His cheeks flushed. When I straightened back up, he came with me, nipping at my jaw in a completely unexpected butincrediblyhot move.
“What?” he said when he realized everyone was staring at him. His cheeks darkened further. “You two were kissing, and I thought me and Gray—you know.”
“Is anyone capable of getting through a life-or-death conversation without getting a boner?” Cruz wondered aloud.
“I don’t have a dick, so.” Ava shrugged.
“Yeah, but we make you wet, princess.”
She shut him up with another kiss, which was lucky for him because my preferred way to stop him talking would have been a lot less pleasurable.
“Okay.” Clearing my throat again, loudly, I banged my fist on my desk to get everyone’s attention. “Listen up. Here’s the plan. Ava and Cruz will get into a compromising situation that our stalker won’t be able to resist. Me and Micah will scout the area, and hopefully we’ll get lucky. If not, we have the backup of Cruz’s shady little deal.”
His jaw clenched. Yeah. I wasn’t gonna let that drop.
“We have locks on all our doors, and the window alarms I set up last week, but I think we should set up some more backup options for this because we know the threat will be coming from outside.” Micah tapped his finger against his lips, thinking. “Ifwe pick the location beforehand, we can set up cameras. Motion sensor ones.”
“Good idea. We need to make sure we don’t get caught doing it.”
I nodded at Cruz’s remark. “We’ll be careful.”
His gaze slid to mine. “You’ll be careful when it comes to the main event. I won’t be able to help you.”
“We will,” I replied, knowing what he was really asking was for me to take care of Micah. Micah, though…he could handle himself, and I’d make sure we took every precaution we could. I wasn’t going to put any of us in danger if I could help it.
“Okay. We have a plan.” Ava smiled at me. “We?—”
A loud banging at the door cut off whatever else she was going to say. Motioning for everyone to stay quiet, I unlocked my door and cracked it open, finding Smith in the hallway with a wide grin on his face.
“You gonna stay locked away in your room all day with your girlfriend and boyfriends, or are you gonna come down and be social with us? We haven’t seen you in forever, man. Not off the ice.”
I glared at the bastard guilt-tripping me, and then his words sank in. “Girlfriend and boyfriends? The fuck, Smith?”
“Saw you sneaking them up to your room. Figured you were doing some freaky shit up here.”
“We are.” Cruz nudged me out of the way, pulling the door a little wider. His body was hot and solid against my side. “We’re summoning a demon to suck out your soul when you’re asleep.”
“Kinky.” He was undeterred. “Just kidding about the boyfriend and girlfriend thing, although if that’s what you’re into, that’s totally cool. I’m not kidding about you being social, though.” His gaze flicked to Cruz. “Your guests can join if they wanna.”
I sighed, defeated. There was no chance I could deter him now. “Yeah. I’ll come down. Give me a few to wrap things up.”
There was no possible way I could have all three of them around my teammates without serious questions, and we’d been under enough pressure today. Closing the door, I shrugged helplessly.
“Duty calls,” Ava said. Wrapping her arms around my shoulders, she leaned up to kiss my cheek. “We’ll leave now. Thank you for today. I think…for the first time, I feel hope.”
Hope.
It was all we had, and it had to be enough.
23
CRUZ
Ididn’t have the heart to tell Ava that I didn’t feel hope—well, at least not for myself. At the end of the day, in settings like that, I became nothing more than a statistic. That picture of me with Ricky was incriminating enough. A judge would look at it and take a few seconds to pass judgment. One picture was worth a thousand words—even if those words were all wrong.
I was fucked.
Maybe it was a good thing because if I went down, that meant Big Dog would go down with me, and that meant he wouldn’t be able to go after the people I cared about. I decided I would find comfort in that. I wouldn’t become a liability to them then.
