“That’s not an option.”
“It is.”For fuck’s sake.“Must not seem like it, but I’m telling you, it is. You never need to shut down and isolate yourself to survive in this crue. That’s not how we roll.”
After a few moments of silence, he says, “C cut back my responsibilities, and he limits his interactions with me now. That speaks for itself.”
“Look where you are tonight.”
“Sure, but you offered me this, right? Which I appreciate, by the way.”
It surprises me that guys in our own crue don’t always understand how we operate. “You’ve got it wrong. I was the one who talked to you about it, but that was only after C gave me the green light. With something like this, if any of the three of us had said no, you wouldn’t be here tonight. You’d be reading about it in the morning like everyone else.”
“All right.” He nods. “Good.”
That at least seems to have the ring of truth to him.
Miller’s the best of the new recruits. He’s better, in fact, than some guys who came on board before him. I hope bullshit doesn’t get in the way of business. C needs to continue utilizing Miller for bigger stuff, and everyone needs to stop acting like business decisions are personal. It’s one thing for C, ‘Vil, and I to treat each other like family, with all that that entails; it’s another to have a young crue member believe he’s being cut out because someone’s girlfriend got her feelings hurt.
Good thing honeymoons are only a once in a lifetime thing because apparently not everything keeps rolling perfectly when one of us is gone.
Chapter
Eleven
4 weeks later (July)
TRICK
It’s nearly eleven o’clock, and Laurelyn and I are in our bedroom in the new house. We brought the furniture from my apartment since it matched the new place. The bedding and the mattress are new. We’ve given them quite a workout since we got here.
Laurel’s lying naked under the rumpled sheets, when I say, “Hey, I’ve got an idea for the house.”
“You with an idea for the house? You don’t say.” Laurelyn smiles, but her single raised brow speaks volumes. “The house is done. Get whatever other things you want. Unless it’s—what is it?”
Our taste in decor diverges pretty widely, so we had to go one way or the other, and a modern aesthetic won out because she finally realized I’d never come out of my study and game room if the rest of the house looked like it should belong to aneighteenth century Frenchman. I did concede on a few pieces of antique furniture for the dining room because they were painted and matched the place’s color scheme pretty well. No need to go too monochromatic or singular with a design.
“About the baby’s room…”
“Trick, come on!” she immediately protests. It’s the one place I’ve told her she can do whatever she wants.
“Hang on,” I say. “That’s still yours to decorate. I just want to show you something.”
She purses her lips. “Go ahead.”
“You said you didn’t want to go too standard, so how about a custom job with a nod to Ireland?” I pick up my tablet and show her the designs I had drawn. The wall paper for two of the walls are basically paintings. One will have rolling green hills, the opposite wall is the sea with a couple of mermaids sitting on a rock.
Laurel shakes her head and smiles. “Damn it.”
I try not to smile myself.
“Yeah, I love this,” she says.
“Could do the carpet in sea blue because I found this guy…” I swipe to the next image. “who makes bassinets that look like old boats. You can hang a mobile from this mast. Maybe some sea life, turtles, dolphins to go with the scene?”
“Oh, wow. That bassinet’s beautiful. Is that hand-carved?”
I nod. “And depending on what color you pick, the guy says he can put either a brass or silver plate on the side to match. It could have the baby’s name engraved on it. Or, I was thinking maybe just our last name in case we want to use it for more than just him. You can think about it. I’ll send you all the specs and contact info, so you can see the different colored stains and pick out what you want.” I shut the tablet down and stick it in the drawer of the nightstand. “You know what else? You know that house you were renting?”
“What house?”
