The Rules of Dating(12)

“You too, Colby.”

It had been a good couple of hours together, some flirting even. So while I knew she’d just come out of a relationship, I said fuck it. “Hey, would you want to have dinner sometime?”

Billie smiled sadly and shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”

Ugh. Talk about a kick in the gut. But like she’d told me to, I owned it. I forced a smile. “Well, that sucks.”

She smiled back. “I’m sorry. It’s not you.”

“It’s not?”

She shook her head.

“Well, if it’s not me, I guess it would be okay if I tried again another time?”

She laughed. “Goodnight, Colby.”

“See you soon, Billie.”





CHAPTER 4


Billie



Deek kicked his feet up. “Why the hell would you tell him no? That dude is smoking hot, successful—he has everything going for him. Well, except that he doesn’t have tats. That I don’t like.”

It was Thursday afternoon, and I’d gone upstairs to Deek’s apartment in between clients. He and his boyfriend lived just above the shop. He was burning incense, probably because he’d smoked weed before I got here. Aside from working full time for me, he also did some freelance web design on his days off. He was good at it, but unlike when he tattooed, he usually got stoned to work on a website.

Deek had spent nearly all of this particular coffee chat giving me shit for turning Colby’s dinner offer down. Now I wished I’d never told him about it.

“Colby might seem like a catch, but there are other things to consider, Deek. Especially after the shit I’ve been through lately. I’m not gonna waste my time with anyone who has the potential to hurt me.”

“Uh, anyone you’re remotely interested in has the potential to hurt you,” he pointed out, raising an eyebrow. “But you’re going to write him off because of Tinder-swindler Kaiden? There’s no evidence Colby is anything like that. Name one thing wrong with him. I bet you can’t.”

I struggled to come up with something. Finally, I sighed. “There’s nothing wrong with him. But he has a kid. As stinkin’ adorable as she is, I can’t get involved. He has his hands full, so I’m not sure a relationship is his priority, either. Not to mention, I don’t know if I want to have kids myself, let alone raise someone else’s.” I took a long sip of my coffee. “So, it’s not about what’s wrong with him. It’s about what would be wrong with the whole situation.”

“Aren’t you jumping the gun a little?”

“No! When there’s a kid in the picture, there’s no such thing as jumping the gun. You have to decide from the get-go whether you’re in or out, whether you’d be okay with being a part of their life. If the answer is no or you’re not sure, you can’t start anything at all. Plain and simple. That’s not fair. All or nothing.”

He scratched his chin. “Alright. I guess I can understand that point of view. But maybe keep an open mind. It’s not like there’s an ex-wife in the picture. That’s a rarity. I hate to say it, but it makes things easier that the kid’s mother is MIA. At least you wouldn’t have that additional complication.” He drank the last drop of his coffee. “What’s the deal with that anyway? Why did she leave?”

“I don’t know the full story, just that the woman didn’t want to be a part of her baby’s life, so Colby is raising her himself.”

I’d thought a lot about Saylor’s “mother” recently. What kind of person would leave her kid and disappear? I’d wanted to ask Colby for more details the last time we were together, but I was almost afraid of the answer. Like, did he do something to scare her away? I doubted that, but I was damn curious, even if it wasn’t any of my business. Would he have married her if she’d stayed?

Either way, the whole thing was heartbreaking. Saylor was too young to understand the decision her mother had made. That shit would hit her like a ton of bricks someday. I’d thought I had it bad with a mother who was sometimes verbally abusive. But at least she was around, I guess.

Then I thought of something else to help my case. “You’re also forgetting that he’s the freaking landlord now, Deek. That’s a good way to have to pack up and move when things go sour.”

He wriggled his eyebrows. “It’s also a good way to get free rent.”

“For a whore, maybe.”

“I’m teasing.” He laughed. “It’s not just him who owns the building. You know that, right? There are four of them. It’s like they all grew from the same tree of fineness, too.”

“Yeah. They’re all friends. The only other one I really know is Holden, though I saw Owen two days ago when he dropped off a part for the AC.”

“Pretty crazy story how they ended up with this place,” he said. “A wealthy friend of theirs passed away from leukemia and left the four of them a huge inheritance. They kept it in the bank for a while, and they finally decided to buy this building. Pretty good investment, if you ask me. They all live here, so none of them has to pay rent, and they’re making money every month.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Where’d you hear about how they inherited the money?”