“I know. Not my smartest move,” I agreed. “I was just…”
“I saw you, you know,” Jase said, cutting me off. “With Valen. Then when he was gone. Don’t think I’ve ever seen someone that happy and then that fucking devastated. I don’t blame you for still being mad at that fuckhead. You deserved better.” There was a short pause, then, “But I think that maybe prospecting would be hurting more than helping.”
“You’re not wrong,” I agreed.
“I guess it all comes down to the end game, though,” he mused, accepting a drink the bartender passed him.
“End game?” I repeated.
“Yeah. What’s the plan? To make him pay? To make him apologize? To make him yours again?”
“I guess that’s the problem,” I admitted. “I don’t know. I mean, when I came up with the plan, I just wanted to make him suffer. But now? Now, it’s more complicated than that.”
“Shit with the opposite sex always is, isn’t it? Especially when you loved the bastard. What happened tonight?” he asked, and the truth must have shown on my face because he let out a knowing chuckle. “I see. Yeah, that always complicates it, doesn’t it?”
“It never used to.”
“Yeah, because you were fucking guys you didn’t love,” Jase said, shrugging.
“When did you get all wise, huh?” I asked, shooting small eyes at him.
“Don’t go accusing me of that shit,” he said, shaking his head. “So, are you here just to drown it, or are you trying to figure it out?”
“Either. Both, I guess,” I admitted, swirling my drink before taking a long swig.
“You love him.”
“Despite my better judgment. But, in my defense, I don’t really think I have much choice in the matter.”
“Can’t say I understand that, but okay. You think he loves you?”
“I don’t know,” I said even as my heart squeezed in my chest at the possibility. “He said he missed me,” I told Jase.
“If it helps at all, I don’t think you can miss someone you don’t have feelings for,” Jase said.
“I guess that’s true,” I agreed. “And, given the complicated situation you two are in now with the club, I can’t imagine he’d fuck you unless he genuinely felt like he couldn’t fight it.”
“Also a good point,” I agreed.
“What’d he say after?” Jase asked.
My gaze slipped in his direction and quickly away.
“Fuck, baby, that’s cold,” he said, knowing what had happened. “Alright, listen. I get it. You were never good at the mushy, emotional shit. Can’t imagine you got any better at that while you were out in the world, following in your daddy’s footsteps.”
“How did you know that?” I asked, stiffening.
“Come on, Lu. You think I don’t know what’s going on with all the players in the world worth knowing about? Relax. No one knows your name. There are just several posts about some hot brunette making her way across Europe and rubbing shoulders with some shady characters. Sounded like a girl I once knew,” he said, shrugging.
“Oh, okay. And, ah, yeah. No. Being all alone in that whole world probably made me even worse at the whole communicating shit part. No one wanted to know what I was feeling, you know?”
“Yeah, I mean, I’ve never been breaking a kneecap and had someone ask me how my mental health is,” Jase said, giving me a wicked smirk.
“You savage, you.”
“Says the chick who has her own personal lye supplier,” he shot back.
“In my defense, I inherited that lye supplier,” I said, sharing a smile with him. And, for a moment, the years fell away, and we were just a couple of dumb kids playing at thinking we were grown enough for a relationship.
“You gotta talk to him, girl,” he said, shaking his head at me. “And not pick a fight with him,” he added.
“You make me sound like a monster. Why the hell did you want to be with me back then?” I asked.
“Guess I like smart-talking monsters with commitment and intimacy issues. Whiskey-sour, that’s how I like my women,” he said. “Besides, you have a fucking killer ass,” he said, making a laugh bubble up and burst out of me.
“All these years, I thought it was my sparkling personality winning over the menfolk. Nope. Just my ass.”
“The tits are great too,” he added.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And you’re just putting off the inevitable because you’re scared. The girl who was never afraid of anything, afraid of having a little talk with a guy. Who’da thunk it?”
“Listen, a fight to the death is easy. Telling someone who might reject you that you still have feelings for them? Not so much.”
“What’s the worst that could happen? He rejects you? You’ve been there. You survived. I’m sure it sucked. And I’m sure you don’t want to go through it again, but you can. And you’ll come out of it. But if you don’t talk to him, you’re going to wonder forever. That shit? That is the kind of thing that people talk about on their death beds. Not that they regret laying their heart on the line, but that they failed to do it when they got the chance.”
“Damn, that was almost… poetic,” a female voice said from behind me.
“How’d it go?” Jase asked, nodding his chin up at her.
And then I saw a wad of cash slap down on the table with a long-boned female hand with pointy fake nails on top of it. A hand covered in dried blood.
“Did you really have any doubts?” she asked.
“With you, Sam, never,” Jase said, smiling at his little sister as he took the cash.
“Sam?” I hissed, spinning around on my stool to face the youngest of Shane and Lea Mallick’s kids.
Sam was the youngest of four and the only girl in her family. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been in that really awkward stage of early adolescence. Tall and all arms and legs with splotchy skin and a mouth full of metal.
This Sam, though?
This Sam was a damn knockout.
I mean, of course she was. There was never any doubt that she would be. Shane was hot. Their mom, Lea, was drop-dead gorgeous. She just needed some time to grow into her looks.
And grow into them, she did.
She looked a lot like her mom. Tall and lean, but curvy in the chest, hips, and ass. She had long, silky black hair that she pulled back into a ponytail, and stunning light blue Mallick family eyes.
“Are you in the family business? Is she in the family business?” I asked, tone a little more accusing than I meant it to be as I looked back at Jase.
“Long story, but yeah,” Jase said, nodding.
“And you’re okay with that?” I asked, eyes widening.
Because I’d always known Jase to be an almost comically overprotective big brother. I had vivid memories of him screaming out the car window as Sam was coming out of the convenience store because he thought some guy in the car next to him was checking her out.
“She’s a fucking little girl, you fucking pedo freak!”
Turned out, he was actually looking at his stunning wife who was walking out behind Sam.