Page 31 of Stealing Blinds

“How the hell does any of this qualify as payback?” I counter.

“Not from me for your incessant razzing about Mercy and me being friends. This is the universe getting even for”—he can barely push the rest of his sentence past his shit-eating grin—“everything. You are down bad for this girl.”

“You cornered the market on being a man down bad, lover boy. I just refuse to lose.” I nearly make an off-handed joke about going down on Sylvie or some other reference to fucking her, but it’s bitter on my tongue before the retort is even formed.

Axel side-eyes him while handing me a glass of whiskey and moving on. “What the hell happened that you needed to cut power in San Antonio?”

“Jesus,” I hiss. “Liam called you?”

“No.” Axel takes the other chair, and his eyes narrow, concern mixed with intrigue. “Wells just called. They were following up to make sure you were good.”

That’s on me, I suppose. I silenced a call from Liam when I was still in the car with Sylvie, and then I forgot to call him back. I didn’t think about updating him since I’d boiled it down to a possessive chess move.

Wells and Liam are both men in my sister’s family. Rena is married to Ty. Wells, Liam, and Gage are like his brothers. Their wives are like sisters to Rena. And they all live in a grand French chateau about a half hour from here. The guys are ex-military, CIA assets, identity erasers, and members of KORT. So, they are a powerful resource, but also thorough. I should’ve expected them to follow up.

“I’m fine.” I wave my hand as if that were all nonsense. “Peter Fairfax had his eye on Sylvie.”

Ryker claps his hands—the fucker has probably been praying for me to go off the deep end over something like this. “So, you shut down his party?”

“The party kept going.” I shoot him a warning leer while swilling my whiskey. “I simply made it so he could no longer eye-fuck my girl, utilizing the only cordial, non-blood-shedding solution I could fathom.”

None of them know Sylvie was there on a job, nor will they. It’s not important. And my appetite to choke out Peter Fairfax for drooling over her all night is something they will all understand.

“He eye-fucked your friend,” Jax corrects, but his brows are furrowed, so he’s not being a smart-ass.

“Yeah,” I concede. “My fucking friend.”

They all get quiet for a beat, and something about that is jarring, like they can see deeper. It makes my skin itch. The truth is always in what most people don’t notice. I clear my throat, but before I can change the subject, Ryker breaks in, subdued and serious.

“Talk to us. What’s the end goal here?”

“I don’t fucking know.”

My attention darts to the Picasso we have hanging in honor of my mom since he was her favorite artist. And maybe for the first time, I get why she was enamored with him. His works are raw, showcasing all the right pieces, but in an arrangement that’s twisted and disjointed, which somehow makes it seem like his subjects were inside out, with all the ways they don’t align with the world on display.

I skip the art analysis with my brothers though. “Part of me thought if I could just have a night with her, I could move on. Get back to normal. That’s not gonna happen. She’s not open to it, and I’m … Walking away is best, but …”

“She called you a friend,” Ryker fills in because he gets that torment better than anyone.

“Worse. She said she needed one, and I don’t know …” It takes a beat to gulp down the truth of this, and for some reason, it has my mind drifting to my mom again, which all the men in this room would understand. “I’ve had people ask me for money, connections, nights out, gifts. I probably would’ve given her my goddamn jet if she’d just agreed to have dinner with me. She’s in some sort of trouble. She could’ve requested anything to help with that. But all she asked for was for me to be her friend.”

Again, I’m met with silence because we all know how fortunate we are, and not one person in this room would complain about our life, but it’s rare to meet someone who isn’t more swept up in what we can give them than they are in anything real about us.

“Are you okay with only being her friend?” Maddox asks.

“Fuck no.”

Axel sighs—it’s quiet but an undeniable prelude to his concern. “Are you okay with being more?”

“That’s not a good idea.” My chest fucking hurts. I finish my whiskey and shake my head. “I don’t even know what that means, and even if I did, I’m not cut out for it.”

They all know this. I don’t have the gene that lets you feel shit and go deep with someone. Squeezing myself into that box would be disastrous for everyone.

Maddox flicks his balisong in an intricate combination, as if to garner my focus. “You know you’re kind of screwed then. You can’t just fuck her now.”

“Definitely not,” Ryker agrees, staring me down.

I scoff and pull the asshole move of turning my agitation back on him. “Well, I guess I’ll do the friend thing, and maybe in two decades, we’ll say, Fuck it, and go for something more.”