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“It’s not. I talked to him. Leo asked Mike about leaving, and the asshole demanded twohundred fifty thousand. The same number the old man told me when I went to argue Leo’s case. Is that how much you had to pay, Dash? Six fucking figures?”
I can tell my brother is clenching his teeth from the way his jaw muscle pops out.
“No,” he eventually admits. Then he points a finger at me. “That doesn’t mean you should do all this. Give up the money that Wai Po left you.”
“Listen to yourself! All this—” I wave back toward his house where Charlie sits. “—is the only way I get that money. Otherwise, it goes to our shitty father. Bill Lamont getting that money would be the opposite of karma, and you know it.”
“Great. Dad won’t get the cash, but the criminal organization he works for will. Have you thought about that? How you’re handing them all that fucking money to fund all their illegal shit?”
“So what?” The question burst from my lungs in a shout as I battle against the defensive anger in my chest. Hell, I’m tired of this argument that I’ve already had a hundred times with myself.
“What do you mean so what? You’re financing criminals!”
“Don’t you get it, Dash?” I step forward, shoving a finger in his chest as if that’ll get my words to pierce his thick skull and drive home my point. “I. Don’t. Care.” I jab with each syllable. “I’m selfish! I don’t care about the random people Uncle Mike fucks over. I care about my brothers. You and Leo. I want the two of you to be safe, and fuck the rest of the world!”
My holler echoes across his backyard, probably traveling the entire length of the neighborhood.
When the reverberations of it dwindle, another shout pierces the night from a few houses down.
“Fuck you too!”
Dash and I blink at each other, his shock no doubt matching my own.
Then suddenly we’re laughing.
All the tension of the situation melts out of us, the anger rising and falling that easily. Because at the core of every shouted word was the massive amount that we care about each other.
And included in that is Leo.
When our hysteria fades away, the night is eerily quiet. Just the sound of crickets and Pig snuffling in the grass in the corner of the yard.
With a deep sigh, I brace myself for the argument to start up again. “Charlie and I are married. We will be for the next year, and then I’m going to get Leo out of the business. I just—” My throat tightens, and I clear it before pressing on. “I need you to not give me shit about this.”
Dash stares at Pumpkin where she snores on the ground in the middle of the yard. He takes his time answering.
“Fine.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Fine.”
A weight lifts that I didn’t realize was dragging me down, and I give into the urge to raise my arms in a shoulder-cracking stretch. Charlie and I made the drive to New Orleans in a day, but it wasn’t exactly short, and now my muscles complain with little aches and pinpricks I try to work out.
“You like Charlie?” Dash asks.
That question has me dropping my arms and glancing at my brother suspiciously.
“I trust him to follow through on this, if that’s what you mean.”
“You two…” He lets the sentence drift off, turning the mystery ending into a question.
“We get along. I think at the end of the year we’ll be good friends.”
“Friends,” he repeats, without inflection.
“Yes,” I say, steel in my voice. “Friends. We’re just friends.”
ChapterTwenty-Three
CHARLIE
“You like Luna.” Paige barely waits for the door to shut behind the siblings before she gets straight to the sensitive, secret center. “This is not the normal path of a relationship. Just in case you got confused. The marriage usually comes later.”
