Stalemate Read online

  He starts coming just as I finish, and his release sends me right back into a second wave of bliss.

  By the time he pulls out of me, I’m so spent that I can’t even stand up. Honest to God, I feel like I could just sleep here in Axel’s office, bent over his desk…but he doesn’t let me. He pulls me up and helps me collapse in one of his chairs.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I grin. “Never better, babe.”

  CHAPTER 2

  EMME

  The next morning, I sorely regret the activities from the night before.

  My head is pounding, my body aches, and my stomach hurts.

  I think I threw up last night after Axel got me home, but I can’t really remember.

  I’m never drinking again.

  Even as I think it, I wonder how many times I’ve made that same vow. I’ll probably be back at it again tonight, because it’s what I get paid to do.

  Nights like last night are rare, though—the nights where the band is rowdy and the crowd assembled to watch them is just as rowdy. Even I was having a hard time keeping up, which is why I had one (or five) too many. Anthrax’s Revenge was loud, high, and lit—especially after the bottle of tequila we gifted them. The crowd was rowdy and drunk, and the bar made a ton of money, but it’s a lot more stressful now that Axel owns the very bar the patrons were trashing.

  Sometimes I drink too much on purpose. Axel’s weak spot has always been drunk women, and that smile he shot me just before I brought the first round of tequila shots to the band—that impersonal smile that did nothing but piss me off—that stuck with me. I wanted his attention, and I got it by drinking tequila. It led to me getting fucked in his office, so I guess my mission was accomplished.

  It’s immature to play games, but there’s this big thing between us.

  He proposed to me a couple months ago.

  Proposed—as in marriage.

  Are you kidding me? We’re so not at that place.

  My best friend, Courtney, wanted every last detail, of course. They were details I wasn’t willing to give, though—mostly because it was embarrassing. So, I lied. I told her he was down on his knee when I got home from work one night.

  The truth is, he asked me right after sex. He had just come down from a particularly taxing orgasm and said he only wanted to fuck me for the rest of his life…and then he said, “Let’s get married.”

  It’s not exactly romantic to be proposed to while the man you just had sex with is still inside you, but I knew it was just the sex talking. I told him to shut up, he told me he was serious, and I said we’re not at that place.

  Everything felt the same in the morning, so I figured there was no harm done—but there was some harm done, actually.

  For one thing, there’s this ginormous elephant between us. He wants more, and I don’t.

  Axel thinks we’re meant to be or some bullshit fairytale crap. I don’t believe in fairytale endings, and I don’t believe in meant to be. I think relationships take work, trust, and love, and I don’t know if I have the magic combination of those things with Axel.

  I don’t want to work for what we have. I’m at a place in my life where I’m just having fun. I know it’s stereotypically the man who doesn’t want to commit, but in our relationship, it’s me.

  I hate the distance between us. I want things to go back to how they were before he decided he wants to marry me. Everything was simpler back then. Now, though, everything feels like he expects it to lead to something bigger. I’m not sure how to get through to him that the life he wants isn’t the same life I want.

  Commitment means marriage, marriage means responsibility and kids, and I don’t want kids. I’m not motherly in any way. I’m independent, stubborn, and selfish, and I’m happy with my life exactly the way it is.

  I resent Axel for even asking in the first place when he knew what to expect from me. I made it clear from the beginning—from the very first time we hooked up—that I wasn’t looking for anything serious. It was inevitable that we’d cross the friendship line eventually—we had an incredible sexual tension between us. While I worried it’d ruin our friendship, I couldn’t help but give in to him.

  Besides, is Axel really the guy you marry anyway? He’s a bar owner and a bartender. He’s not the guy I bring home to Daddy, and I try to imagine how my mom would feel about him. It was nine long years ago that she left me, but I have an inkling she’d approve so long as he makes me happy. Most of the time, he does make me happy.

  But do I love him?

  I don’t know. Maybe. I’m pretty sure I don’t even know what love really is.

