I open my eyes and look at him.
“Deacon uninvited him to the market because they knew he’d been with you last night.”
My body tenses, “What?” I whisper hiss.
“You got a superpower kid.”
“A superpower?”
“Like a skunk, but pretty.”
“Oh my God, just spill it,” I whisper.
“Moretti didn’t get a whiff, but he knew something was up based on that weird foreplay between the two of you.” I feel my face burn. “He was an ass at Icehouse?” I nod, and God forgive me, I don’t divulge that I totally earned that. “Deacon warned him to behave at Rockefeller Center, and you two did that again, the —”
“Please never say weird foreplay to me again.”
“Well, that.” He chuckles. “Then the guys were giving him shit in the locker-room about bringing a girl back to the Pad, which I assume is a new rule they set when I moved in.”Good.“Moretti must have thought what they all did, you two got the hots for each other.”
“We do not have?—”
“Never lie to me. It’s a…” he scratches his head. “What the hell does Claudia call it? A bullet point, a shot, something?”
“A trigger.”
He snaps his fingers and points, “Yep. It’s that. Makes me?—”
“Wanna shield yourself from everyone and not take care of yourself? Drink until you wake up face-first, surrounded by a building you no longer want to be in, but can’t leave because it’s where Patsy’s and all your good memories still live? Oh, and have to be helped up off the damn floor by?—”
He cuts me off, “My point, sassy ass, is that you both need to stop presuming you’re going to fail each other because the people who were supposed to protect you didn’t. He’s not going to pour alcohol in that wound in your chest, he’s going to heal it, and you’re going to do the same for him.” Just those words make me warm inside. “If you quit fucking around.”
I close my eyes and kiss Savannah’s head. Inhaling her sweet baby scent.
“The smelly part.” I crack open one eye and look at him, and he goes on. “The one who has a crush on me?—”
“Dash.” I smile
“Yeah. They have rituals. They still ride back to the Pad after practice together, the four of them, not the one with the good hair or?—”
“Koa.” I grin.
He winks, “Yeah, that one or Savannah’s Daddy D, they don’t anymore, but the other four must think their winning streak depends on them leaving the arena and heading to the Pad.”
“Got it.” I smile inside at the fact that I now love his drawn-out stories instead of waiting for them to wrap up impatiently. Which I note, because how rude? His life and memories are precious to him and should be treated as such.
“So, the kid with a crush on me, he acted like he was grabbing a box to bring to that mansion he rented to impress his girl, the sweet one.”
“Noelle.”
He nods. “I’ll circle back to the fact you haven’t been to the mansion, and why you need to carve out time later, but to my point, Sterling was full of shit. All but ran down the hall and threw open AK’s door, grabbed a pillow, and apparently sniffed it, and because of that distinct scent knew the girl he broke house rules for was you, the one who AK had been an ass to, and the one they consider their own due to your sisters.” He sighs. “One who may be by blood.” I hold Savannah closer, and he continues. “I walked in and was hit by it.”
“My stink?” I ask.
“Scent, ya little shit,” he grumbles.
“And?”
“I spilled the coffee so to speak.” I don’t correct him. “Not about Mr. Big Bucks or the half-blood bimbos, but about,” he touches his chest, right above his heart. “My girls.”
