“My dad went down to the station to try to get Lucian released, but Lucian’s dad insisted on pressing charges. They were going to charge him as an adult. My dad kept fighting for him, but I felt so guilty. It was my fault he was in there in the first place. And I knew he’d be terrified that something was going to happen to his mom. So I decided to fix it.”
“Uh-oh,” Stef said.
Lina covered her eyes with her hand. “Oh God. What did you do?”
“I decided that I needed irrefutable evidence.”
Naomi groaned. “This is going to go horribly wrong, isn’t it?”
“Let’s just say I achieved my objectives.”
“At what cost?” Lina asked.
I looked down at my right hand and flexed my fingers. “Ansel Rollins caught me recording him at the window and broke my wrist in three places.”
Stef held up his hand. “I think we’re gonna need some shots here, Joel.”
“It was fine,” I assured them, even though bile rose in my throat. “Not only did I get him on camera, but a neighbor saw him come after me. No friendship could keep him out of jail with that kind of evidence. Lucian was released the next morning. But not before he missed his own high school graduation.” I looked at Lina. “I think that was the moment Nash decided to become a cop. He saw how easily the bad ones could hurt good people and decided to fix it from the inside.”
She sighed and looked moonily toward Nash, who was bent over the pool table, his spectacular ass on display. “My fiancé is the most amazing man.”
“With the most amazing ass,” I added, admiring the view.
She snickered. “It’s true. If I weren’t me, I’d hate me.”
“How did Lucian feel about…everything?” Naomi asked.
“You’d have to ask him. He got out of county lockup, we fought, and that’s the way it’s been ever since.”
“What the hell did you fight about? He should have been worshipping the ground you walked on,” Lina pointed out.
“You’re not only beautiful, you’re also incredibly astute,” I told her.
“I know,” she said with a wink.
“And you’re stalling,” Naomi pointed out.
“You guys are supposed to be too drunk to follow the story by this point,” I complained.
“We had two drinks each,” Lina said smugly.
“We just wanted you to feel safe opening up,” Naomi added.
“Sucker,” Stef teased.
“You sneaky, conniving, sober—”
“Compliment us later. What did you fight about when Lucian was released?” Lina said.
“He accused me of ruining his life and being selfish and stupid. I accused him of being ungrateful and stubborn. It went downhill from there.”
“Well, you sure as hell didn’t ruin his life. You’re a goddamn hero,” Lina said, tipping her glass in my direction.
“There’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity,” I admitted.
“So he goes all dick mode on you for the rest of your lives?” Stef asked.
“Not to side with the enemy, but I can see it from his perspective. A little. Even though he’s very, very wrong,” Naomi amended when Lina and I whipped around to pin her with twin glares.
“What’s his perspective?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
She shrugged daintily. “He was a seventeen-year-old boy who felt responsible for keeping his mother safe. That’s a heavy burden for a grown adult, let alone a teenager. I’d guess this was an escalating situation that he’d dealt with on his own for a long time, and that kind of long-term trauma can take a toll. He probably saw you and your parents as some kind of idealized version of a family he could never have.”
I snorted. “That’s just stupid.”
“As stupid as deciding to make yourself the target of a raging alcoholic with a history of violence?” Lina pointed out.
“Hey!”
She held up her hands. “Don’t get me wrong. Team Sloane all day every day. But Witty over here paints an empathetic picture.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not teenagers anymore. We’re adults. It’s our job to learn more and do better. But he hasn’t changed. He gets all alpha over some pile of dead rats. You know the drill, ‘You’re not staying here alone’ blah blah blah. Then the next morning, he says he wasted enough of his life with a woman who didn’t care about self-preservation and that he’s not going to do it again.”
“Ouch,” Naomi winced.
“He said what?” Knox sounded pissed off and baffled at the same time.
I hadn’t noticed he and Nash return.
“Fucking idiot,” Nash muttered.
“Where did he go that morning?” Lina asked, her eyes on her fiancé.
“He came to see me,” Nash said evenly.
Knox slapped his brother in the chest. “Did you make him dump her?”
“Ow!” Nash rubbed his pectoral. “Watch the bullet hole.”
“There was no one to dump because we weren’t together,” I said despite the fact that no one seemed to be listening.
“Hotshot, you’ve got some explaining to do,” Lina said.
Nash sighed. “He wanted to know what we’d found about the threats. I told him what we had. Then he wanted to know my theories. So I told him.”
“And what were those theories?” I demanded.
“That either you pissed someone off over late fees or some shit, or maybe the timing meant there was a possibility you were being targeted because of your relationship with Lucian.”
“Once again, I don’t have a relationship with Lucifer. Second, we were sneaking around. No one knew we were not having a relationship. And third, I’m nothing to him. No one would try to manipulate him by threatening me because he literally doesn’t care.”
“That’s bullshit,” Knox said, tucking his wife under his arm.
Nash nodded. “Agreed.”
“Gotta side with the testosterone twins,” Stef said, hooking his thumb in their direction.
“They know something,” Lina said, narrowing her eyes.
I crossed my arms. “Then they better say it.”
The brothers shared a look.
“Uh-uh. None of that telepathic guy code,” I insisted.
Nash cleared his throat. “Evidence suggests otherwise.”
“What evidence specifically?” Naomi pressed.
“When you blew into town and needed money, Lucy coughed up half the cash to fund the grant that paid your salary,” Knox announced.
“How do you know that?” Naomi asked him.
“Because I paid the other half,” he said.
Naomi sighed. “Just when I think I couldn’t love you any more than I already do.”
I slapped the bar. “Hang on. You’re saying I didn’t earn that grant? That you two bozos just decided to give the library the money?”
Knox shrugged. “We heard the funding you applied for wasn’t gonna come through. So we made it happen another way.”
“That’s very generous of you,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Uh-oh. Sloane’s going to explode,” Stef observed.
“No, I’m not.” The effort to keep from shouting made my throat hurt. “Why would he do that? He’s always hated me.”
“No, he hasn’t,” Lina and Naomi insisted together.
“At the risk of breaking man code, let me tell you a story about Lucian’s bike,” Nash said.
“I don’t care about Lucian’s bike,” I snapped. “I want to know why the guy who told me I wasn’t worth his time because I’d ruined his life would dump money into a cause I care about.”
“It’s a metaphor,” Nash promised. “Luce’s aunt and uncle who lived in California got him this sweet mountain bike for his thirteenth birthday. He loved that thing. Rode it everywhere. Washed it every other day. Two weeks after he got it, Ansel got pissed at him for not taking the trash out or mowing the lawn crooked or some shit like that. He took the bike out of the garage, threw it in the driveway, and then backed over it with his truck.”
I rolled my wrist. Apparently time didn’t heal all wounds.
“That’s horrible,” Naomi said.
Knox handed her a fresh napkin. “Do not fucking cry, Daze.”
“His aunt and uncle must have heard about it because they sent Lucian another bike. He hid it at our place in the shed. He only rode it when he came over. He never once took it into town or anywhere his dad might see him on it,” Nash explained.
Knox frowned. “I remember that.”
I didn’t want to feel sorry for Lucian. Not right now.
“So he protected it by hiding it from his dad,” Lina said. “That’s a spot-on metaphor, hotshot.”
“I do what I can,” he said with a flirty wink.