His exhale ghosts warm across the sensitive hollow beneath my ear, sending a current down my spine that makes my fingers twitch against my thigh. When he speaks again, his voice slides under my skin like a blade between ribs.
“I had to watch you with my brother for years.” His mouth hovers so close I feel the words more than hear them. “And you can’t handle five minutes? C’mon, Bells, Iknowyou can take it.”
The lines blur and I forget what we’re talking about for a minute. I exhale a slow breath and grab hold of my indignation with two hands. It’s easier to wrangle than the emerald green swirl of emotion slowly eating away at my intestines.
“So what’s your brilliant plan?” I push into his space further. “Fuck the fence andhopeshe suddenly agrees to the deal? What, does your dick grant wishes now?” The laugh that tears from my throat sounds like broken glass.
“Yeah, baby girl, it does.” His mouth curves, one dimple appearing as he watches me squirm.
I push off the wall, closing the distance between us. My chin tilts up, eyes narrowing. “Baby girl? I’m literally older than you.”
He dips his head to ghost his lips along the sensitive skin just below my ear. “Yeah,and?”
The heat of it travels through me in a way that feels deeply unhelpful and far too immediate. This isn’t supposed to feel like a challenge my body answers before my head does.
My fingers find his wrist without permission from my brain, tracing the ridge where veins disappear beneath skin. My neck tilts sideways, exposing more territory. He hums against that spot on my neck, like he’s pleased by the access I’ve granted him.
“Don’t fuck her, Cruz.” The words escape like steam between barely parted lips.
The air between us crystallizes. One heartbeat. Two. Then he steps back, breaking contact first, the corner of his mouth lifting in that half-smile that makes my teeth clench.
“Come on,” he says, as if his voice hasn’t just altered the chemistry of the air between us. “We’ve got other doors to knock on.”
He turns and walks away while I’m still frozen against brick, counting rapid pulses at my throat. My shoulder blade throbs where it pressed against the wall. I peel myself away, rolling tension from my shoulders, and follow him into the sunlight.
ELEVEN
CRUZ
The bassfrom Coco’s speakers pulses through the soles of my shoes, vibrates up my legs, and settles somewhere behind my right eye where the headache’s been building for hours.
Five days since masked motherfuckers rolled our truck and stole a third of our take. Three days since Bellamy and I walked out of Pacific Trade empty-handed.
Ma catches my eye from across the yard, raises her margarita glass in a silent command that needs no translation: smile, mingle, pretend we didn’t just get fucked. I lift my glass back to her, the perfect obedient son, because what she wants, she gets—a point she reinforced at breakfast when she told me I need to make sure I act like everything is fucking sunshine and rainbows with that look that’s never actually been a request.
I lean against the far end of the outdoor bar with a glass of whiskey in my hand, watching her. Coco is exactly where she should be, positioned at the center of the yard without ever looking like she chose it. People orbit her without thinking about it, pulled in by something that reads as effortless if you don’t know how much control it actually takes to maintain. She laughs at the right moments, touches the right arms, leans injust enough to make whoever she’s speaking to feel singled out without isolating herself from the rest of the room.
It’s seamless like always.
I guess that her whole fucking point.
Beside me, Bishop exhales slowly. “You know, any one of them could be behind theinterception.”
I scan the party crowd through the rim of my glass. One of Coco’s regular dealers, laughing too loud by the fire pit. The Moreno brothers, who used to run with Coco back when she was our age, huddled near the speakers. My gaze catches on unfamiliar faces—friends of friends, plus-ones, variables, people Coco invited on a whim.
“You think so?”
“Maybe.” Bishop’s jaw works beneath three days of stubble as he drags his palm across it. His eyes never settle, constantly moving between faces like he’s counting exits.
I nod, feeling the throb behind my right eye intensify. The bruise on my temple still pulses purple-green where my head hit something during the ambush.
He stretches his neck, vertebrae popping. “We’ve gotten out of worse before.”
“That was before. When it was just us four.” My shoulders tighten, muscles bunching beneath my shirt. I roll them back once, twice, but the weight remains—like someone’s standing behind me, hands pressing down, waiting for me to fix this shit.
“Right.” Bishop’s eyes flick toward the pool, then back to me. “And now we’re seven deep and the biggest score we’ve ever had gets sabotaged.” He tips back his glass, Adam’s apple bobbing as he drains it in one swallow.
I squint at my eldest brother, watching him set down his second empty glass in thirty minutes. “Are you fucking with me right now?”
