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“You’re good at that,” says Finn. “Shit, you’ll be out of here again in no time.”
The thought has my stomach doing somersaults. Barely twenty-four hours ago we’d agreed, West and Raleigh and me, to give this thing between us a shot once we get back to New Haven. And West already had one foot out the door.
“Not exactly,” says West. “They’ve got me for a year at least.”
The somersaults slow down somewhat. A year should be plenty of time. Right? Probably.
The guys start talking about sports, so I yawn and sit up and ignore the cracks from my brother about it being my turn to drive since it’d be a cold day in hell before he’d let me drive his precious car. I turn my phone back on and pull up my messages from Lucy. She’d promised to text me everything she could about Bob Sopa from the City Council. I click through to the email she’d forwarded.
“Finn.” I’m interrupting, but he needs to hear this now. “Finn.”
“What?”
“How long before we get home?”
“Maybe forty-five minutes,” he says. “Why?”
“You need to see this email from the chamber of commerce,” I say, fingers flying as I forward the message to his email. “They’re claiming gross negligence and they’re going to revoke our business license.” The message says we have less than thirty days to address the accusation, but I don’t mention that part. Finn’s liable to have an episode, and I don’t want to upset him further while he’s driving.
“What the fuck?”
“No kidding,” I say.
West is looking over his shoulder at me from the front seat, his concern plain.
“Can they do that?” he asks.
“They can if they think we’re mistreating the animals, or something equally horrible,” says Finn. “Goddamn it. I bet that motherfucker Sopa has something to do with this.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re right,” I say, tapping my fingers on the armrest and wishing the damn car could fly so we can get home and sort this out. “Lucy said he stopped by while we were gone.”
The silence in the car is thick.
“And you didn’t mention this because…”
“Because we were at a wedding, and because Lucy can handle herself,” I say, trying not to sound defensive and getting irritated because I can’t help getting defensive about this. “And because we were only gone a couple of days. I told her I’d handle it when I got back.”
I can practically hear my brother fighting to keep his temper under control. He can join the club.
Half an hour later I realize it’s kind of a nice change, being angry instead of just being scared. I wonder how much of that has to do with West and Raleigh and the out-of-this-world lovemaking last night.
Sex. It’s just sex.
Oh, God. Who am I kidding? It’s not just sex. It was never just sex, not even that first night.
I’m falling for them. Hell, I may have already fallen.
You can’t be brave unless you’re scared, too, says a little voice in my head that sounds like Raleigh.
If I can be brave enough to try for Raleigh and West, I can be brave enough to take on Sopa and his acolytes.
I can be brave enough to love them anyway, even if I’m scared to death.
19
Raleigh
“Who was that?” asks Cas, kicking a heel back to shut the door while juggling an enormous box of groceries. I set down my phone and take the bags from his curled fingers under that box, heading for the kitchen.
