Page 107 of With Spite

Denver eventually got up to order his own food.

Gentry and Black talked to Bernice a little bit longer about the dude they were firing before she glanced at her watch and said, “I have to get back to work.”

She still had a bite of her sandwich left, which Denver took before I could.

I growled. “Seriously?”

“Boys.” She laughed as she got up and shrugged on her coat.

I caught her by the sleeve when she skirted around to my side, then tugged until she leaned down and pressed her lips to my own.

Then she was gone, leaving me with the taste of honey mustard and Bernice.

The men at the table watched me incredulously.

“You love her, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “I’ve loved her for a really long time.”

“No, but you really love her,” Gentry said. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Love her so much I’d die for her,” I agreed.

A soft hand at my throat had me tilting my head backward to see Bernice was back. “My phone. I forgot it.”

I righted my head and reached for it under a discarded napkin, then handed it to her while tilting my head again.

She dropped her mouth to mine and reached for her phone.

When she was done kissing the hell out of me, she left again.

But she didn’t get far before she said, “Oh, Hux?”

I glanced at her over my shoulder. “Yeah?”

She beamed at me. “I love you, too. So much that I’d die for you as well.”

Twenty-Five

Hope is one shady motherfucker.

—Bernice’s secret thoughts

Bernice

No one got fired that day.

Not that Odin wouldn’t have fired Chan had he come back into work.

But he’d called while everyone was gone and left a message with the clinic’s answering service saying that he was throwing up and wouldn’t be back in today.

It was chaos for the rest of the afternoon, but we jived better than we had in a week.

Later that afternoon, when we were shutting down for the day, Odin took a seat at the edge of Sage’s desk and said, “Maybe we should just take fewer patients.”

I looked at him in surprise. “Yeah?”

“We just keep working the three of us. Eventually, my assistant will graduate. He’ll come work here as soon as he’s done. He’s already confirmed that’s what he wants to do. In the meantime, while we wait for him, we drop down to seeing fewer patients. Block off thirty minutes for each. See walk-ins for the hours of eight to ten. Schedule all patients after ten. Close at four. And just be open and honest with everyone that this is a family-run business, and sometimes we’ll close the clinic for holidays and make this work just the three of us.”