I rolled my eyes. “I am not some stupid girl you fight over, winner take all.”
“I wasn’t fighting to win you. I was teaching him a lesson. Now answer me. Did he come here?”
“No! Not that I owe you an explanation, but apparently you’ll go homicidal if I don’t tell you. I saw him at the ER where I took Bailey, okay? All he did was apologize to me. And he looked like shit. You seriously hurt him.”
“Good. But he shouldn’t have talked to you at all. I warned him what would happen if he did.”
My eyes widened. “You’re not going to do anything else to him.”
He said nothing.
“I’m serious. I can’t believe you even did that much. This isn’t like the caveman days. Who does that? Crazy, violent people, that’s who. You could’ve really hurt him.” And then a thought hit me. “You could get in trouble. Even go to jail.”
“If I do get sent to jail, it won’t be for that.”
“What does that mean? What other things are you doing?”
He gave a quick shake of the head. Don’t ask.
“I swear to God, Colin, do not make me play twenty questions. If you are up to something dangerous and you are bringing it here into my house with my daughter, then I have a right to know.”
Finally he looked ruffled, his cheeks pinking and his nostrils flaring slightly. “I’m not bringing anything into your house. No one will hurt you or your daughter, especially not if I’m seeing you.”
“Is this supposed to be comforting? Because it’s really not. What does that even mean? Who the hell are you? The mob?” I tried to laugh but choked on it when he shrugged.
“Nothing that organized.”
I stared at him, dumbstruck. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, that’s what had happened.
He sighed. “Can you please sit down?”
“I don’t want to sit down.”
“Allie. Sit.”
I sat.
“You know I own a restaurant. But before that I worked for my brother. I won’t lie and say everything was above the table, because it wasn’t. It wasn’t always legal and it wasn’t always…good.”
He looked at me resignedly, as if I would condemn him. I thought of Shelly, and I thought of Andrew. My own halo was much tarnished. No, I wouldn’t condemn Colin for his past, but that didn’t mean I had to accept it into my life. I had to think of Bailey.
“You aren’t involved in that stuff now, right? I mean, now that you run your restaurant.”
“Most of the time.” His words were slow, too carefully chosen to be comforting. “But sometimes he asks for my help, and I do it. That’s what I was doing at the club the night we met—meeting him.”
“What types of things do you do?”
“Whatever he needs done.”
“Violent things?”
“I never claimed to be perfect.” His eyes focused on mine, his voice steady.
A small laugh burst out of me, the sharp sound bouncing off the walls of my bare apartment. “No, you didn’t, but there’s a long way from not perfect to violent criminal, don’t you think?”
He said nothing.
“And if I asked you to stop doing those things, would you?” But I already knew the answer.
“He’s my brother.”
I wasn’t angry. Not angry for whatever slight deception there may have been not to tell me this up front. Not for his past, whatever illegal or violent things he had done. Not even angry for what he had done to the guy from the club.
I was afraid.
Afraid that somehow, that world would intersect with mine, when I’d worked so hard to isolate myself. Even my club nights were carefully orchestrated and contained, incidents that never spilled over into my real life. Until Colin.
I was afraid I’d misjudged him, that he wasn’t the nice guy I’d thought him to be. Just doing bad things in your life didn’t make you a bad person. I believed that firmly. But how could I tell the difference? I couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t even trust myself.
“You’re breaking up with me, aren’t you?” An undercurrent of steel in his voice was the only sign of his displeasure.
“It’s not like we’re going steady. We’ve had one date and two fucks. That does not make a relationship.”
“Don’t bullshit me. You and I both know it was different between us.”
I paused, then said more quietly, “Why me? You could go back to that club and pick up a girl who’s hotter than me, who doesn’t have issues, that’s for sure. I need to understand why you want me.”
He shook his head, though it wasn’t a refusal.
“It’s not just the sex. It’s…it’s this.” He waved his hand around my apartment.
Bare white walls, cheap ratty couch, strewn plastic toys. I just looked at him.
“I want you. I want this.” He gestured between us in frustration, maybe at me for asking the question, maybe at himself for not being able to answer.