“So, this is the reason you’re piling all of this shit on me?” Cole spoke his mind clearly, doing his level best to keep everything he’d just learned in mind.
It was clear that Alex had a lot on his mind lately, and between the pregnancy and Dylan going off the grid, it made sense that Alex was leaning on him.
Alex nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” It was one thing for Alex to need help, it was entirely different for him to pile the shit on Cole when he wasn’t expecting it.
Another shrug from Alex.
Cole hated that he’d walked in here fully intending to lay into Alex for being so damn selfish, when it turns out that Cole was the one being selfish. He wasn’t fond of the idea of moving forward in this capacity, almost positive he was going to burn out quickly, but from what he’d learned in the last half hour, it wasn’t like he had much of a choice.
“I need you to explain it to me, Alex. I’m barely hanging on here. In the past week, I’ve been tempted to tell you to shove this job up your fucking ass and just leave you high and dry. At the very least, I deserve an explanation. I’m not fond of being kept in the dark.”
The stunned look on Alex’s face told Cole that he’d pretty much laid his feelings on the line there.
And for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t worried about offending anyone else.
Chapter Eight
With the day pretty well shot to shit after the meeting with Alex, Cole opted to head home. If he was lucky, Luke and Sierra would be there, and he’d have a chance to have dinner with them both. For some reason, after the conversation he had with Alex, he felt the need to be close to them.
Due to their schedules, they didn’t get to have a lot of down time these days, but he was hoping today would be different. If they didn’t learn to slow down a little, it was likely they were all going to burn out at some point, not just him.
Based on the last real conversation he’d had with Sierra over lunch, he was pretty sure they were rapidly heading in that direction without even realizing it. It occurred to him that they’d somehow managed to stop talking like they used to and that worried him on more than just one level. As much as he tried to convince himself that this was just one of those instances where life gets in the way, and you wake up to realize that the important things were left behind, Cole was worried they were taking some very valuable things for granted.
Maybe his conversation with Alex had affected him more than he thought.
When he walked in the back door, he found Sierra sitting at the kitchen table, a mess of things cluttered in front of her. Leaning down, he kissed her on the top of her head before making his way to the refrigerator where he retrieved a beer and returned to stand beside her.
“Luke here yet?”
“No,” she said, not looking up from the pattern she was looking at.
“Did he say when he’d be here?” It was painfully clear already that he wasn’t going to be getting Sierra’s full attention tonight.
“Late. He told us not to wait up for him.”
Cole nodded his head and turned to walk out of the room. It was clear she was busy, and Luke obviously was too. It wasn’t like he didn’t expect it. There was so much going on at the club, and Sierra had been working with a new client for the last week which kept her plenty occupied.
Foregoing the living room where he normally would find a way to pass the time, Cole went out on the back patio with his beer. The days were shorter, and the sun was going down quickly, but it was still warm for January, so he figured he might as well enjoy it while he could.
Cole had never been big on being cooped up in the house, always preferring the outdoors. That’s part of why he liked his job with Alex because he was always on the go and very rarely stuck inside. Would that change if Dylan went off the deep end and Alex was forced to make some significant changes, he thought to himself.
He had just sat down when his cell phone rang. He glanced down at the screen to see it was Luke and promptly answered. “Hey.”
“Hey back,” Luke greeted, sounding unusually upbeat. “Why don’t you and Sierra come down to the club for dinner? I can’t get away, but I’d like to see you.”
Cole’s stomach tightened, and a chill ran through him. The times when Luke said so much in one instance were few and far between. For him actually to ask to see them was even more infrequent than a sentence with more than ten words in it.
“Will do. I just walked in the door, but I’ll talk to Sierra and we’ll head that way.”
“See you then,” Luke said and the phone disconnected.