But Daniella was already halfway down the hall.
I followed her into her bedroom. “Where are you going to stay?”
“With my little sister.” She grabbed a tissue and blew her nose with a loud honk. “Delphine’s been thinking about moving out of her current place. I could be her new roommate.”
“I’m sure she’d love that. You’d get to hang out more,” I replied. Both sisters shared a fondness for ink and piercings. Quite a few of their tattoos matched, commemorating travels, graduations, birthdays, funerals.
It wasn’t enough for Daniella to live life; she wanted to feel it viscerally, to carry the memories of pain and pleasure on her skin. Would tonight merit a tattoo someday? I hoped it would be a happy one.
We dug through her closet and desk, sorting all her stuff into Take, Leave, and Pitch piles. Along the way, we uncovered random memories, meaningless to anyone except us.
Football hats and foam fingers and ticket stubs from stadiums all over Texas. A DVD box set of a TV series we’d once obsessed over. A pair of scarves that one of Daniella’s elderly patients had knitted for us while recovering from surgery. Souvenirs from our road trip when I’d had business in New Mexico: a tiny jar of white sand, a Roswell UFO key chain, a turquoise necklace with an O’Keeffe painting pendant.
“I never knew you were such a pack rat,” I grumbled after a couple of hours.
That wasn’t really funny, but Daniella chuckled anyway. “Hey, what can I say? I’m a sentimental slob. Or maybe just a regular slob.”
I held up a takeout menu with a cartoon chili pepper on it. “Why the hell did you hang on to this? Pepe’s Fire Pit went out of business six months ago.”
“It was my favorite place; I was sad when it closed down. You know how much I love spicy food.”
“Yeah, because you’re a masochist.” I found another one of my shirts and threw it in the Leave pile.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Daniella sighed.
It sounded like she was talking about more than just her kinks. I felt a pang of sympathy; she seemed to keep falling into relationships with men who ended up hurting her. But I needed to focus on the situation at hand and help Daniella get through this, not wallow in my own guilt. I should believe her when she said I wasn’t acting like her ex-Dom. She had always taken my words at face value, so I should give her the same courtesy.
“Holy shit, is this that party?”
I showed Daniella a glossy photo whose edges had started to curl. A dozen or so people—mostly women—were grinning and waving in someone’s backyard. The barbecue grill stood open, but empty, and three huge delivery pizzas covered the picnic table.
Daniella gave a half groan, half laugh. “Oh God. I’d just transferred to the ER. The head nurse invited the whole department to her Fourth of July party, and your fucking dog made me look like an idiot.”
“You still holding a grudge about that?” I chuckled.
In a rare burst of initiative, Sutton had leaped up on the table holding the raw meat, knocking everyone’s dinner into the dirt. What little food he didn’t devour was ruined. Daniella and I had apologized profusely and paid for pizza with all the trimmings.
As we sorted and joked and reminisced, my shoulders slowly unknotted. The tension that had clouded our home started to ease. We were finding our footing again as friends. Just friends.
Even so, I could still hardly believe I’d done it. I’d actually broken up with Daniella. Paradoxically, taking this huge step made me even more nervous about telling Lacey. It brought the future—that terrifying place where everything changed—one step closer.
Tomorrow night, I decided. I would invite Lacey out for a nice dinner and tell her the good news there. Almost like I was proposing.
Before I could explore that thought, my pocket buzzed. I pulled out my phone and my neck prickled when I read the caller ID screen. Jerry Barton. Nobody from Redstone ever called me outside work hours, let alone the big boss himself.
Wondering if our office building had caught fire, I answered, “Yes, sir?”
“I’ve got a job for you, Maxwell. Top priority,” Barton snapped, his tone making it clear that refusal wasn’t an option.
I had heard that no-bullshit bark plenty of times before. But there was also an unfamiliar urgency in his gruff voice. It almost sounded . . . frantic.
What the fuck was going on here? Barton had never revealed the slightest hint of fear to his men, not even in the worst battlefield situations. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was scared shitless right now.
I started to reply, “Of course, whatever you—”
“It’s my daughter, Lucky. She’s in trouble.”
Chapter Nineteen
Lacey
I had to pee.
As I shifted to my side, pain seared through my hip and up my spine, making my stomach roll with nausea. I gasped aloud—only to choke on the stench of mildew in the air.