Chapter 33
SMITH
Riggs held it together until he finished his appointment with Greg.
He cleaned his station, and followed me up to the apartment.
Once the door was closed behind him and the separation was there, the facade around him finally started to crack.
First, it was a frustrated hand through his hair, a snapped hair tie, his head against the wall.
Then it was a trembling breath, a breathy sigh, and nervous hands.
I’d already changed out of the hoodie. It wasn’t something I felt wrong wearing.
It was the same one he’d put on me the night I got my first tattoo and one we’d both worn multiple times since then.
It was a little too small for him, a little too big for me, and it had the comfort and smell of something that had lived a long and loved life.
Knowing it belonged to Riggs’s husband, I believed that to be even more true than I had before.
When I made it back to the front of the apartment, Riggs was on the floor. His back against the wall with his knees bent, his elbows resting on top of them and his arms outstretched. He’d dropped his head into the crook of his upper arms, hair fanning out all around him.
“Hey,” I said, sitting down beside him and stretching out my legs.
“Hey. Sorry.”
“I don’t know what you’re apologizing for.”
“For Toren,” Riggs grumbled. “The things he said.”
“He didn’t say anything unfair.” I tentatively settled my hand on the middle of Riggs’s back and dragged my fingers in a swooping circle across his shoulders.
“He was hurtful.”
Toren’s accusation about my relationship with Riggs had been abrasive and biting, but not unfair.
It had come from a place of hurt, a place I was familiar with.
He was older than me, but Toren reminded me of how I’d been as a teenager coming into the Covington house.
I’d been brimming with so much misdirected anger, and I didn’t know where to put it.
Marshall, even though he didn’t live there anymore, had taken the brunt of it on his chin, and he’d done so in stride.
It was the easy way he handled me and my moods that had gotten me through the first few years.
He’d probably gotten Finn and Hunter through my first few years as well.
Life had been lonely, and I imagined Toren knew that feeling very well, having lost not just a brother but a twin.
“Everyone says hurtful things when they’re hurt.
” I swallowed hard. I needed to talk to Marshall, I realized.
Man to man, without Hunter and Finn there.
Not because the things I wanted to say didn’t involve them, but because Marshall needed to hear it directly from me.
I’d been very unfair to him, and I hadn’t even realized it until I’d watched Toren treat Riggs the same way.
“Did you get along with Toren? When your husband was alive?” I asked.
Riggs raised his head, let it drop against the door. His eyes were closed, but the strain around his mouth was evident. I’d never seen him so distraught, and even still he held himself together, answering me with a slow nod.
“When did you stop getting along with him?”
“Never, really.” Riggs opened his eyes and stared across the room at the wall. “I was…we were all very lost in our own grief, and it’s so thick, you know?”
I thought of losing my mother, knowing she was still alive but didn’t want me. “I know.”
“I couldn’t see him anymore. Couldn’t see anything that wasn’t my own loss.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” I dragged my fingers over his forearm, tracing some of the dark outlines of one of his tattoos. “You were both grieving something huge. Something that affected each of you differently.”
“Yeah, but I understand how it looks like I’ve moved on.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and I didn’t need to. Someone in heavy boots bounded up the stairs and knocked hard on the door.
“That guy’s back,” Merrick said through the wood.
“Thanks. Tell him I’ll be right there.” As he said the words, Riggs shook my hand off his arm and pushed up to his feet.
I stayed seated on the floor, watching him brush himself off and get himself together.
He went into the bathroom for a new hair tie, and after he’d redone his usual loose braid, he helped me to my feet.
Riggs rubbed his hands up and down the outside of my arms, eyes scanning my face.
“I haven’t moved on,” he whispered, taking my face into his hands and sliding his thumbs across my cheekbones. He held my head steady, making it impossible to look anywhere besides right at him. “But I am moving forward.”
“That’s all you can do.” I bit the inside of my cheek, the difference in the meaning stark. “Maybe Toren hasn’t done either.”