  I blame my parents, for one thing. They fought all the damn time before they finally got divorced when I was thirteen. I moved in with my mom, and then she got sick and passed away when I was fifteen. Then I lived with my dad, who had no idea what to do with a semi-wild teenage daughter. He was gone most of the time for work, anyway, so here I am today, bitter about love at the ripe age of twenty-four.

  How am I supposed to believe in fairytales and happy endings when the model I grew up with showed me the opposite?

  I blame my ex, Declan, too. Despite my parents fucking me up, I still used to believe in fairytale endings until I caught the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with cheating on me. It wasn’t just the cheating, though. He also posted videos of us having sex online without my knowledge. This was a man I trusted and loved, and that’s why I don’t ever want to get married.

  *

  “So, a hilltop wedding just before sunset at Westlake Winery?” I poke around my salad with my fork, not all that hungry after the final tally of tequila shots I decided would get me through last night.

  Courtney nods. “And you’ll be my maid of honor, of course.” Incidentally, her fiancé is the other co-owner of The Port.

  I smile. “Naturally.”

  Courtney has been my best friend since our freshman year at San Diego State University. We grew up together in college—it’s where we both became the independent, headstrong women we are today. We shared the same major—marketing—and we both still use our degrees. I use mine as a promoter, and she uses hers to run her very successful dating blog, Courting Sandy Eggo.

  She recently got engaged to Axel’s cousin, Carter. While Court and I share many similarities, her desire for marriage, kids, and the white picket fence—the whole dream package—is one major area of contrast. They’ve only been together for a few months, but they already know they want to get married, and soon.

  Apparently Carter’s parents got married after only knowing each other for two months, and they’re still happy and in love all these years later. I suppose the fact that Courtney and Carter have already been together for three months and aren’t married yet is like, against Carter’s religion or something.

  Even though it’s not my dream, I still support my friend one hundred percent. It’s plain to see just looking at those two that they’re meant to be together. They’re so ridiculously in love and they have so much fun together, I almost feel it just being around them—almost.

  That doesn’t change how I feel about my own relationship, though.

  “Have you picked a date?”

  Courtney chews her lip and fingers a curl of her dark hair nervously. “Yeah.” She squeezes her eyes shut for just a second, and her nerves are nearly sending me into a state of panic. She’s usually more calm and collected than this. “It’s the only date Westlake had open for the next fourteen months. Someone canceled.”

  I set down my fork and reach across the table to take her hands in mine. “When?”

  When she answers, her voice is a whisper and her face pales. “Two weeks.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “No!” Her hand flies to her mouth in shock.

  “Sorry, it’s just fast.”

  “I know. Oh God, is everyone going to ask me that?”

  I shrug. “Pro
bably.”

  “Great.”

  “Are you ready to get married in two weeks?”

  “To Carter? Yes. Am I ready to actually plan a wedding in two weeks? Uh, no, not in the slightest. I don’t even know where to start, but it’s my dream to get married there.”

  “Good thing your best friend in the world is a promoter with all kinds of connections that will help make this happen.”

  She sighs in relief. “I knew I kept you around for a reason.”

  Working as a promoter is, at times, sort of like working as a party planner. I’m organized and I know how to get shit done, so Courtney chose the right person for the role of maid of honor—not that there would ever have been any question. Court is a wonderful person, but she’s guarded and careful about who she gets close to. On the flipside, people tend to be afraid of getting close to her because of her blog. I can’t pretend I haven’t been the subject of many of her posts, but she uses fake names for me. That’s the benefit of being the best friend; other people aren’t as lucky.

  I pull out my phone and download a wedding planning app. It’s a start, anyway. I check my calendar. “I’m mostly free this afternoon and tomorrow, and I’m off Tuesday. We’ll get this done.”

  “I know you’re like anti-wedding and everything, but will you come dress shopping with me this afternoon? I made an appointment and my mom is meeting me there.”

