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Zeke was quiet a second, then cursed. “You shitting me?”
“Zeke.”
“He’s here.”
I waited, expecting Allen to ask why his best friend was asking for Harper’s whereabouts. He didn’t.
He did ask, “You need me to get him somewhere?”
It was slow, and I couldn’t see the full transformation from my seat, but I saw Blaise smile, and it was calculating, mixed with a certain amount of pride. “Yes, I do.”
“Zeke,” Cross spoke up.
“What the fuck?! Your fucking brother is there with you?” A pause. “Who else? His bitch, too?”
“Hey!” I surged forward.
Cross was ahead of me, clipping out, “You goddamn say one more word about Bren like that and you will find me standing over you in bed one night. It won’t be now. It won’t be tomorrow, but one night when you’re having a good time, when you’ve forgotten about this threat, you’ll go to sleep. You’ll wake up to go piss and I’ll be there. And I will make it so that you’ll be pissing through a bag for an entire month, if not longer.”
Shit.
A shiver went down my spine.
Cross leaned forward, closer to the dashboard, his voice dropping low. “Do you hear me?”
I loved my man, a whole lot right about now.
But Blaise was half-watching the road, half-watching his brother from the side of his eye, too. His hands were steady, hanging loosely on the steering wheel. I had a feeling he wasn’t loose at all. That’s when I knew that one day Blaise and I would have words. Cross was protecting me from Zeke. I would be protecting Cross from his brother.
As if sensing my thoughts, he stopped the car at a stoplight and glanced to where I was sitting. Seeing me studying him, he did a double take, then realization slid over him, and his eyes narrowed on me.
This whole thing was tricky. This thing being the different alliances, loyalties, relationships, those forced and those earned. Yeah. Tricky.
“Blaise.” From Zeke.
The light was still red, so Blaise’s eyes were still on me. “Yeah?”
“What. The. Fuck?”
Blaise’s eyes remained narrowed. “Pitts and Greenly are heading your way. My guess is that they’ll use Tabatha’s phone to get Harper out of there. Don’t let him leave.”
“What am I supposed to do? He hates me because of you.”
“Zeke!” Blaise whipped back to the front. The light turned green and he shot forward. “You will want us to get to Harper first, not them. Trust me.”
There was another beat of quiet before the call dropped.
Cross said, “He won’t help us.”
Blaise almost sounded bored, saying, “He’ll help us.” He flipped his turn signal on and took another sharp turn. He was driving fast, but not reckless. He was safe, and he was also driving roads I didn’t know about. Cross didn’t say anything, but he seemed in tune with his brother’s driving. Not me. I was holding on to keep from falling or slamming into the door.
Cross and Blaise sat almost like one person.
It would’ve been unsettling if I hadn’t been more amazed at it, but then we were going down a back alley. I recognized Zeke’s fraternity house. It was lit up. There was a fence, but you could see people walking around the backyard. The second floor had lights strung around the bannister. Almost every room was lit up as well, but when Blaise parked next to a back shed, he said, “Ironically, this is their study night.”
Then he was crossing the alley and going to an opening in the fence.
Cross stayed back, turning to me. “You stay here.” “What?”
He touched my stomach, holding me back. “I mean it. I’ll be safer going in with Blaise.”
“You’re drunk. That’s why you’re saying this.”
“No. If Jordan and Zellman show up, tell them to hang back.”
“You know they’ll be pissed, knowing we figured out they came here without us.”
“Cross!” A hiss from just inside the fence.
He began backing away from me, heading for Blaise. “Tell them. We’ll deal with that later.”
This wasn’t the first or second or even sixth time that I’d been kept out of the action lately. I was starting to get annoyed. The old Bren was getting annoyed, too, and that wasn’t good for anyone.
CROSS
“I swear to God, Blaise. If you—”
He glanced back, hissing. “Shut up.” A savage wave with the back of his hand and he was leading the way. He moved by the back of the fence, making his way to the house as if he’d done this a few times. He was keeping low and remaining cautious, but still moving at a good pace.
I’d forgotten how big their backyard was. For a frat, it was huge.
No one was back here.
Blaise stepped up on the back porch, but he didn’t go for the main door. He headed, instead, in the opposite direction. Suddenly, a big window popped open and Blaise hauled himself inside. I climbed through, noting afterwards that it was their back bathroom.
