“I know,” I grumbled. “I just wish you gave me literally any other task to do. I’d sooner go sweep the sidewalks of Santa Maria than have to deal with that prick.”
“If it makes you feel better, once we get to a certain number of prospects, I won’t make you do that. It’s my intention to experiment and rotate people in different spots.”
“So you’re saying I can eventually go back to fucking with him?”
Brock smirked.
“Long as it betters the Black Reapers in the long run.”
I nodded. A brief silence fell over us. I looked back at Mason and Garrett, cracking on each other about Garrett’s promiscuity and Mason’s distance. I remembered when Brock and I used to banter like that; now, for obvious reasons, things weren’t the same.
I couldn’t fucking take it. I needed things between us to feel normal.
“How’s Tara?”
It was a risky question. I wasn’t even sure I wanted it answered. But I wanted to not have every interaction with Brock feel like we were waiting for the therapist to sit across from us.
“Fine,” he said. “If you don’t mind me asking, you’re still good with helping Elizabeth?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Brock sighed.
“I don’t want to make this any more complicated than it already is, and I’m sure this won’t come as a surprise to you, but from what I know of her and from what Tara says, Elizabeth is into you.”
I laughed.
But it wasn’t much of a surprise. I’d always known in some corner of my mind the strength of her reactions suggested something more than what showed on the surface.
“Probably was just jealous of what Tara and you had and now is confused how to act. Suddenly, you’re available and she’s—”
“Elizabeth Rogers,” I said, still laughing at Brock’s words. “Her? Why the fuck would I be attracted to that prude?”
Because she cared about you earlier?
Because she knows what it’s like to have a shitty family?
“I don’t know, but lust makes people do some weird shit,” Brock said. “If working security ever gets difficult—”
“It won’t,” I said. “I’m a grown-ass man. I’ll handle it on my own, but I won’t need to. There won’t be any problems with Elizabeth.”
Funny thing, those words.
Usually, when I projected my future, I felt like I could see it with the clarity that I could see Brock’s skeptical expression right now. I wasn’t trying to speak with bravado when I had said I would get Tara back; I had genuinely believed it. Whenever I said that I would do something, it fucking happened. I made sure it did.
But when I thought of Elizabeth, I genuinely had no idea what to expect. And that shit was fucking annoying.
On the one obvious hand, she was a fucking prude, the complete opposite body type of Tara, and someone who I suspected would turn more into a nagging wife than a hot MILF in twenty years. She constantly complained about me and my brothers, and to say she came from a different walk of life was an understatement. We were not two different things in one category; we were two distinct categories.
But on the other, more subtle hand…I knew from years of knowing her that once you got passed the constant whining about oil and gasoline scent, when you looked past her hesitancy to get involved with the “unknown,” there was someone who cared a great deal. There was someone who was looking for something more, for something or someone she could feel content with. There was…
Someone like me.
It didn’t matter, though. The obvious factors—her personality, her last name—made it impossible. It didn’t matter that she was my type.
My type?
My physical type.
At least, that was what I wanted to believe.
And for the first time that I could ever remember, I couldn’t make myself believe it. I couldn’t transform it from belief into objective, inevitable reality.
