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“Worse ways to spend your retirement.” He followed his friend into the brightly lit restaurant. If one could call Frank’s a restaurant. There were exactly two tables and three chairs, and in all Gideon’s time of coming here, he’d never seen them empty. Most people took their food to go, which was what he and Roman did. They turned left without bothering to talk about it—it was always the direction they took when they managed to carve time out of their schedules for this sort of thing.
They both finished their breakfast sandwiches by the end of the first block. Roman barely waited for them to cross the street before he started in. “What are you doing with Lucy?”
“None of your damn business.”
“No, it’s not, but you know me well enough to know that I’m not going to leave it alone. Explain. Now.”
Gideon stopped walking and turned to face his friend. He didn’t like the set of Roman’s jaw or the tight way he held himself. “Why are you pissed?”
“Everyone with eyes in their head has seen the way you’ve watched her since she came into our group. You’ve had a thing for her for as long as we’ve known her.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “You have a point. Get to it.”
“My point is that you agreed to find her a husband—that’s it. A husband that is from the agreed-upon list that I helped you put together.” When he didn’t immediately jump in, Roman glared. “I may be pretty, but I’m not stupid. You dragged her into the back room at Vortex and you two had sex, which means you’ve crossed so many damn lines, you’re too deep into it to realize exactly how much you’re fucking up.”
He wasn’t fucking up. He might have changed the rules with her, but she was on the same page he was. More or less. It was the “less” that worried Gideon. Lucy had put it all out there yesterday—her fears about the future and what it might mean for them—and he’d essentially steamrolled her.
Admitting that to himself and admitting it to Roman were two very different things.
Roman, damn him, knew it. He shook his head. “She gave you an opening and you just went for it, didn’t you? Didn’t bother to stop and think about the damage you were dealing because you were too busy thinking with your cock.”
Enough was enough. “I would never hurt Lucy.”
“You’re hurting her right now.” Roman raked his hand through his hair. “We all stood by while that piece of shit ran around on her, and we have to live with that. There’s no making it right—not really—but she came to you for help, Gideon. You do anything else than give her exactly the help she wanted and you’re just as bad as he is.”
No need to clarify the “he” Roman meant. Gideon gave his head a sharp shake. “It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it? You and me—and even him, though I hate to include Jeff in anything—are not good men. We’re just not. We never have been—you don’t get as far in the world as we’ve gotten without throwing people under the bus along the way. I’ve made my peace with that, and I thought you had, too, but you’ve always had a white knight complex when it came to Lucy. She is good—as good as anyone is. She deserves a hell of a lot better than she’s gotten up to this point, and that means we owe her.”
“Fuck, will you listen to yourself?” Gideon knew all that. How could he not, when he’d thought it himself over and over again for years? But hearing Roman say it felt different. Real. As if Gideon really had been deluding himself all this time by thinking things could work out between him and Lucy. “She and I just work.”
Roman’s eyes didn’t hold a shred of sympathy. “For how long? How long until she wakes up one morning and realizes you pulled one over on her? She asked you for help, and instead of doing what you promised, you used her needing you to leverage a place in her life. That’s shitty, Gideon. If our positions were reversed, you’d tell me the same thing.”
He started to react, but stopped short. If Roman had come to him with news that Lucy had approached him for help, and he’d ended up sleeping with her and sabotaging her matchmaking plans... “I would have punched you in those perfect teeth.”
Roman rubbed his jaw. “You have a wicked right hook.”
He didn’t smile, though it couldn’t be more obvious that his friend was trying to lighten the mood.
Gideon tossed his garbage into a trash can and stared at the street. “I didn’t set out to do this.” I love her. But what did his feelings matter when he hadn’t taken hers into account? Lucy’d had years of playing second fiddle to some asshole—she didn’t need Gideon coming in and starting a replay, regardless of his intentions. He’d never cheat on her, would do everything in his power to make her happy.
