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I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my short hair. Still felt weird. It used to be long enough to tie back. “I’m just wondering about Ella.”
Leo’s girlfriend, Ella, wasn’t my daughter—no blood relation at all—but she was the closest I was ever going to come to having a child of my own.
“What about her?” he asked.
“Just wondering if you’ve got plans to make an honest woman out of her.”
“Really?” Both of his eyebrows reached for his hairline.
I shrugged. “I haven’t been seeing much of her these days. Just want to make sure she’s taken care of.”
He nodded, and his eyebrows settled back down above his eyes. “She was trapped for four years. I want her to feel free. Until I’m sure a ring on her finger won’t feel like just another shackle, you’re just going to have to be okay with your honorary daughter living in sin.”
“At least it sounds like you’re more than willing,” I grumbled. The truth was, I wasn’t in any position to be giving sermons about sin. It happened to be one of my favorite things.
“You know I am, Brute.”
“All right,” I said, heaving a sigh. “Looks like the fish ain’t biting today. Time to wrap this up.” I looked down at my two floating fish, and Leo’s gaze followed.
“I’m not jumping in there to get those,” he said, stifling a smile.
I chuckled. “And here I thought stirring up the waters was right up your alley.”
Leo laughed. “That’s all you,amico.”
Hard to argue with that.
We’d driven out in my Ford F-150, but I handed Leo the keys, letting him drive us back, hoping just a little that he’d crash the thing. The truck’s metal walls didn’t feel secure, they felt like a trap. I fucking hated cages. A necessary evil, maybe, but nothing felt freer than riding down the highway at a hundred miles an hour on a Harley Davidson Dyna Super Glide.
And by the time we got back to the city, I was itching to get out of the fucking truck.
I swung open the door and climbed out, thinking that maybe the next time I wanted to inquire about Ella and give Leo a lesson in slowing shit down, we were going to have to get him a bike. No more cage bullshit.
Leo got out of the truck and handed me the keys.
“This was…fun,” he said, though it sounded more like a question than a statement.
I shrugged. “You’ve got to slow down every once in a while to appreciate the rush, my friend.”
Leo laughed. “This was one fucked-up version of stopping to smell the roses.”
“Smell roses, shoot fish…” I shrugged. “Same thing.”
I was just about to bid my young friend farewell when I noticed the big-ass box sitting in front of the bar’s back door.
It wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever found at the bar’s back door. Pretty sure the human head wrapped in dozens of layers of plastic wrap I’d found here a few years ago took that trophy.
“Secret admirer?” Leo asked. He was grinning, but he was also eyeing the box suspiciously.
I shook my head. “Don’t think so. Pretty sure the whole damn city knows my thoughts on relationships.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Care to enlighten me?”
I scoffed. “Never wanted one, never going to want one.” Pretty sure the motto was stamped into my bones.
Leo laughed. “Si, that’s exactly what I said.”
Maybe, but I meant it. I’d watched my father drive my mother into the ground and then do the same to the woman he married after her. No way was I doing that to any poor girl. Casual, no-strings sex with grown women who understood that the relationship stopped with breakfast in the morning was the way to go.
