Page 47 of Ruled By Rivalry

She’d always done that—turning a question around without answering it herself.

“Good. Busy,” I mirrored. “How’s his hip?”

And God, worrying about them felt so much more familiar than worrying about myself.

“His hip’s fine,” Pops said, as grumpy as always. In recent years, it always sounded like he was grimacing, though. Always in at least a little bit of pain that he tried to mask.

I wondered if Mimi noticed and just ignored it the same way he did.

“Tell him I know he’s lying,” I said, and while she burst into another laugh, Pops rolled his eyes. It was that tsk coming through the phone that gave it away.

“Stop worrying about us, darling!” Her flustered voice soothed something in me. Maybe it was the familiarity of it. The fact that I could not call for three weeks, and we’d still pick up right where we left off once I did.

Or maybe their bickering—with me and among themselves—just sent me right back to a time when the four of us sat around their dinner table for Christmas, birthdays, and Thanksgiving.

When Mom was still alive, and I hadn’t left for college yet, and it didn’t feel like every time I saw them, they’d aged another five years. Like they weren’t slowly dying in front of my very eyes.

Walking back to the apartment, I told them about the city, about work, about my new roommate. Mimi asked if he was cute, and I’d rolled my eyes like she could see it. I didn’t mention that they probably knew him, and if they didn’t, his face was just one Google search away. Mostly because explaining to them how Google worked meant another ten miles of running until they got it.

“Irene Peterson!” I gasped into the night, adjusting my headphones. “Your husband is listening! You’ve got to stop asking about my cute roommate, whose cuteness, by the way, I’ve never confirmed.”

“Oh, Maeve.” She giggled, ignoring Pops’s humph from the second phone in the house. I assume he’d been standing in the kitchen for the entirety of this conversation, while she’d gotten comfortable on the couch. “I can just tell. It’s about time you found someone.”

“I didn’t find anyone—” But I cut myself off.

Because I just had, on the curb of our block, waiting for me.

Chapter 20

With a promise to call again soon, I hung up once I spotted Elliot on the stoop up to our building, foot anxiously tapping. The wind had done a number on his blond hair. Phone in one hand, keys in the other, he was looking in the wrong direction.

He’d changed into sweatpants and a shirt, and he was probably freezing his ass off out here. Even though the heights of summer were fast approaching, nights still got cool. If I hadn’t just run five miles, I’d be cold too.

“Waiting for something?” I watched his head snap in my direction, brows furrowing first in surprise, then disbelief, and finally . . .

Wait, no.

“What the fuck?” Anger. That’s what it was. “Where did you—” But one look down my body answered the question before he’d even finished it. Plainly, he added, “Are you crazy?”

From the end of the block, a thick native accent echoed through the street. “You better be quiet out there or I’ll shut you up myself!”

Lower, I hissed back at Elliot, “What’s your problem?”

“My problem?” He threw his head back in a laugh. “You. Running around the city in the middle of the night. Like it’s an open invitation for every creep around every corner.”

I ignored that. “I’m out at night all the time. And guess what?” I faked a gasp. “Sometimes when I go running in the mornings, it’s still dark.”

Standing on the first step, I looked up at him. Watched him shake his head before he groaned in frustration. He ran his hands through his hair, and I realized it wasn’t the wind that had messed it up. How long had he been out here? How often had he done that to calm his nerves?

“Never by yourself,” he said. Calmer, lower. The guy down the street was probably thankful.

“I don’t know anyone here besides you and Paula.” Who wouldn’t, under any circumstances, voluntarily get up that early.

He rolled his eyes like I was trying not to get it. Like it was my fault he was speaking in riddles, and like he wasn’t really in the mood to explain them to me. “No,” he insisted. “I usually send one of the guys with you.”

Elliot said it so nonchalantly that I almost brushed past it. Send one of the guys with you. “What?”

“When you go for those runs in the morning. When I know you’re staying at the office late, and I can’t walk you home. I leave my security with you. Just to make sure.”