  I chuckle. “I’m not anti-wedding. I’m happy for you, Court. I’m just not ready to take that step myself, and I’m not sure I ever will be.”

  “Are you ready to tell me more about the proposal yet?”

  I roll my eyes. She hasn’t stopped asking since I told her he proposed. “It’s awkward,” I finally say.

  “Was there something in your ass when he asked?”

  “Court!” I scold, and she laughs.

  “Did I get it right on the first guess?”

  I feel my face heating. She’s not all that far off. “No.” I sigh. “But he was still inside me after we had sex.”

  “Oh my God!” she squeals, and a few heads turn in our direction. This is why I didn’t want to tell her.

  “Shut up.”

  “Why did you lie about it?”

  “Because it’s beyond embarrassing that I got proposed to while I was having sex. It’s private. People don’t need to know that.”

  “For one thing, I’m not people, and nothing in your life is private when it comes to me. For another, that’s not embarrassing. It’s kind of hot, actually, like you were so good he never wants to bang anyone else ever again.”

  “The proposal was along those lines.”

  She laughs. “How could you say no to that?”

  “Because I’m not ready for marriage and I don’t think I ever will be.”

  She stops laughing and turns serious. “I’m sorry. Maybe Axel just isn’t the right guy. Weren’t you guys having some problems that you never wanted to talk to me about?”

  “It’s not that I didn’t—or don’t—want to talk to you about it, specifically.” At the time, it kind of was, though. She was going through her own shit with Carter, and she didn’t need me to dump my problems on her. The issue was the same thing it is today: he wants a commitment, and I don’t. “I just don’t want to talk about it at all.”

  “When you’re ready, I’m listening.”

  “I know. Now let’s focus on you and your happily ever after, okay?”

  “Deal,” she says, and she shoves her salad plate aside and pulls out her phone so we can figure out where the hell to even start to plan a wedding.

  CHAPTER 3

  AXEL

  We’re not at that place.

  Her words are still on repeat in my head, and it was nearly three months ago that I asked the question I still wish never would’ve slipped past my lips.

  No.

  She never actually said the word, but We’re not at that place sounded a hell of a lot like it.

  I pretend like it doesn’t hurt, but every day those words slowly eat away at me. I pretend like everything’s fine, but it’s not.

  Why doesn’t she want to get married? Is it me, or is it her?

  I’ve never not been a confident, self-assured man. I’ve never struggled the way I do with her, and that’s what tells me she’s worth it.

  I hate this distance she’s creating between us. I’m in love with her. I’ve never loved anyone else. I’ve had good times, had one-night stands, but I’ve never been with a woman who made me want something serious.

  I think about my cousin who is getting married—and soon. Then, as I always do, I think of his brother, too. The three of us grew up as the Three Musketeers—that’s what we called ourselves. My mom raised me on her own, and she’d send me off to New York to spend the summers on the huge King family farm with Carter and Carson. Even though we’re cousins, we’re close like brothers.

  I always thought myself to be a bit more like Carson. Now, though, I think maybe I’m more like Carter.

  Of the two, Carter is a little more serious and focused. He’s a genuinely good guy who looks out for the welfare of others. He was in a long-term relationship with a woman none of us liked, and then they broke up when he announced he was planning to move to San Diego. That’s when he and I got closer.

  He started dating Courtney, and in a few weeks they’ll be married. That’s what I want, too—a relationship with someone who wants to marry me someday. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow. It doesn’t have to be next week, or next month, or even next year. I just need to know that there’s a possibility of someday. Emme tells me no, though. She says that’s not what she wants.

  Carson, on the other hand, is pretty much an arrogant prick. He’s the kind of guy who keeps a different woman’s bed warm every night, and he has no qualms about it. That lifestyle came and went for me. It was a short-term solution to a long-term problem, and it wasn’t something I ever felt good about in the morning. From the way Carson brags, though, I don’t know that he shares that sentiment.

