And I had to say, that door was leading somewhere a lot more intriguing than I ever would have assumed.
Mason
Connor and I left Southwest Dine without another word.
I didn’t need to be a therapist to see how pissed Connor was getting at the banter between Rachel and me. He didn’t need to worry a damn bit. I thought she was beautiful, and I even thought that she was into me, but that was never going to happen.
And the truth was, it had nothing to do with what had happened to her. If she felt comfortable moving on from it and trying her hand at something romantic, then that was good enough for me. It had been over ten years, not ten weeks. That had been plenty of time for her to do some work.
It had everything to do with me.
“You better not fuck her.”
I didn’t even realize Connor had spoken until I looked at him and he had that damn fucking glare, the one that said he was going to fuck you up if you didn’t do what he said.
“The fuck makes you think that?”
“She’s looking at you the way she looked at Brock back in the day,” Connor said. “I promised her when this all happened, I’d fuck up anyone who touched her. That doesn’t exclude you.”
“First of all, that’s not happening,” I said. “Second of all, stay the fuck out of my dating life. And third of all, you think she can’t make those decisions on her own? You think that she can’t ask for help on her own?”
Why the fuck did you think it was a good idea to mention that third bit?
“That girl’s coming out of a ten-year hibernation to recover from something that would drive a lot of people to kill themselves,” Connor said. “I’m not fucking allowing anything to get near her.”
“She’s an adult woman, Connor; she’s not a little teenage girl anymore.”
Connor scowled. He might have acknowledged I was right, but that sure as hell wasn’t something he would say out loud. Nor would it change his behavior.
“Should we say anything to Brock?” I asked.
“The fuck would we?” Connor said. “He’s happy with Tara. He’s got bigger shit to deal with.”
“You don’t think he’d want to know that the woman that is driving all of us, all of this, is putting herself back in the world? You don’t think he’d be fucking pissed if he found out we’d hung out with her and didn’t say anything? You’re talking about a guy that would fucking nuke this town to defend her, Connor. He deserves to know.”
It was amazing to say, but I really thought Connor was jealous. In no way did I think he was going to leave Katie for Rachel, and in no way did I think he’d cheat on her, but I’d always known Connor saw Rachel as a little sister. Big brothers could either be enormous assholes or indestructible guardians, and rarely did they allow themselves to change into anything other than the two.
Even when it made sense to anyone and everyone, most especially the brother.
“You do whatever the fuck you want to do,” Connor said. “For now, we gotta head back to the clubhouse. Guess Lane and Brock talked and got something planned.”
* * *
As we walked into the clubhouse, with most everyone else except Garrett having settled in, my mind would not leave what had happened at Southwest Dine.
First, I was pissed. I should have taken a fucking bullet to take out Eduardo. It would have done this town a lot of good, and it would have finally given me a heroic sendoff. After the shit I’d done in this life, it almost seemed fucking noble and full circle that I’d do something like that.
But alas, it wasn’t as simple as having a standoff and both of us dying. Many more people, least of all Connor, would have died in the chaos that fired. It wouldn’t have ended the violence so much as continued it.
But fuck, I fucking hated Eduardo!
And then I felt fucking torn and conflicted. Hanging out with Rachel was truly wonderful. Her presence, her smile, her words were the kind of thing that put me at ease.
But boy, of all people, I was pretty much the last person that should have ever been near her. Garrett winding up with my sister, as much as I hated it, was probably a better outcome than her having me over her shoulder twenty-four-seven. I was not going to go so far as to…well, OK, yes I was. I was a fucking monster.
And while I would never deliberately go out of my way to hurt someone like Hannah or like Rachel, prior events suggested that it didn’t much matter what my intent was when I couldn’t fucking stop the worst from happening to those I cared about.
So maybe it was for the best that I just shut the fuck up and listened to what Connor had to say.
