracted tonight.”

She retrieves two clean shot glasses and pulls back to look at me silently in response. And now I remember the heat of her oddly hypnotic eyes—more amber than brown—and the temptation of her full, flirty lips. Unscrewing the cap from a bottle of pretty stellar tequila, Harlow blinks away before pouring each glass to the brim.

“Well, I can tell Not-Joe is doing a great job undistracting you,” I tell her, “but you might want to slow down on shots with the guy who pierced his own penis.” Honestly, when Oliver told me that story, I nearly choked on my sandwich.

Harlow was beginning to hand me a shot, but her hand pauses, midair. “He . . . what now?”

“Twice. One in the tip, one in the shaft.”

She blinks.

I lean in a little and the way she’s staring at my mouth is making my skin hum. “According to Oliver, ‘things happen’ when Not-Joe gets drunk.”

She tears her eyes from my mouth and looks up at me, lifting her chin to indicate the table of people still playing cards across the room. “You’re suggesting instead I go play cards with the people who’re giving out shots of Clamato as penalty?”

“It’s even better than that,” I say with a shudder. “It’s Budweiser with Clamato. It’s called chelada, and it’s pretty warm now.”

She makes the exact same face she made when the barista offered her a pumpkin spice mocha this morning—complete and total horror—and that drink she ordered. “Someone actually made that into a thing? There are people who drink and enjoy that?”

Laughing, I tell her, “You know, despite my better judgment I find it really funny when you act like a diva.”

With her head tilted to the side, eyes incredulous, she asks, “Being turned off by Budweiser mixed with tomato and clam juice makes me a diva?”

Apparently I’m buzzed enough to belt out a few lines of the only diva song I can think of at the moment: “I Will Always Love You.” And then I lift my shot and down it.

Harlow looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, but I can tell she’s amused. A smile lingers in her eyes, even if her brows are pulled together disapprovingly. “You can’t sing to save your life.”

Wiping a hand across my mouth, I say, “That’s nothing. You should hear me play the piano.”

She narrows her eyes further. “Did you just quote the Smiths?”

“I’m surprised you got that. It wasn’t from a song eventually sampled by P. Diddy.”

Laughing, she says, “You have a pretty fantastic impression of me.”

“I really do.” The tequila slips into my bloodstream, warming me from my chest outward. I lean closer so I can get a good whiff of her. She always smells warm, somehow, and a little earthy and sweet. Like the beach, and sunscreen and honeysuckle. I’ve said more nonsex words to Harlow in the past five minutes than I did the entire time she was in Canada, but I’m surprised to find that not only is she easy to talk to, she’s fun. “And, my impression of you is ever evolving, now that you aren’t just a pretty face in my lap.”

“You’re one classy motherfucker, Finn.”

“This speaking thing does wonders for expanding our horizons.”

She takes her shot, swallows, and winces before saying, “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Sunshine. I like our arrangement.”

“We have an arrangement?”

Nodding, she turns to pour us each another shot. “We fight, or we bang. I think I prefer the banging part.”

“Well, then I would have to agree.”

When she hands me the second shot—on top of the three beers I’ve already had with Ansel—I ask, “Why did you come up my way anyway? I never got around to asking you that because you were sitting on my face most of the time. The visit was . . . unexpected.”

“But awesome?” she asks, brows raised as if she knows I’d never deny it.

“Sure.”

She licks the side of her hand, shakes some salt on it this time, and studies it, thinking. “Honestly? I guess I wasn’t sure I could trust my memory from Vegas.”

“You mean your memory that the sex was so good?”

“Yeah.”

“It was,” I assure her.

“I know that now.” She licks the salt, takes the shot, and grabs a slice of lime from the counter, sucking it briefly before murmuring through wet, puckered lips, “Too bad the man attached to the penis is such an epic loser.”

I nod sympathetically. “True.”

“You’re fun,” she tells me, pulling back a little as if she’s only really looking at me now. “You’re fun in this sort of easy, unexpected way.”

“You’re drunk.”

She snaps her fingers in front of my face. “That must be it. The tequila I’ve had is making you fun.”

I laugh, wiping a hand over my mouth. “You seem to be in a better mood tonight,” I say.

“Just have some stuff going on and trying not to think about it. And besides,” she says, raising her empty shot glass, “this helps immensely.”

“How many have you had?”

“Enough that I don’t care much, not so many that I don’t care at all.”

This seems like a pretty bleak response for someone I’ve assumed all along was chirpy and sexy and carefree. Really, though, I don’t actually know much about Harlow’s life. I know she’s a pretty little rich girl, and probably has a line of pretty little rich boys lined up at her door. I know she’s a loyal friend to Lola and Mia, and because she’s apparently one of those people that need to help every human alive, she was a driving force in getting Ansel and Mia back together again. But outside of that, there’s not much. I don’t even know what she does for work . . . or whether she works at all.

“Anything you want to talk about?” I offer halfheartedly.

“Nope,” she says, and tosses back another shot.

My phone vibrates in my pocket and my warm, drunken comfort is quickly replaced by a sense of dread. Without having to look, I know this is the message I’ve been waiting for. Back home my youngest brother, Levi, is running a safety check on the largest boat in our fleet, the Linda, named after our mother, and with the way things have been going, I’m willing to bet the news isn’t going to be good.

Short in the wheelhouse, none of the controls are working.

Fuck.

Although there are about a hundred curse words I want to type right now, I don’t answer right away. Instead, I slip my phone back into my pocket, pour myself a shot, and throw it back. It helps.

“You okay there?” Harlow asks, watching me.

I clench my jaw against the burn, feeling it warm my body as it settles in my stomach. “Just a little distracted myself.”

“Well then—let’s have another!” She pours two more shots and hands me one. I know this isn’t really going to help. I’m going to sober up in the morning—or maybe a bit later in the day than that—and the controls in the boat will still be down, and our whole fucking livelihood will still be just as in jeopardy as it is now. But, damn, I’d really like to forget all that for a while.

I pick it up, look at the clear liquid before I lean into her, my lips almost brushing the shell of her ear. “I think you and I both know the last time we drank tequila together it didn’t end so well.”

“True,” she says, pulling back just far enough to meet my eyes. “But there’s no twenty-four-hour chapel nearby manned by some reckless idiot willing to marry us, so I think we’re safe.”

Point made.

Harlow knocks back her shot and winces. “Ooooh . . . I don’t think I can do any more.” She holds up her hands, pretends to count out about thirty shots, and then smiles up at me. “One more and I’d face-plant into the bowl of these Fritos London is so excited about.”

She may have lost count, but I haven’t. Four shots into my time in the kitchen with Harlow and—besides Vegas—I’m drunk for the first time in years.

It feels like he’s been gone for an hour, but Not-Joe finally returns in a cloud of weed-smell. As he approaches, he extends his hand to me, saying very slowly, “I’m Not-Joe . . . it’s nice to meet you.”