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He searches my face as if he still doubts me. I stare back, expression blank as I wait for him to realize this is one of the rare occasions I’m telling the truth. Once he’d have believed whatever I told him because he’d have had no reason not to. As close as brothers, I wouldn’t have lied to him. About anything.
But now?
“Get rid of the girl,” he says, and that’s when I know he believes me.
After resting my glass on the couch end, I pull a small bundle of bills from my pocket and toss it in the girl’s direction, never taking my eyes off Dariel. “Go. Your services are no longer required.”
We don’t look away from each other as the girl curses as she snatches up the bills from the floor. She curses some more as she flaunts off to find some other guy who won’t have a problem with half-assed paint-by-numbers lap dances by easily forgettable blondes with fake tits.
“Why do you bring them here, Kade? You know all it does is cause a fight.”
Since it should be as obvious to him as it is to me, I don’t respond. Just reach for my glass.
He sighs. “There’s more to life than drinks and women, Kade.”
My smile is both empty and wide. “Perhaps you might tell me what that is and whether that thing is hiding in your office with you?”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Then tell me the last time you slept with a woman. No, better yet, tell me the last time you let a woman touch you.”
His expression, usually distant and unreadable, turns glacial. He spins on his heel and stalks away, heading toward the entrance for the bar manager's apartment upstairs.
We all have our shadows and the things we do to hide them.
Who is the girl and what are hers?
I lift my glass to my lips as I ponder the question.
13
SAIGE
There’s no reason for me to be fighting back tremors that make the contents of my plastic bag crash into each other when the only person in the room saved me from pimps with a gun.
There isn’t, but that’s not enough to stop panic from crawling up my throat.
Aden draws the black drapes over the window, blocking out the moonlight and stars that moments ago flooded the room. The only light now comes from the too-bright overhead ones.
As he turns, I tighten my hold on my bag and make my expression blank. “Greg has a few days off and he’s out of the city, so no one has a reason to come up here tonight but you.”
He waits for a response.
I should say something or he’ll think something is wrong.Morewrong than me tucking myself behind a black leather couch in a room so masculine that all it's missing is a man at a desk smoking a cigar and clutching a glass of whiskey.
My mind returns to the man from the bar. The one having a lapdance, but who was watching me instead of the beautiful blonde with the perfect curves.
Why was he watching me and not her?
The silence extends.
I swallow down the creeping anxiety that hangs over me like vines, waiting to tighten around me and strangle the air from my lungs. “Greg?”
I’m proud of how calm I sound. It’s as if I have normal conversations all the time.
“Bar manager,” Aden responds, his next blink slow. And Iknow, from that one blink, he isn’t buying my facade of calm. Maybe that’s why he’s sticking to his side of this cozy living room while I’m on this one.
“Oh.”
