Read Under Locke for Free Online

desk, hands shoved into his front pockets.
     
    “Yes?” I asked, keeping my gaze locked only as high as his bare neck.
     
    “Ritz,” he repeated the name he’d used at first.
     
    “My name’s—,“ I started to say before he cut me off.
     
    “Would you look at me?”
     
    No.
     
    Was there a treatment for gonorrhea already?
     
    I clenched my teeth together. “You didn't tell me what you wanted me to do until you guys were done, so I figured I'd clean up. Blake said you would put up the—,“ I started to tell his neck in a surprisingly even voice. You couldn’t even tell I’d been fighting back tears the majority of the day.
     
    “Look at me,” Dex interrupted in a low voice. 
     
    Slowly, fighting everything in me that ached from his shitty words, I dragged my eyes up to his.
     
    "Yes?" It was like the words were pulled from my throat with rusty tweezers.
     
    Some indecipherable emotion reflected back at me from his true blue eyes as I grudgingly held his gaze for all of ten seconds before turning back to finish cleaning the frames.
     
    Dex exhaled. It sounded like he rubbed his palms together before speaking. "You gotta toughen up," he gritted.
     
    Oh my God. The first person in my life who I had the urge to punch in the face was a six-foot-three-ish biker that I assumed beat the living crap out of someone and went to jail for it. Of all the people in the world smaller than me that I could have chosen, and this was who I wanted to nail right in the testicles? Not Sonny, or even Trip who hadn't given me the impression he'd try to murder me?
     
    I bristled and like clockwork, my molars ground together.
     
    I need the job.
     
    I need the job.
     
    I need the job.
     
    “Wipe down the counters for me," he added in a low voice that seemed to go immediately against the harsh, no-nonsense tone he'd used a moment before. How was this man even capable of speaking in that kind of tone after the daggers he'd been spitting out earlier?
     
    I nodded and swallowed back that gross feeling in my throat again. “Okay.”
     
    “Yeah?”
     
    I held back my long sigh, keeping my eyes on the title, “Ink Me!” on the mounted magazine while I wiped streaks across the glass. I wasn’t going to argue with him, I wasn’t going to care enough about the fact he didn’t remember my name, and I definitely wasn’t going to let him know how shitty he'd made me feel. In all actuality, this just made it easier for me to want to find another job. “Yup.”
     
    My pride won out because I didn’t turn back to look at him while he stood in place another minute, and when Blake walked with me to my car twenty minutes later after closing, I didn’t look at Dex again then either.
     
    Fuck him. Not screw him, or damn him. Fuck him. He deserved the f-bomb for being such a dick and heaven knows I saved th at word for special occasions.
     
    Just because I let my conscience guide me into keeping the job out of respect for Sonny—and my need for some cash—didn’t mean I had to like my boss. It didn’t mean I had to let what happened go and get over the fire he’d breathed for no reason.
     
    Friggin' asshole.
     
    ~ * ~ *
     
    "What's wrong?"
     
    Sonny was going to blow a gasket. There was going to be smoke coming out of his ass and ears. I just knew it.
     
    I'd underestimated him my entire life. When I was a kid, I'd thought he hated me because Will and I had lived with our dad and he hadn't, except for yearly visits that lasted until Son was old enough to tell him to screw off. As a teenager, I thought he wouldn't care too much about the disasters that had stockpiled in my life.
     
    But the fact was, he had. As an adult, Sonny had become the most solid figure in my life even if he lived over a thousand miles away.
     
    We hadn't been raised together, obviously. Sonny had lived in Austin with his mom, where I'd grown up with mine in Florida nine years later. We'd settled for seeing each other once a year when I