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TWENTY-ONE
Talon
“She fucked all of us,and you don’t have a problem with it?” Garrison was griping at Blaze. “Because in all the years I’ve known you, I never thought you’d be into swinging like that.”
He’d been going off on Blaze since the moment we’d reached the rooftop deck, but Julius and I needed a moment to process. I stood back, leaning against the wall and thinking about the signs that I’d noticed and written off as something insignificant. Was Julius thinking the same?
“She’s allowed to make her own decisions. If it bothers you that much, don’t sleep with her again,” Blaze said, stating it as if it was the most obvious solution to the problem. And I supposed it was, even if the thought of not sleeping with her again sent a twinge of loss through me that clashed with the flare of jealousy when I remembered seeing her tangled up in the other man’s embrace.
Julius stepped forward, and the two of them fell silent. “How long has this been going on?” he asked in a no-nonsense tone.
Blaze gazed steadily back at him. “Today was the first time we ever hooked up—or did anything remotely close to hooking up. You saw how she reacted to me the first time I got flirty with her.” He paused, and a hint of a smile curled his lips despite the situation, one so pleased it provoked a renewed jab of possessiveness in my chest. “We got that all sorted out.”
“Wonderful,” Garrison groused, and turned to Julius. “It was only once for me too—that we slept together. The evening before the L.A. job. We fucked up here while the rest of you were out doing prep work.”
He spoke callously, but I couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t clarify the way Blaze had about interactions that fell short of “fucking.” He’d been the most obviously upset out of the four of us. Just how entangled had the two of them gotten?
At the same time, my mind was doing its own simple calculations. Unless Julius had welcomed Dess into his bed sometime before our threesome, which it certainly hadn’t seemed like in the moment, I was the only one who’d been with her before we’d known who she actually was. I’d been the first.
Should I feel triumphant about that fact? I didn’t really. The brief flickers of jealousy had faded, and now I only felt a dull discomfort when I thought about Dess waiting downstairs, shut out of our discussion despite how much it involved her.
She hadn’t committed a cardinal sin. She hadn’t betrayed any of us, not really. Our feelings were our own to deal with, weren’t they?
Maybe I only thought that because I rarely had much of any feelings to do anything about, but I didn’t like remembering the frustration and pain that’d shown so clearly on her face when Julius and Garrison had chided her in their own ways—and when we’d left her behind.
“What about you and Talon?” Garrison asked, his narrowed eyes flicking between us.
“Also once, on the way back from the convention center,” Julius said. “It sounds like this hasn’t been an ongoing situation then. She’s just… given each of us a try.”
I couldn’t tell how he felt about that idea, but the need to correct his mistaken assumption prickled at me, alongside Garrison’s earlier remark about lies of omission. I wasn’t sure it’d make a difference, but I wasn’t going to leave our boss with the wrong information.
“Actually,” I said brusquely, “she and I also ended up getting together once before we found out about her real identity.”
Blaze’s eyebrows shot up in a surprised reaction that might have offended me if he didn’t have way more of a reputation as a ladies’ man than I’d ever possessed.
Garrison’s eyes only narrowed further. “You got it on with her when we weren’t even sure if she was the enemy?”
I frowned at him. “She wasn’t, and I didn’t compromise the crew in any way.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he demanded.
I gave him an even stare. “Why should I have? I didn’t see how it was anyone else’s business. It didn’t affect the crew.”
“Yes, of course you’d see it that way.”
“Hey,” Blaze broke in. “I didn’t hear you announcing your involvement with her from the rooftops—even though that’s apparently where it happened.”
“Because I thought it was just me,” Garrison retorted, and sighed. “Which obviously we all did. Well, except you two, it seems.” He studied me and Julius in an evaluating way I didn’t totally like.
“How we conduct our own private business isn’t any of your concern either,” Julius replied.
Garrison threw his hands toward the sky. “It isn’t just private business anymore, is it? Look at us! We were thinking of bringing her into the crew permanently, and she has us at each other’s throats. How can we trust someone who’d create this much turmoil?”
I didn’t think Garrison trusted much of anyone anyway. But Julius stirred on his feet with unusual restlessness. “That is a point that’s weighing on my mind.”
Even Blaze was silent for a moment. The discomfort inside me congealed into a heavier ache.
Dess hadn’t done any of this intentionally. From her reaction, she hadn’t understood that what she’d done might bother us at all. She hadn’t liked that she’d upset us—I’d been able to see that much in her face—but she simply hadn’t viewed the situation the same way we had.
