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He turned, something like pity coloring his expression. “This was a one-night deal, I told you that.”
“I know.” Because it could be nothing else. They’d tried doing the half-measure thing and it didn’t work. “So leave me like it will be the last time.”
He could’ve laughed in her face. Could’ve spurned the request. He could’ve been cold and cruel; he’d played it that way in the past.
Instead, he came back to sit on the edge of the bed and she wriggled closer. “Use my name any time you need to,” he said. Her frown questioned him. “It’s pissed me off since I left yours, I never told you to….”
“Use your name any time I need to,” she said, folding his pillow under her head.
“Aye.”
She sighed. “Now he tells me.”
“I’ll be there if you need me.”
“If I get in trouble?”
“You will get in trouble,” he said. “Trouble follows you around.”
“Maybe it’s my line of work.”
“Yeah, and getting involved with Helios Manzani…”
He clenched his teeth and inhaled like he was restraining himself.
“I can tell why you don’t want to be with me.”
“You were never with me,” he said, sinking his fingers into her hair. “If you were with me, things would’ve worked out a helluva lot differently.”
Before she could ask what that meant, he bowed to kiss her and disappeared into the closet.
She could follow him, question him, but what would that achieve? Their one-night deal was over.
***
“YOU COULD’VE CALLED when you got home last night, or this morning,” Steeple said as they both sat at his desk. “I was worried.”
“You know better than to worry about me.”
“Tulip left you at the bar and didn’t see you again.”
“She wasn’t worried. She texted me.”
The buzz on Conn’s stairs, that her brother would’ve heard, was Tulip’s text. Her colleague called the evening a clusterfuck and said they’d talk the next day, that day.
“You were at Stag. Anything can happen there.”
“Yeah,” she said, wondering if he’d heard about the cops showing up. “But I’ve been there a hundred times and I’m still here.”
She took her hands off the arms of her chair, showing him a hopeful smile. Was he buying it?
“They tell you anything about Ire?”
Tulip hurried in. “Sersha! You’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said, turning back to Steeple. “She didn’t worry until you told her to worry.”
“It was amazing!” Tulip exclaimed. “We have to go back tonight!”
