Casey spoke over him. “Last night was what it was, but come on, you really didn’t think you were going to get more than a hookup, did you?” She abruptly turned and headed into her kitchen because she didn’t want to look at him. He was too damn good at feigning hurt and confusion, which was bullshit. She was the one who’d been lied to.
He followed her, his footfalls startlingly quick, and she spun back to brace herself for whatever an extremely well-muscled, powerful, and relatively unknown-to-her man might do when he’d been provoked to anger.
He immediately stepped back, hands up and horrified.
“Whoa,” he said. “What the... You don’t actually think...”
“I don’t know you,” she said. “So yeah, back the fuck up.”
“Casey, you’re freaking me out. You absolutely know me. What is happening here?”
“You need to go,” she told him. “It’s time to go.”
“I’ll go outside,” he said shifting slightly toward the door. “I’m happy to go outside if that’s what you want, but you have to come, too, because we need to talk.”
“I told you last night, more than once, that I don’t want to talk.”
“Last night,” he said. “You didn’t want to talk last night, but Jesus, we really should’ve, because this is—”
“When I said I didn’t want to talk, I meant this morning, too. And this afternoon, and tonight, and... pick a day, any day in the next, oh, seventy-five-ish years. Got one? Good, because I don’t want to talk then, either, thanks.”
“Hook-up,” he said as if the words she’d spoken after finding him in her living room had finally penetrated.
“Todd texted,” she told him, “but then I thought, hey, you were already in my backyard. Why not.”
“Why not,” he repeated. “I didn’t... know... that was a... a why not. I thought...”
“That I’d marry you? Right.” She laughed as he flinched, because it was that or cry, and she was not going to cry. Goddamn it. God damn him. And in a flash, she knew exactly what to say to make him leave, forever. And for one brief, dizzying moment she teetered, because yeah, she was beyond angry now, but forever was a damn long time. But then she smacked down the part of her that any minute now was going to start making excuses for why it was okay that he’d lied to her about who he was, and she did it. She said it. Words she knew would make him leave. “That was sex—last night. Nothing more. Come on. Look at yourself. You know the deal. You used me, so I used you. You lied to me, I lied to you. And really, if you didn’t realize that, that’s on you. That’s you being, well, stupid. Pretty fucking stupid, if you ask me. But, hey, if the shoe fits...”
And yeah, that did it. A direct hit.
He turned back to the living room, but then turned back to her, spinning in one small circle. “You need to call Ella, and if she can’t come back from Seattle, have her get someone else who can. You’re not safe here alone. The man in the car. He was gunning for you. That look on his face. It was a... a... murder face.”
“A murder face?” It was her turn, now, to repeat his crazy-ass words.
“I was going to say warrior face, which is a real thing in the Teams, but it felt disrespectful to real warriors, so—” he cut himself off. “I’ve been thinking about it, kind of all night. Why go after you? It seems crazy, but it’s a mob thing. It’s an organized crime MO. Someone was trying to kill you to send a warning to your brother. And maybe trying and failing was enough of a message sent. But maybe not. And if not, and they decide to try again—”
It didn’t just seem crazy. “Please just go,” Casey said.
“I’ll be out in my car until Ella, or someone else, gets here,” he told her.
“I don’t want you to—” she started, but he’d already grabbed his flip-flops and was out the door.
Rio was wrecked.
He sat in Tasha’s car, outside of Casey’s house, his breath still damn near knocked out of him.
How had he gotten that so freaking wrong?
Casey was so angry—and so cold. Shockingly, heartstoppingly, harshly and calculatingly cold. The icy nothingness in her eyes as she’d looked at him had been like a punch to the chest, making him doubt everything. All of it.
She’d gone for his jugular intentionally, with scalpel-like precision. Pretty fucking stupid, if you ask me. But, hey, if the shoe fits...
Had any of that been real—the past few days of intense, delightful discovery and intimacy?
Their weekend in Palm Spring, the drive north to Napa, the flight back to SoCal... Rio had talked more with Casey than he’d ever talked with anyone, about deeply personal things. Not just Uncle Joey, but Laura-who’d-broken-his-heart. When was the last time he’d told anyone about either of them?
Never.
