“I wouldn’t call it a lurch,” Casey protested. “It was more of... I don’t know, what’s less than a lurch?”
“A fix? A conundrum? A pickle? A pretty sour one, though. I went to Seattle because you promised me—you swore up and down—you’d get Dave or one of his teammates to sub in,” Ella reminded her.
That much was true, but... “I was safe there.”
“Yeah,” Ella agreed dryly. “Because hanging with Dave’s fake boyfriend was more enticing to you than hooking up with Todd.”
Casey rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean that kind of safe. FYI, your being there wouldn’t have stopped me.”
“I am well aware of that. And kinda awed by this superpower that Rio-pretending-to-be-Luc wields.”
“I liked him,” Casey said, and there it was. Her face crumpled, and her eyes welled with tears and she couldn’t help herself, she started to cry. “I liked him, El. And it made my head explode when I found out he’d lied to me, except he did it for Dave, to protect Dave from me. And even though I get why he did it—why he lied... Even though I understand it now, it still scares me because I honest-to-god don’t know what was real and what was just random shit he told me, to make me believe Dave loved him. So I really don’t know him, I don’t know who he is, he’s just another stranger that I slept with. Because I was hurt and I was angry and I tried to turn this entire fuckery into something cheap, into casual sex, which is fine, it is, it can be, but it wasn’t because I don’t think it was what he wanted—or was it? I honestly don’t know, but it’s not what I wanted—I wanted... I still don’t know what I want.”
She didn’t know what she wanted, but she now knew what she got. Rio—who made sure she heard the news that Dave was safe in London. Rio—who was willing to put himself in danger to help Jon. Rio—who’d asked her to marry him. And yeah, maybe that was crazy, too-soon, first-time-having-sex bullshit, but...
Even if Rio was a total stranger to her, even if her worst fears were true and everything he’d told her was complete fiction, maybe, just maybe, he was still worth getting to know. Assuming she hadn’t completely blown it by showing him just how thoroughly damaged she was.
His word.
And not incorrect.
God. Casey wouldn’t blame him if he helped Jon and then vanished.
“You need to pull over?” With Ella it was always safety first. “Next exit there’s a gas station on the corner, we can take a minute.”
“No, I’m okay,” Casey said, wiping furiously at her face and willing the rush of tears to stop. “I’ll be okay. I just want to get to the Del so that Rio can get Jon his car—and check to make sure he’s safe.”
And then text her again.
Rio grabbed an apple from his fridge drawer as, freshly showered and dressed in cargo shorts and a T-shirt that he hadn’t slept in, he headed back out to Tasha’s car.
His plan was to drop it at her and Thomas’s place—if she wasn’t there, he’d hide the keys—and then get a Lyft over to the Del. Where he’d skulk out of sight until Casey arrived and was safely inside.
From there he’d take Jon’s car to the Infinity Lounge, where he’d interact—oh joy—with his latest fake boyfriend, who also happened to be the ass-hat brother of the woman he was rather desperately in love with.
Fuck.
Rio took a bite of the apple, and Jesus, it didn’t crunch. It was soft and nasty, so he spit it into the shrubbery outside of his apartment as he used his key to flip the deadbolt on his door.
As he headed down the courtyard toward the covered parking area, he was focused on getting all of the nasty-ass bad-apple-shit out of his mouth and not paying much attention to anything, but then, just as he was past the defunct gas grill and bolted-down picnic table, about halfway to the parking area, two very large men came into his line of site and he snapped to attention, because... shit.
Out on the tarmac, just a hundred feet away, was that motherfucking black truck—same dent in the right front grill—that he’d spied in his rearview when he’d veered into the veterinarian parking lot to exchange texts with Dave. Plus, a white van—the same one he’d seen drive into the Infinity Lounge lot when he was playing at being Jon’s boyfriend and... yup. There was the man he’d seen behind the wheel, too.
It was immediately, instantly clear that the scumbag who was threatening Jon was gonna use Rio to send him another message of some kind.
His first thought was joyous gratitude that they’d targeted him and not Casey.
Second thought: Even if he immediately turned and booked it back to his apartment, miraculously unscathed, there were exactly zero—zilch, zip, nada—firearms inside. His sidearm was secure in its high-end lockbox—in his locker on base.
Third thought: Shit, he was wearing flip-flops instead of boots.
Fourth thought: Damn it, of all the days for Mr. O’Connell’s caregiver Pete to not borrow Rio’s parking spot. If he had, Rio would’ve parked Tasha’s VW out on the street. Instead it was parked in—no doubt intentionally—by that ugly black truck.
But okay. All right. He still had his two badly-clad feet to get him where he needed to go, and he was nothing if not fast.
But giant guys one and two spread out a little, as if reading his mind. Jesus, they were big. Getting past them was gonna be a challenge. And the van driver—climbing out from behind the wheel at the end of the courtyard—was carrying pretty badly concealed. Running toward him was not a great idea.
But running away from him meant hitting the flat-out dead-end where the courtyard ended and the building made a U.
