So I understood her play.
“Oh, well then,” was all I could say.
“They didn’t go to shit, obviously, but you need to know why they’re here.”
“Thanks for letting me know.”
“No, Willow. I’m not explaining myself to you. What I’m doing is sharing that my cousin went through hell with Denise. Ariana was just an important lesson painfully learned. But you know what he found when he found Denise by that river. He’d loved her. He’d been inside her. He probably thought at one point he’d spend the rest of his life with her. Seeing her like that would mark any man. Gabe internalized it. He blamed himself for what she did. Mike and Shelby, Kacie and Wyatt, me and Ava, even Denise’s parents tried to get him to understand he did everything he could do.”
I just knew a dad who would put his foot down to get his daughter safe wouldn’t blame Gabe for that.
And I was glad to know I was right.
“Gabe was always an intense guy, but he could be a fun guy too,” Luke told me. “When he found Denise after she took her own life, all that fun was wiped clean away, and the intense part got more concentrated. She’s been gone for years, and Gabe wasn’t back. So you can imagine their relief that he’s back. He’s pissed, but they told me last night he was chill with you, relaxed, smiling, and they were fuckin’ beside themselves I wasn’t lyin’ when it came to you.”
Okay.
Back to needing to cry.
He glanced beyond me then came back to me. “So that’s what I came to say.”
I looked to my side to see Alexis approaching with two plastic wineglasses filled with white, and I went back to Luke. “Thanks for taking the time to say it.”
“Was I gone for long enough?” Alexis asked.
“Perfect,” Luke murmured as he stood.
“Yoo-hoo!” was called from the security gate.
I turned and saw a tall, lean man with a brown crewcut, next to a shorter Latino man entering the courtyard.
The tall man was carrying what looked like a stack of scrapbooks.
The Latino man seemed to be carrying half the stock of a Michael’s store.
They were strangers, so how they got through the security gate was a mystery, and even though they didn’t appear to be a threat—unless they were going to tie us all up with ribbon—their easy access possibly needed to be noted to the landlord.
Then again, the Nightingale Men came and went as they pleased, and only one of them officially lived there, case in point, Luke sauntering in like he owned the joint.
“Fuck,” Luke muttered.
“Do you know them?” I asked Luke.
“Brace,” Luke answered.
He knew them, which might explain why they knew the code to the gate.
“Luke Stark!” the tall man said, marching toward us with the other guy at his side. “I need to find a woman named Alexis. Do you know where she lives?”
Alexis made a gurgling noise that was half-confusion, half-curiosity.
The two men stopped at our table.
“Are you Alexis?” the crewcut guy asked me.
“No,” I answered.
He turned to Alexis. “You?”
