Bad Boy Ink (Get Ink'd #5) - Ali Lyda Page 0,27
and definitely hadn’t liked. I was a major introvert. I liked people, contrary to popular belief, but even an hour or two of hanging out with someone could completely wipe my energy stores. Just talking about the case with Bryce would have left me drained, but the interaction with my father had emptied me entirely.
I opened my wallet to hand Bryce a twenty-dollar bill. “I'm sorry I'm bailing—I know you've been pushing to work on this project. But we got pretty far today, and I bet if we have some space and work at it on our own, the next time we come together, we'll have some new ideas to crack it. But right now my head is killing me, and I'm going to go sleep it off.”
Bryce refused my money with a firm shake of his head. “Are you sure you're going to be okay? Do you need somebody to walk you home? That was super intense, and I want to make sure I'm not leaving you hanging.”
Fuck. Without any energy and after having taken a pounding at my emotional barrier, his kindness managed to sneak in and snag me. I even gave him a smile. It wasn't often that anyone was concerned over my well-being. Usually just Bryan, and he'd been very busy with Mateo lately.
“I promise I’ll be fine—I just need to decompress. Thanks for dinner.” I left the restaurant quickly with my hands shoved into my jeans pockets. With my shoulders around my ears, I stormed home, my gaze locked on the sidewalk as I made my way to the apartment.
As soon as I was inside, I went to the bathroom and grabbed medicine for my headache. That hadn't been a lie, and it had exploded into a full-on migraine as I’d walked home.
But before I passed out in bed, I decided it would be a good idea to call Bryan. After all, there was a good chance that Bryce would say something about the encounter to the guys at Get Ink’d, and I didn't want Mateo to get to Bryan before I'd had a chance to explain.
Bryan picked up on the second ring, voice ragged as he breathed heavily. “Hello?”
“It's incredibly rude to answer your phone while you're getting porked,” I said lazily.
Despite the pounding in my head, Bryan's laughter was a balm. It was full and it was normal and it helped root me back to the present. The tight squeeze in my chest lessened.
“Is everything okay?” Bryan asked. Then he followed up with, “And I'm not getting porked for your information, buddy. I've been out running. And who the fuck says ‘pork’ anymore?”
“Here are your answers in order: I'm okay now. And I say pork.”
“Want to tell me what made you not okay before?” I could hear a chair scrape on the floor and knew that he was sitting down. It felt like permission to continue. Besides, Bryan and I had the kind of relationship where if he truly didn't have time for me, he would tell me.
“Bryce took me out to dinner so we could work on our project. It was going well until my father showed up.” My tongue felt thick and dry as soon as I mentioned my father.
“Oh, shit,” Bryan said in a hushed voice. He knew my backstory. He always laughed and said he couldn't decide if it was good or not to know that rich people had their own bullshit, too. He joked that he'd wanted to believe that money truly could buy happiness. I was sure to pop that bubble quick.
“Yep. He then went on to try to embarrass us in the restaurant. He tried to call me out on how I was ‘conducting myself,’ and Bryce stepped in and basically threatened to dig up dirt and embarrass my father more publicly in return.”
My blood seemed to flow a little faster, grow a little more heated at the memory. Bryce had been so cool and confident, the kind of self-assured I always tried to make myself seem and very rarely succeeded. But somehow he’d pulled it off with finesse. And he’d been doing it for me.
I heard Bryan stuck in a breath over the line. “That's fucking amazing. I'm really glad he was there with you. I'm glad you weren't alone.”
I’d dealt with my father for eighteen years. Eighteen years of facing him on my own, with no one else in my corner. I could have handled him today as well, but while I would never