Collaring Chaz (Dante's Infernal #2) - Joel Abernathy Page 0,5

hole that’s in my heart.

I wonder if your world even changes, as mine just falls apart.

You’re everything I’ve ever needed, but all you want is what I’m not.

Is it love if it’s in pieces?

If I collected the shards you leave behind

And fit them all together

Would it be you? Would you be mine?

Instead, I swallow them like broken glass

Because at least it’s still you inside me

Burrowing in with all the questions that I could never ask

I could--

The pen flew out of my hand as I heard the door outside the studio fall shut.

Shit.

I didn’t have time to shred the pages, so I snapped the book shut and stuffed it under the sofa cushion. Cash and Dante came in together as I was pretending to fluff the pillows.

“Hey!” I said brightly. “Look who showed up.”

“Don’t start,” Cash grumbled, lumbering over to hang his coat up on the rack. “Traffic was even worse than usual. I swear, I don’t know why we bother with this fucking city.”

“Because this is where every important douche in the music industry lives,” Dante answered, nursing his iced coffee. He was wearing big black shades and sweats, hearkening back to the bad old days when he used to show up totally out of it, but these days it was probably just the two of them fucking like rabbits all night.

The joys of almost-married life.

“Where’s Raf?” I asked, since they usually arrived around the same time.

“I thought you’d know,” Dante snorted. “Whenever he’s late, it’s usually because of you.”

My face turned hot, and my tongue got tied up, as usual.

“He wasn’t with me last night,” I mumbled. “He went to some stupid party for the club.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that,” Dante said, squinting. “We don’t usually go to the social stuff, though.”

“What are they like?” I asked, leaning on the desk in the mixing booth.

Dante looked up from tuning his guitar and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know, they’re parties. Just a bunch of people hanging out at a restaurant, drinking and feeling each other out to see who’d be a good match, arrange scenes, that kind of thing.”

“Scenes?”

The corners of his lips quirked. “Why are you so interested all of a sudden? Thinking about joining?”

“No,” I huffed, looking away. Not joining for the hell of it, at least. “I’m just curious. You’re all so obsessed with that place, I can’t help but wonder.”

“Well, you could just check it out for yourself sometime,” Cash said, taking a seat behind his drum set. The burly former soldier was Dante’s opposite in nearly every way, but if anything, that seemed to work for them. “They’re open to anyone who’s interested.”

“I’m not interested in joining,” I said quickly. “I don’t even know what goes on, or what I’d even do there.”

“Well, that’s sort of the point of the meetup,” said Dante. “It’s so you can talk to people involved, figure out if you want to give anything a try, and see if you mesh with anyone.”

“That’s...cool, I guess.” I didn’t know how to admit my interest in BDSM was pretty much restricted to one person.

“What’s cool?”

I froze when Rafael’s voice came from behind me. Hopefully, he hadn’t been there long.

“Chaz wants to go to a meeting,” Cash said with a mischievous grin. The nice thing about being in such a close-knit band was that we were all like brothers. The not-so-nice thing was that it included brotherly teasing and general assholery.

“A meeting where?” Rafael asked, shrugging out of his jacket and gear. I was already awkward enough about seeing him after the other night. It had been three days, which was the longest he ever went without coming over or at least texting me corgi videos.

And there were way too many corgis doing cute shit to delude myself into thinking he hadn’t come across a single video of them arguing with each other or freaking out over cabbages in that time. There were like eight billion cute animal videos posted to the internet every millisecond, and he was clearly still pissed enough about my Dante comment to keep three whole days’ worth of them to himself.

“The club,” Dante answered casually, looking down at the music for today’s session.

Rafael finally looked at me, and I could tell from the confusion on his face he was as surprised by the revelation as I was uncomfortable.

He frowned, and I could tell he was about to ask me about it, so I pretended I didn’t notice and went over to Dante. “Can I run something