Her eyes widen, and she looks truly surprised. “My God, no. I would never play that kind of horrible game. What if you stopped trusting me? Also, he’s a friend who’s married to the love of his life and so happy. I really like his wife. I wouldneverdo that. C, I swear. How could you even think that? I love you. I’d never try to create trouble between you and Trick. I wasn’t even aware that was possible.”
I shake my head at myself because I know she’s telling me the truth. I should’ve known without asking. Zoe’s not the kind of woman who needs men to fight over her to feel special.
Taking her hand, I squeeze it and pull it against my chest. “I don’t know why you think I don’t miss you. You’re the one who left.”
“Right, but not because I didn’t love you. I cried every day for weeks. You probably didn’t even cry once. You never texted. You never asked Rachel about me. I asked Sasha so many times. He said you were fine and seeing other women since you were single again. You moved on so fast. Like we didn’t even matter.”
“Baby, be serious. I paced holes in the fucking carpet the week you left. I drank Jack straight from the bottle to get to sleep. Did you expect me to—?” I bite off the rest of what I’m about to say because I hear the doorknob turn.
I look over as the door opens, and Trick strolls in. I scowl because I suspect he was right about Zoe wanting me to chase her and re-stake my claim sooner. I thought she was still trying to figure shit out. When she said she wanted time alone and wasn’t ready to talk, she sounded sure of herself. I took her seriously.
To hear that she wanted to hear from me all along makes me grind my teeth. The night we slept together, she said she couldn’t have handled if I stopped by. She said she moved out of my New York apartment so we wouldn’t see each other. Was that all bullshit? Because from where I’m standing, it seems like she’s changing her mind about what she wants from one minute to the next.
Meanwhile, I held back, fighting the urge to drag her back to me. Instead I gave her what I thought she wanted. From thesounds of it, I slogged through a lot of tough nights without her for no reason.
“What do you think of the stairwell?” I ask Trick, putting my focus where it needs to be for the moment.
“The stairwell door to this floor isn’t secure. And on the first floor, the lock’s broken on the east door to the building. All anyone needs to do is hop the back fence to gain access. There’s no camera facing that way, so we’ve gotta decide how we want to play it. We can leave the door lock the way it is, and I can install a motion-activated camera and wait to catch him when he enters. But that’s probably not necessary if the camera footage from the hall outside this door is decent. I’ll see.” Trick pulls a chair out and sits. “What’s up with you two?”
“Zoe and I have some things to settle,” I say, rising. “First, let’s you and I take a walk.”
Trick nods and falls in step with me as I go out into the hall. He waits.
“You shouldn’t be the one to cover me anymore, Trick.”
His frown is fierce. “Why the fuck not? I swear to God, C, if you really think?—”
“Wait,” I say, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Just wait.”
He falls silent.
“I know you’d take a bullet for me, but I’ve also known for a while that I wouldn’t let you. C Crue is so big and successful now that it could survive even if it lost one of us. The thing is I’d stop caring about working on it if you weren’t around. We built this empire together, and it’s been the best fucking time.” I nod for emphasis. “We’re brothers.”
“Jesus, C,” he says with a mock grimace. “That settles it. ‘Vil’s out of the running to be baby boy Patrick’s godfather. That’s all you.”
I tip my head back and laugh. “Way to disrupt the moment, Trick.”
He flashes a grin and shrugs. Trick knows that underlying my words is a sincere apology for implying he’d ever betray me over Zoe, or anything else. It’s classic Trick though to deflect when things start to get too serious or dark. And any reference to an untimely death always calls for a deadpan response from him. The thing is, he’s the one who can usually get sentimental on us, but only when he’s pretty deep in his cups and not guarding against it.
“How many more months until you can drink again? Because some of the shit you’ve said while drunk—you’d have thought we were about to die on the field of battle and brotherhood was making its last stand.”
Trick laughs. “Don’t tell me what I said. There are some things that should only be said while blackout drunk, so the next day there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s the Irish in me. Emotions are fine, as long as no one gets carried away and mentions them.”
That brings a barking laugh out of me.
“Being dead sober makes things dicey on the romantic front, too. If I’m drunk, I can say all sorts of things without them coming off as sappy. Sober, I don’t know. Laurelyn’s Irish, too. I could be making a mistake. For all I know, she likes the wild, hard-drinking version of me better. I should probably find out. Wouldn’t it be ironic if she left me for being too sober and sweet?” His rueful smirk is priceless.
“Yeah, that would be one for the books. Sober and sweet are not normally your defining characteristics, so maybe she does wonder who she’s married to these days.”
“Right.” He shrugs, then narrows his eyes. “Yeah, but who am I kidding? She couldn’t get to the end of the driveway without my getting an alert. Laurelyn’s never leaving me because where could she go that I wouldn’t show up? Nowhere. And, byrights, she can’t act surprised that I’d never let her go. I warned her. Married in a church is married for life.”
“Sounds like Zoe’s stalker’s a rank amateur next to you.”
“He is.” Trick flashes a smile. “I don’t know who he is yet, but I’ve got a plan to find him within forty-eight hours. Wanna bet me I can do it in twelve?”
“Sure, if it’ll make you work faster.”
“You sure you want me to find him right away, C? I could drag it out, so Zoe will want her big, bad gangster boyfriend back in her life to protect her.”
