“That’s for the window that asshole shot out.” Dee slid free, bending down to pick up his guitar. “Sorry about that.”
Sionn could feel the tired and scared rolling off of Dee. If the past week had been rough on him, he couldn’t imagine what Dee felt like. Cupping Dee’s chin in his hand, he gently guided the man back around to face him.
The guitarist’s cheek was hot in Sionn’s bare palm, and Dee shivered at Sionn’s touch but didn’t pull away. They were someplace Sionn couldn’t say would be safe if he kissed Dee the way he wanted to. Instead, he rubbed his thumb over Dee’s jaw, then let his hand fall away to his side.
“You’re trouble, Dee boy,” Sionn muttered under his breath. “But I get you. I do. Something shitty’s happened to you, and I’m guessing you’ve got nowhere else to go. But you’ve got my word that I’ll help you.”
“That guy was shooting at me, Sionn.” It wasn’t a surprise to hear Dee admit it. Sionn’d shot dead the last person who’d tried to kill him. He didn’t have anyone else he knew of on his ass, so it had to be Dee the gunman was after. “I can’t bring that to you. It’s not—”
“You’ve got to trust someone, Dee. If not me, then who? Who else do you have?” The edge of Dee’s mouth felt too cold, and Sionn went back to rubbing some warmth into his cheek. “I can handle myself. Probably a damned sight better than you can. Just let me know what to expect and it’ll be all right. But you’ve got to talk to me, boyo… and trust me.”
“Betcha say that to all the boys who get your place shot to shit.” Dee smirked at him through his fingers, but the humor didn’t push away the shadows in his troubled eyes.
“No, you piece of shite, not all the boys,” Sionn grumbled as he took the hat from Dee’s head and ruffled his hair. “Just the one I seem to want to fuck.”
SIONN’S place was different than Damien had imagined it would be. Tucked away in Chinatown, the building shouldered up against smaller buildings, stretching up five stories to look down its nose at the street traffic below. Sionn’d parked his Jeep in one of the nearby lots and hurried Damien across the street, jogging behind him with the guitar case in the hopes of beating the rain.
Three feet away from the building’s entrance, they lost their race when buckets of water dumped out of the sky above.
The lobby was little more than a square of tile wide enough to hold four or five people, with an elevator door on either side. Dark and smelling of fried noodles from the restaurant next door, the space felt sticky and hot despite the cold coming through the crack under the foyer’s glass doors. The elevators were old, with wood paneling and an accordion door blocking anyone from entering. A tiny key on Sionn’s key ring fit into a slot by one of the elevators, and the man rattled the door back, letting Damien inside. Sionn got in behind him, punched the top right button of the two uneven rows set into the wall, and the car lurched once before heading up.
Given the entrance, he’d been expecting a long, narrow hall with doors leading off into equally tight apartments. What he got was an open-spaced loft with glass tile demiwalls separating out rooms and a view of San Francisco Bay being pounded by a chilly storm.
“Holy shit, this place is awesome.” Damien set his guitar down and stepped into the main living space. The wood floors beneath his wet sneakers squeaked slightly from the damp rubber treads, and he guiltily hopscotched back and shed them by the door. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sionn replied. “I’ll go get us a couple of towels and some coffee. Go make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”
A large burgundy sectional took up a lot of space near the bayside slice of the loft, arranged to mostly face the big-screen television anchored to a brick wall. A dining table sat opposite, with a weight bench and some exercise equipment set up farther away. The rest of the loft was hidden from view behind glass-tile stands or curving plaster walls rising about ten feet from the floor, far below the space’s open-beam ceiling.
Damien padded over to the sectional and settled into a corner of the sofa, stretched his legs out, then rubbed away the sweat forming on his palms. It felt good to stop moving. He’d spent most of the week running, looking over his shoulder for murdering blonds or an elusive warehouse that seemed to never be where he thought he could find it. The only constant in his life appeared to be Sionn and the pub, and he’d fucked that up without even meaning to.
“You can do this, Damie,” he told himself. “You were going to do it anyway. Just fucking tell him the truth, and if he thinks you’re nuts, then you can walk away. Easy enough.”