Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) by eden Hudson (ebook reader with highlight function .TXT) 📗

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It’s amazing what a hot shower with real shampoo and conditioner can do for a hangover. Even being in a strange house with two people I had never met and my crippling awkwardness felt like something I could handle after that. I put my backpack back in Tough’s room and went downstairs.

In the front room, a heavyset blonde-haired guy was on the couch playing a video game. When I got to the bottom step, he pushed a button on the controller and the game paused. He smiled at me like he was waiting for something.

“Uh, hey,” I said. He probably wanted to know who the heck I was and why I was in his house. I swallowed and tried to play it cool. “I’m Desty. McCormick. Desty McCormick.” Super-cool. “Tough, um—”

“I thought I heard someone with him last night,” the guy said, wiping his forehead with the sweatband on his wrist. “My name’s Jax, but you probably know me better as ‘Warrior.’ The goddess is at the store getting groceries.”

I took a couple tentative steps into the room. “So, then, your girlfriend’s Harper? That’s a pretty name.”

Jax shrugged and turned his game back on.

“She’s pretty, so it fits.” He jerked his chin at the doorway to my left. “If you’re too hungry to wait for her to get back, there’s still a couple of things in the kitchen to eat. Cracker behind the stove. Maybe some chili stuck to the wall in the microwave.”

He was joking. Right?

Of course he was joking, but now it was too late to laugh. I was on a roll this morning. I shifted my weight to my other foot and put my hands in my back pockets.

“Do you know when Tough will be back?” I asked.

Jax shook his head, but didn’t look away from the werewolf pack he was gunning down. “He had to talk to Rowdy and Dodge and then go to an appointment with the Matchmaker, but that’s just on the square. If he doesn’t have anywhere else to go, he’ll probably be back by three-thirty or quarter ‘til.”

“What time is it now?” I asked, checking out the window. It looked like a photographer had turned the saturation up way too high and the world was one degree away from bursting into flame.

“Just about three,” Jax said.

“Three?”

“Don’t worry, it’s still Monday,” he said. “You weren’t even close to breaking the record for longest uninterrupted sleep in the Carpenter-Ives-Whitney household.”

I smiled. It’s hard not to like someone who can just step right past your social incompetence and make you feel like a normal person.

“What’s the record?” I asked.

“The bar’s pretty high on that one. When Tough first moved in, he slept for forty-one hours. Harper thought maybe he was in a coma.”

“You didn’t think so?”

“He had normal REM cycles and his flexion was above average. Also, he woke up on his own. Classic sign.” Jax used his elbow to point toward the couch cushion beside him. “You can sit down.”

My stomach picked that second to growl really loudly.

“Or you can get something to eat,” he said. “There’s some of those blueberry toaster pancakes in the freezer. They’re pretty good.”

“Thanks.”

I went into the kitchen and started a couple, staring into the toaster slots while they cooked to make sure they didn’t burn. I was looking for a plate or paper towel when I heard the screen door bang and the rustle of grocery bags.

“What’d you do, buy out the store?” Jax asked.

A feminine laugh. Harper?

“They had a two-for-one deal for the same orange juice that was on sale, so I got four of them,” she said. I could hear her footsteps approaching the kitchen, so I raked my bangs out of my eyes and turned to face the doorway. “It’s not like I’m never going to drink them.”

I wouldn’t say Halter-Top from the bar was the absolute last person I expected to see, but I was definitely surprised. Maybe as surprised as she was to see me.

“What are you doing here?” Halter-Top—Harper today, because she was wearing a black tank top with a mockingbird airbrushed onto it that said her name in purple letters—stopped in the doorway and put her hand on her hip, grocery bags and all.

“That’s Desty,” Jax called from the front room. “Tough brought her home last night.”

“Bullshit he did,” Harper said.

My voice came unstuck, but I said the wrong thing. “He just let me stay the night because I didn’t have anywhere else to go and I’d have to stay at the Dark Mansion if—”

“The Dark Mansion?” Harper dropped the grocery bags and crossed the room. She was a good five inches shorter than me, but she got up in my face the way some redneck girls can when they’re mad. I backed up against the sink, and she followed me, getting close enough that I could smell the shea butter on her skin. “What are you, some kind of spy?”

“I’m not—”

“Or maybe you got a vampire fetish? Finn moved on to someone else so now you’re after Tough because he used to be a vamp’s fuck-puppet? Is cold-by-proximity enough for you or are you hoping he’ll put in a good word with someone who can make you?”

Jax popped into the kitchen. “Harper, what the hell? Leave her alone.”

“She left Rowdy’s with Finn the other night,” Harper said, not backing down.

I held deer-in-the-headlights still and tried not to breathe.

“So?” Jax said.

“So if Logan doesn’t trust Finn, I don’t either. He’s no one’s protector, he breaks the rules, sucks off of tourists, has sex with anything warm—”

“I didn’t have sex with Finn!” I said.

“Well, I guess even he’s got standards,” Harper said, cocking her head