  He’s next in line to be the CEO of King Communications, a multimillion dollar communications and media company. He offered me a job in New York—a standing offer, which I appreciate—but I can’t move away from Emme. I haven’t even told her about it. I also have no interest in moving away from my mom or my half-siblings, and I love bartending and running The Port.

  My mind always wanders when I’m mixing drinks. I’ve got a six-top that ordered lemon drops, my least favorite shot to make because the sticky sugar drips fucking everywhere and it makes a goddamn mess.

  I’m being dramatic, but when my mind goes back to Emme’s refusal and I have sticky hands and lemon juice seeping into the paper cut I got when I was cashing out a drawer earlier, it’s hard to put a smile on my face. I set the shots on a tray for Haley, my best waitress, and she grins at me.

  “Thanks boss.”

  It’s early, so I know if a six-top is already ordering shots, they’re planning to stay a while, and they’ll probably order more. Part of me wants to throw this to Olivia. She’s young and eager to learn, and this is exactly the type of thing a seasoned bartender like me shouldn’t have to deal with, but I’m not that much of an asshole.

  “Axel, how do I make a Shirley Temple? Isn’t she a singer?”

  She may be young and eager to learn, but she’s also as smart as a box of rocks. It’s a damn good thing she’s pretty, because her customers would eat her alive otherwise.

  “Ginger ale and a splash of grenadine. Use the chart by the register. If it’s for a kid, add extra cherries. And yes, I think she was an actress and a singer.”

  “Why does she have a drink named after her?”

  I get asked questions like this all day. Since hiring Olivia, I’ve realized just how much patience I actually have.

  “I don’t know,” I mutter. God, this is going to be a long night. Emme’s got a huge band coming in, and after last night’s fiasco with Anthrax’s Revenge, I could use a good cash night. We
had more broken glass than we’ve ever had in one night, and I placed a huge order for replacements when I got in this afternoon.

  She shows me the drink after she makes it, and I eyeball it. It looks right, so I give her a nod. She needs the confidence boost.

  A guy at the bar orders a Blue Moon, so I fill a pint glass from the tap and stick an orange wedge on the rim of the glass. The citrus scent mingles with the yeast of the beer, and my mouth waters. I never drink on the job—unlike my girlfriend, who thinks it’s her job to dry the bar out of all our stock.

  It’s a little before seven when Kasey comes in. She’s a gorgeous girl, which makes her perfect for tending bar. She purposely wears shirts that are just a little too tight against her tits, and men fall over themselves to throw tips her way. I’d probably be one of them if I were a single guy out for a beer. She’s got these piercing blue eyes, and she’s the type of girl who loves to engage in harmless flirting.

  I suppose that’s how my relationship with Emme started, too. We flirted until it wasn’t harmless anymore.

  Even though Kasey is fun and beautiful, she doesn’t have anything on Emme. Ems is smart, stunning, and sexy—a killer combo. She’s a shark when it comes to her job, but she does it in a way that makes her the life of every party. I think that’s what drew me to her initially—well, aside from her long, blonde hair and innocent blue eyes that just kill me.

  “Hey Kase,” I greet her.

  “Hey Ax-man. How are things tonight?”

  “Better than last night so far.”

  “So far,” she says with a laugh. “Was it rough?”

  “Be glad you had the night off.”

  “That bad?”

  “I had to order over a thousand dollars’ worth of glassware this morning.”

  “Oh, fuck. I’ve heard Anthrax’s Revenge brings a rough crowd.”

  “Thanks for leaving us on a night we needed you.”

  She passes by me and bumps my hip with hers. “You always need me.”

  I can’t deny that. We do much better in tips when she’s there versus Ben. Ben’s a nice guy, and I can objectively say he’s attractive, but men tend to pay the bill more than ladies do, and men tip chicks with tits. Women don’t always tip better just because the bartender’s hot.