“Is she still doing the professional poker thing?” I asked.
“You would know if you maybe texted her once in a while,” Violet said, shooting me a hard look.
“We covered the me being a shitty friend part,” I reminded her. “I plan to try to… reconnect. You know… when I can sit on a barstool again. Because I think things like that require liquor.”
“Alright. I’m holding you to that. Even if we have to kidnap you. And, Louana, you know we will,” she said, looking like she might actually enjoy the hell out of it. “But, yeah, that’s what she’s been up to. I swear she’s been all over the world the past few years, seeking out those high-stakes games.”
If she was playing high-stakes games, that meant Layna had a lot of money to her name. A lot of those games wouldn’t even let you in if you couldn’t prove you at least had a million dollars in cash on hand.
And, yes, sure, I made a nice chunk of change. Enough that I could buy my car and my bike outright. Enough that I could buy a house too. All of it given to me from jobs, or stolen from virtual wallets of bad guys—a skill my father taught me how to do.
But I was nowhere near a millionaire.
I was kind of in awe of that for her.
“That’s awesome. But also seriously dangerous,” I said, shaking my head, thinking of the kinds of characters you could find in those games. Crime lords, shady politicians. The kind of men who didn’t like to lose. The kinds who might look at Layna and see someone they could easily “deal with” and take their money back from.
“I know. Everyone worries about her. Except her, of course. She seems to think she’s invincible.”
That sounded like Layna.
“She’s in France for this weekend. Which makes me feel marginally better than when she was in Russia with some Bratva and without her cell phone. I didn’t sleep that whole night, I swear. I felt like I had a daughter who might be ‘dead in a ditch somewhere’ or some other parental crap like that. She’s coming back after, though. So healed ass or not, I am going to make you see her.”
“You won’t have to make me,” I told her. “I… I never meant to be such a dick, Vi. And I think I’ve been avoiding you guys even though I’m back because I don’t want to face up to the hurt feelings I know are there. Which is ironic,” I said, waving toward the bathroom where we could hear Valen’s shower water running.
“It’s always hard to own up to our mistakes,” Vi said. “Luckily, we are a family of fuck-ups in all our own separate ways, so we won’t hold it too hard against you,” she said, hopping up. “Come on. Let’s get you a shower. I know your mom will probably be coming later, but it’s kind of weird, right?” she asked.
“Yeah, hence the oily hair,” I agreed.
“But since we all skinny-dipped on a dare once, there are no secrets here,” she said, waving down at her body, then mine. “Come on.”
I really wanted to argue. Because a part of me was starting to really feel like a burden to everyone around me.
That said, Vi was pretty damn persistent, and the next thing I knew, she had me in the bathroom, and was running the water.
And while I stood there wrapped in a towel for a moment more of modesty, I couldn’t help but blurt it out.
“Hey, do you know what Valen was involved in while he was traveling?”
“Involved in?” Violet repeated as she popped open the couple bottles of shampoo to smell them and pick her favorite even though it was my shower. “He worked odd jobs. Got into some scuffles here and there,” she added, pointing toward her neck where Valen had his scar.
That was what he seemed to tell everyone.
And no one really had a reason to question him.
Except me.
Because something was off.
I’d noticed it since that one text message came through. The one that made his face darken and his jaw get tight.
There was something he wasn’t telling us.
About where he’d been and what he’d done.
I’d noticed he’d also been ignoring his phone here and there, even when he wasn’t busy. Like he knew who the text was from, and didn’t want to read whatever it might say.
I wanted to know what was going on, but something about his body language—and the fact that he hadn’t already told Fallon the issue—told me that he wasn’t going to open up about it.
Vi was my last hope for finding a sort of covert answer.
Now I just had to bide my time and maybe see if I could sneak a read at one of the messages, or catch him while reading one and confront him about it.
If there was one thing I knew, it was that it was never a good idea to let your past come back and bite you in the ass.
He needed to open up about it, talk to Fallon about it, and hopefully get a plan on handling the situation—whatever it was—before it got out of control.
What if the situation is a woman?
The question came barreling into my head from nowhere, the most unwelcome thought I had maybe ever had cross my mind.
But, of course, it could have been a woman, right? Lord knows he wasn’t celibate since we’d broken up. I hadn’t been either. That wasn’t how the world worked.
So it could be.
An ex wanting to get back in touch with him?
But, then, why so much secrecy.
Most of the guys would have had a good chuckle about it and moved on.
No.
It had to be something else.
Something worse.
“Are you waiting for the temperature to get to hell?” Vi asked, snapping me out of my thoughts and back to the present moment.
“What? Oh, right. Shower,” I said, taking a deep breath as I moved toward the shower door.
I wasn’t exactly excited about a shower. I knew that getting cleaned up was necessary, but that it wasn’t going to feel great to have soap and water running down the wounds.
“Rip off the bandaid,” Vi suggested, letting me use her arm as I dropped the towel and moved inside the shower.
“Okay. I think you can handle the soapy business,” she said. “I’ll be out here to help you dry off,” she added, waving toward the space between the bathrooms where the sink vanities were, giving me the privacy I wanted.
No one wanted to hear the string of curses I let out when the water and soap did finally get down to clean out the wound.
“Vi?” I called when I was finally done, which felt like a lifetime later thanks to over-scrubbing my hair and body because it had been too many days since my last shower, a quick shave, and, well, the laziness of my arms that hadn’t been used much and were fighting against the effects of the pain medicine. “Vi, where’d you put my towel?” I called as I squeezed out my hair. “Violet, I swear to God, if you—“ I started, then trailed off as I heard the door open.
But when a towel didn’t get tossed at my head, like I expected from my old best friend, I turned.
And there he was.
Valen.
Standing in the small space in a pair of lightweight black athletic pants and no shirt, holding my towel in his hand.
For my naked body.
And I mean naked.
Full frontal, no way to hide anything.
I mean, I guess someone else might have raised an arm to shield their breasts.