Free Hook Up (A Bad Boy Sports Romance) by Bella Love-Wins Page B

Slade interested. “Fifteen minutes and we’re outta there, got it? If any of you buy me a lap dance you’re getting your teeth knocked out.”
    We didn’t even make it to the table when shit went down. Four mean-looking men with grimaces on their faces took one look at us and got up in our space. Every one of them was dodgy, angry and so fucking shady I thought it might have been a prank. Credit where it’s due, I may have slapped one of them in the face to see if they were serious.
    He was one mad-looking motherfucker.
    And no, he wasn’t part of the night’s plan.
    All I remember after that was crash landing into two tables where patrons were having drinks and taking in the show.
    I believe it was Evan and Slade who helped me to my feet, but the damage was done. The women with us scattered off, more grumpy men joined the drunken brawl, and that was that. It was not pretty. Drunk men fighting never is, not where half the alcohol-driven fisticuffs ended up missing and sending men spiraling clumsily into shit. Add the puking and beatdowns, and we were in a sorry state for stop three, which I have no recollection about.
    There may have been a waterfront. Maybe a patio. Someone was dancing on me for sure, but hell if I remember anymore with the whoopass I got at the Blue Bayou. I woke up with a nasty hangover at the frat house about noon the next day, smelling like puke, booze and ass. Maybe drunken amnesia was a good thing. When I could finally open my eyes halfway and walk in more or less a straight line, I took a cab home.
    I plugged in my phone and unlocked it to set the alarm when I noticed a text came in from Jo that said, ‘ I’m kinda jealous. ’
    Wow.
    Awww hell no.
    I checked my text log between us. It appeared that at every stop on the pub crawl after the Blue Bayou, I’d snapped a selfie outside the bar or pub we’d visited—and I’d sent them all to Jo. Pat was in every shot, standing there in the background with mafia hat, his bevy of girls and his cigar, cool as punch with his suit still perfectly white and untouched. How the fuck did he pull that off? How in hell were these pictures so clear when I probably could barely stand up? There was even a shot of me with three of the ladies behind me who had all raised their shirts and exposed their breasts just in time.
    Naked boob chicks in my selfies.
    I’d texted them all to Jo.
    And her only reply was, ‘ I’m kinda jealous. ’
    I replied with, ‘ no need to be, ’ and decided I’d phone her later on to hear what she really thought, but not now when my head was still pounding and I was unlikely able to string together full sentences. So I went back to bed.

11

Josephine
    I t was Monday morning and I was on a mission. Find a job within a two-mile radius of Rose’s place by the end of the day, or die trying. That may have been a tall order, and sure, I was overly dramatic. The thing was, I’d already forked over my share of the rent to Rose last night. Seeing my tiny nest egg diminish by almost ten percent within the first day of getting to New Orleans got me to the point of desperation. At any moment I expected to break out in hives from worry.
    What threw me over the edge was the call from my cousin after that. The tow truck driver had dropped off my car, and my cousin had asked a mechanic friend to see if it was repairable. According to the mechanic, my car could get back on the road for only five thousand dollars.
    Five thousand dollars?
    That was what I screamed into the phone, after which I told him to scrap the piece of shit Frankencar, and keep the money. It may have had sentimental value, but I was not so hard up for my own set of wheels to fork out pretty much the rest of my life savings.
    Taking the bus started to look damn good.
    So I was officially carless and jobless. Finding a job today would take care of at least one of those things. Yesterday, I had gone for a nice long walk around the area, and had seen several places with