—I heard about JJ. How can I help?
Great. And that message hadn’t been sent only to him. It was a group message with Carson and Atticus, which meant Carson was getting crafty. The fucker.
Slade spared a glance at Atticus, then back to his phone, thumbs poised on the tiny keyboard. “Do you want me to respond to Carson?”
“What?”
Slade turned his phone so Atticus could see. “It’s a group thread.”
That seemed to bother Atticus, but why wouldn’t it? The guy he’d spent the night with last night, the same one who told Atticus that he and Slade had history, was now texting Slade.
“It’s not unusual for people to ask to help out,” Slade told Atticus. “Especially in Coyote Ridge. We’re a small town, and we take care of our own.”
Atticus didn’t respond, but he didn’t get out of the truck either.
“Why don’t I tell him to go over to Baz’s and see if someone there can give him somethin’ to do.”
Atticus still didn’t say anything, but Slade could feel the tension.
When Atticus finally spoke, he wouldn’t look at him. “Fine. Text him back.”
Slade did, giving Carson the address so he could go over to the house and hopefully get instructions from Luca or Baz or whoever was running things from there.
“Done,” he said when he finished.
A second later, Atticus’s phone chimed with the message, but he didn’t look at his phone when he asked, “Are you and Carson still a thing?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all.”
“Was it more than what Carson told me it was?”
Slade didn’t know the specifics of what Carson told him, so he had no idea. But he doubted Carson gave him much because he hadn’t felt the way Slade had. For Carson, it had been all about sex. For Slade … well, it had become more.
“It was sex,” he lied. “That’s it. And it’s been over for a long time.”
Atticus finally looked at him. “Why don’t I believe that?”
Slade shrugged, but he couldn’t lie to Atticus’s face, so he didn’t reiterate the lie.
“Is there somethin’ you’re not tellin’ me, Slade?”
There was a good chance he would regret this, but … “Ask me anything,” Slade said. “I won’t lie to you.”
And he honestly wanted to believe he wouldn’t. Then again, he wasn’t interested in becoming someone else’s sexual whipping boy. If he told Atticus about the hunger that was driving him to think about Atticus endlessly, there was a possibility he would become exactly that.
When it was clear Atticus didn’t have an immediate inquiry, Slade said, “But let’s multitask, okay? We need to find out if anyone’s seen this guy first.”
Atticus nodded as he reached for the door handle at the same time their phones chimed again, another text for both of them.
Slade got out of the truck and pocketed his phone, figuring if Atticus wanted to respond, he could. The last thing Slade wanted to do was come between Atticus and Carson. It didn’t matter that he doubted Atticus would find real happiness with Carson. It wasn’t his place to say as much.
He wanted to warn Atticus, but he feared it was for selfish reasons. He had a strange obsession with Atticus. The same as he’d had with his ex-wife back when they’d been married. The same as he’d had—and possibly still had—for Carson. It was best for everyone if he simply kept his mouth shut.
At least until Atticus asked him for his opinion.
***
It took thirty minutes for them totalk to the small business owners in the retail center. By the time they were finished, Atticus was running through a dozen questions in his head. Not a single one pertained to the case they were working. Not necessarily a good thing since his only goal was to find JJ yet somehow, his personal life was becoming a pressing issue when it shouldn’t have been.
