Page 45 of Bent, Not Broken

I stood and saluted. “Yes, sir.” I fought not to smile, but he pointed sharply at his door and I went.

After my “talk,” I half expected River to tell me to stay late out of spite, but instead, he grandly ushered me from the office at five, along with West, and we all left together. I whistled and adjusted my suit jacket as we rode down the elevator and then went through the lobby. We called our good nights to the security guard.

“Drinks?” River asked as we left the building for the balmy evening air, and he gave me a dog gaze, the kind that said he might be out trolling for dick tonight, and if I stayed, he’d get us both laid. An electric spark simmered in my gut. I’d been with him on nights when he really let loose, but… I’d never had someone like Evan waiting for me before.

West made a noncommittal sound. “Can’t, Shane is waiting for—”

“We know,” River and I said together.

“Oh,” West’s eyebrows shot up, but he shook hands with River and then me, in front of the office doors, and with a cheerful wave went off toward the parking lot at the side of the building.

“I can’t either, actually,” I said, and stared at the sidewalk between my feet.

“What? Why?”

I glanced up at River and smiled.

“You’re fucking meeting him, aren’t you?” His deadpan expression had me shifting with guilt.

“Yeah….”

“Just keep your shit together tonight,” River grumbled, “because I fully plan to be too drunk to scrape you up anywhere.”

“Maybe one drink? I’m meeting him at Sinful, but it’s too early.”

River slung his arm around my shoulders and drew me close, shaking me. “You’re a good lawyer and a great wingman. Let’s go to Jezebel’s.”

Laughing, I followed him along the street to my favorite bar. Thankfully it was open again, the inside lit with chandeliers that dropped from the high ceiling. The building was ostentatious on top of obnoxious, and I really felt like I should be making a bank deposit as I strolled inside, but I was excited to walk across the high-gloss white-tiled floor to the mirror-topped bar and sit my ass on a stool.

“Hello.” Jaden, a very nicely built guy with pretty brown eyes, who I was fairly certain told me once he grew up in Hawaii, smiled as he went off to make my order by memory, his brisk white shirt taut across his back as he reached for the shaker. A sense of normalcy settled in on me as River took a stool beside me, and we were both soon served our drinks—gin sour for him, and a Creamsicle martini for me. River paid, and I lazily watched him swirl his glass.

“You shouldn’t drink that garbage,” he said, but there was only a small measure of judgement on his face as he eyed my delicious martini.

“Fuck you,” I said happily and bent forward to lap at the whipped cream in the very center of the drink. I winked at him as I managed to get all of it sucked off the top, and he chuckled weakly.

“We’re friends here, right?” he asked.

Surprised, I nodded as I took a sip of my sweet, creamy, boozily perfect drink. “Yeah, aren’t we always?”

“No, damn it, Madden, we’re not. I’m your boss.” He glowered, and I blinked back at him.

“Is there a problem I’m missing?”

“Not normally.” He sighed. “I’m starting to worry about you. You’re meeting the cop out in public now? This isn’t an under-wraps fling if you’re gallivanting around New Gothenburg.”

“Okay, Grandpa. I’ll keep my gallivanting at minimum. No skullduggery, either.”

Jaden’s nose wrinkled as he walked by us carrying someone else’s drink, apparently struck by the same affliction West had suffered over my jacket—low-key laughitis. More after-work men dressed in suits like us, or rather like River in his summer linen, were beginning to filter in, some with women in nice dresses on their arms, or sometimes the women were on each other’s arms. It was a good crowd.

“I’m just sayin’.” He downed his gin sour in one long gulp, coughed for a second, and then spat a cherry into his palm. I snickered when he popped it back into his mouth and chewed on it.

“That’s probably not a good sign for my night,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, isn’t it the cherry that usually chokes?” I elbowed him, and he groaned.

“You’re banned. Go be a cheap sidepiece to your cop.”

“It’s too early.” So I sat there with River and got sloshed. Three drinks in, I started pointing out sexy guys in suits on the other end of the bar, but instead of going over there to try to hit on any of the men, River sat on his stool with his chin on his fist looking glum. It was so bad that Jaden pitied him and gave him two cherries in his next drink when he came by with refills we definitely didn’t need.