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“I don’t need a babysitter, Ethan.” He slammed a glass down on the bar top hard enough to crack it and then tossed it carelessly in the direction of the trash can. “I can handle myself.”
“I know.”
“Then worry about your own problems.” Myles swung around, face hard as he confronted Ethan. He looked like he’d aged five years in the last month. “Did you do what I told you to do and get that girlfriend of yours the hell out of town?”
“Eloise does a pretty good job of taking care of herself.” Ethan spread his hands out, palms up to show he didn’t intend to fight. Myles was riled up, fists bunched, and he cared too much about the kid to break his nose in the state he was in. He had no idea why Myles was suddenly so obsessed with Eloise and his love life, but he was sure that wouldn’t help. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you don’t need to worry about her. I’m going to make sure she’s happy.”
“Happy?” Myles laughed, short and bitter, like glass sliding over gravel. “I don’t give a shit if she’s happy. You can’t just bring women around Dylan like that.”
“I know he’s an asshole,” Ethan assured him, hoping reason would talk Myles down enough that he could figure out what was happening in his head, “and I don’t plan on bringing her around him again.”
“You are so far up his ass that you can’t see how fucking dangerous he is, can you?” Myles didn’t wait for Ethan to try and figure out his meaning. “He helped you out once when you were kids, probably because there was something in it for him. You don’t owe him the rest of your life.”
“He was always there for?—”
“He was there for himself,” Myles cut in. “And he expected both of us to be there for him, too. You can get out, Ethan. You’re lucky, you don’t share blood with him. You can get out.”
“I’m working on it,” Ethan admitted. It seemed like the kid needed to hear it, and Ethan needed to say it out loud to make it real, anyway. “I just need to make sure I can do it without Eloise getting hurt.”
Myles sagged in relief. “Good. She doesn’t deserve to be caught up in this. No one deserves that.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you? What’s got you all wound up like this?”
For a moment it looked like Myles was thinking about telling him, but then the door opened, and Sunny came in to start setting up for her shift behind the bar and he closed up again. “Just don’t say anything about this to anyone else,” he warned and then he went back to polishing glasses in stony silence.
“Still got a stick up your ass, Myles?” Sunny asked cheerfully as she slid in behind the bar. “You’ve been a real jerk lately.”
“Mind your own business, Sunny.”
“Oh? Look who’s decided to show up just in time to take care of Dylan’s little baby brother.” She leaned in to close the distance between herself and Ethan, her breasts tipping dangerously toward the top of the little black T-shirt she was wearing. “We’ve missed you around here. Did you finally get rid of that stuck up bitch you brought in the other day?”
“Nope.”
“You know where to find me when you do.”
“Don’t hold your breath on that one.”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder, revealing an expanse of bare skin at the neck and wafting vanilla perfume his way. “Dylan doesn’t like you running around with someone that doesn't understand how things work around here,” she reminded him. “All you’re doing is setting the poor girl up for a broken heart.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged and went back to his paperwork. He couldn’t afford to let her get under his skin. If he tipped his hand early or admitted how much he cared about Eloise, it would get back to Dylan and cause him nothing but problems. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
Twenty-Seven
Ethan wasn’t home when Eloise arrived back at her house after work, and she sat in the car for several minutes trying to sort through her jumbled thoughts. There was so much to try and navigate that it made her slightly nauseous. All the terrible feelings around Kim’s death were now intertwined with her mixed emotions around Ethan. The future she’d begun to look toward was slipping through her fingers faster than she could hold onto it.
She had to decide what to say to him. It was impossible for her to imagine he might have had something to do with murdering anyone, but she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she let her feelings for him blind her to the evidence in front of her face.
He was connected to the bar, the bar was connected to Kim, and Kim was dead.
She had to find out if he knew more than he was telling her, but her mind was tumbling over itself trying to connect the pieces of the puzzle. Was it her fault her friend was dead because she’d gotten involved with someone like Ethan? The insidious guilt, wrapped in the sound of her mother’s voice admonishing her about involving herself in relationships, made it hard to think of anything else.
It was clearly not a good idea trying to confront Ethan until she had herself under control and after a moment spent thinking through her options, she opened the door and darted across the street to knock on Jackson and David’s front door.
“Hey.” David looked surprised to see her, but his smile was welcoming as he opened the door wide. “Come on in.”
They had always been there for her, ever since they’d seen her struggling to adjust to the new neighborhood and taken her under their wing. She’d cried at their table over career frustrations more times than she could count and they had never complained once about how often she turned to them for support.
If anyone could help her sort through the mess her life had become, it was them.
