“Answer. The. Damn.Question.”
I grin. “When you were moping, and Callum was distracted buying the building, I took the first chance to go over and choke the guy out for touching our mate.”
“But the choking didn’t happen?”
I take a bite of my sandwich, chew, and swallow. “No, it did not happen. June… June has an incredible ability to collect people who want to protect her. He told me some home truths I needed to hear, and he defended her.”
How could I not like the guy?
“Her neighbor was threatening to knock me out with a bat,” Torin says, voice soft with amusement. “I believed her.”
“If it was Lucia, believe her. She’s from a big Italian family where if anyone dares to hurt someone they love, they will kill you. She seems to have adopted June.”
“I’m glad,” Torin says with a sigh. “She’s doing what we didn’t. Protecting our mate.”
I lift my eyebrow. “Again? Can we go one conversation without playing the blame game?”
“I can’t help it, okay?” he snaps, frustrated. “You didn’t call her a whore.”
My good mood dims. “I did something worse. I treated her as if she were nothing. But she’s giving us another chance, Torin. She thinks we’re worthy of that, and I don’t intend to fuck things up. And you can’t keep tiptoeing around her, afraid that whatever you say will upset her and she’ll run. That’s no way to live.”
When he falls silent, I pick up my sandwich to eat it before it gets cold.
“Where’d you get the money?” he asks when I’ve nearly finished my sandwich and my coffee.
“Where’d you think?”
“You called it blood money. I thought you weren’t going to touch it.”
Yeah, me too.
I wasn’t expecting to like Jack. I was even less prepared to recognize a failing business when I saw one. Then I remembered the money. For years, Callum’s dad paid me to spy on his son, but I never felt right spending it. I knew I should do something with it, but what? Start a charity? Donate it? It had been easier to ignore it, so I’d ignored it.
I looked into Jack. It wasn’t hard. A quick tap of the name of the hardware store into my cell phone's search engine brought up the history of the shop, the man who could never do enough for his community, his short fight with cancer, and his eventual death.
According to the new general manager, Jack had taken over helping people out in the apartment building as best he could after his dad died. It made sense that the son would be like his dad.
Writing the check had come easily, so had posting it through his door.
“Jack will do something useful with the money,” I say, pondering my past. “I thought that money would change my life. I could get off the street and build a new life for myself, but it wasn’t the money that did that. It was meeting you, Callum, and Lottie. The money can be Jack’s fresh start. The start ofhisnew life.”
“You sappy bastard.”
“From the guy two seconds away from writing love poems and sliding them under June’s door, you’re one to talk.”
“Fuck off,” he says without heat.
I grin and finish my coffee.
“Are you sure she said my name?” Torin asks.
For a guy who walks around like he owns the planet sometimes, with walls so high, I sometimes forget that wall conceals a surprisingly soft heart.
“I’m sure.”
“I’m no good for her, Archer,” he says so quietly I have to strain to hear him over the loud rattle of the coffee machine and the conversations from the other tables.
“You fucked up. We all fucked up. But we’re making things right. You’re not the poison your parents are. If you were,” I say, lowering my voice to add, “then you would have joined Asylum,and you wouldn’t have thought once or even twice about how sick and messed up that shit is.”
