“She’s not wrong,” Asher said with a smirk.
It was right then that Liam came into the shop, taking in the tension inside with a quirk of his brow.
If possible, I’d swear that kid put on twenty pounds of muscle in just a few months. Once his ribs had healed up, he’d started hitting the gym with his uncle and became obsessed with things like macros, micros, and protein. Meanwhile, Char and I stared blankly at him with our bowls full of boxed mac & cheese on the couch we hadn’t moved from in hours.
He was another one who was growing up too fast for me. He’d shown another small sign of rebellion by piercing his lip.
Christopher hated it.
I thought it looked pretty good.
Liam didn’t care what either of us thought.
“Can I have some money for a drink?” Charlotte asked me.
“Sure,” I agreed, handing her more than she’d need, in case Asher didn’t have his own money. “Don’t leave the bookstore, okay?”
“I won’t. He won’t either,” she said, giving Asher a hard look as she grabbed her bag and went to the door.
“What was that?” Liam asked as Asher bit back a smile while following Charlotte out.
“If I had to place a bet, young love.”
“What?” Liam asked, his face falling.
“Oh, stop with the ’no one is good enough for a Costa woman’ thing.”
“She’s not a woman.”
“And he’s just a thirteen-year-old boy too.”
“There’s no such thing asjusta thirteen-year-old boy,” Liam said, going to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To buy a book.”
I was still smiling when an exhausted-looking Christopher came through the door a few minutes later.
The pawnshop was a bit of a hub for our little family now that we’d moved out of the shoebox apartment we’d been in for a while and into a bigger one closer to my work. Everyone was in and out all day.
“Well, your day looks more amusing than mine. What’s going on?”
“Your niece was just in here bossing around what looked like one of the popular boys in her class. And he seemed to be enjoying it. Oh, tell your eye to stop twitching. It’s innocent.”
“Is there anything innocent when teenage boys are involved? I’ve been one of them.”
“Relax. Charlotte and I had a very thorough sex talk after her birthday. She started taking her martial arts classes last month. She’s armed with knowledge and the ability to defend herself if she needs it. But trust me, they’re just kids doing a book report. And Liam is over there being a guard dog.”
“Oh, you could have led with that,” he said, tugging at his tie.
“What happened with your day?”
“Never knew how hard it would be to find halfway decent associates,” he admitted. “Getting Made was always the goal, since I was a little kid. Now that I have it, it’s one giant headache.”
“For now,” I clarified. “The whole point of building a really solid foundation of soldiers and associates is so they make your life easier in the long run. It’s a temporary headache.”
“I know you’re right.”