Riggs gave me a sad smile and kissed the corner of my mouth.
There was something to be said about seeing this version of him compared to the one I’d first met and fallen in love with.
Riggs was a strong man either way, but I’d never seen him doubt himself.
I’d never watched him move with anything less than complete certainty and focus.
Knowing Toren was downstairs was like seeing Riggs on a tightrope he’d never been trained to walk.
“I know you were with other people,” I reminded him. “Even if it wasn’t your husband, I know I’m not the first person you’ve loved. There’s nothing you can say to me or to him that will shake my understanding of your feelings for me. So, please don’t worry about that.”
Riggs chuckled, leaning back and scrubbing a hand down his face. I appreciated the way he kissed me because I knew of everything we did together, the kisses were something meant only for my pleasure, not his.
“I didn’t realize I’d been worried about that until you said it.”
I smiled and smoothed my hands across his chest. His shirt wasn’t dirty and it wasn’t wrinkled, but it gave me something to do.
“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked.
“I know it’s not how you planned to spend your Saturday night.”
“I planned to spend my Saturday night with you,” I reminded him. “I’m with you.”
“How are you so perfect?”
“I’m far from perfect, but I’ve had good men model it for me, I think.”
Riggs made a thoughtful sound. “I want to meet your oldest brother soon.”
“I want you to meet him too. But one thing at a time, yes?”
He huffed a laugh and nodded, shaking off whatever extra emotion he’d been carrying. “Ready?”
“As ready as you are.”
“So not at all.” Riggs grabbed the doorknob as he spoke, letting his body override the uncertainty of his words.
I followed him downstairs and we found Toren pacing the lobby so aggressively I worried he would dig out a path in the floor.
At the sound of Riggs’s unmistakable and heavy footfalls, Toren looked up.
His eyes were a little red, his hair looked like someone—probably himself—had been tugging at it for the past hour.
“Toren,” Riggs greeted.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” Toren blurted, stare flickering from Riggs to me and back again. “That was—”
“Perfectly fine,” I promised.
“Food, coffee, or drinks?” Riggs asked.
“Drinks.”
Riggs nodded. “Merrick, will you lock up when you’re done?”
Merrick turned down his tattoo machine, leveling a dry look at Riggs. “Obviously.”
Holden grunted his goodbye, and Riggs and I headed out onto the sidewalk behind Toren, who moved like he’d never walked a day in his life before.
“Are you good?” I asked Riggs, the jingle of the bells on the door drowning out my question.
“With you.” He cleared his throat and gestured with his chin toward the street. “There’s a little dive bar around the corner if that works.”
“That works,” Toren said.
There wasn’t room for the three of us to walk side by side, so I let the two of them take the lead. I stayed close, though, close enough to realize the two of them didn’t say a word to each other the whole walk.
The bar in question was definitely divey, but Riggs knew the bartender, and had no issue sliding into a small booth against the far wall.
I took the seat beside him, and Toren sat across from us, folding his hands neatly on top of the slightly sticky tabletop before frowning and dropping his hands onto his lap.
That didn’t last long either, and they were back on the table in no time.
“Toren, right?” I asked, when it became clear neither man knew how to speak to the other.
He nodded, brown eyes dark in the reddish amber lighting of the bar.
“Smith,” I said.
“I remember.”
“What do you drink, Toren?”
He blinked hard, like he’d almost forgotten we were at a bar, that he’d been the one to say he wanted to go for drinks. “Whiskey.”
I glanced up at Riggs who said, “A beer is fine.”
Before he could argue with me, I slipped out of the booth and went to the bar, ordering their drinks.
“Anything for you?” the bartender asked.
“Wine,” I said before I could think better of it.
Wine had always been my drink of choice because it had been Marshall’s drink of choice. I’d tried other things, small acts of rebellion meant to separate me from the man, but I’d—unfortunately—found wine was what I most enjoyed drinking.
The bartender slid all three drinks toward me, and I managed all of them in one trip without any spillage. Riggs took a huge drink of his beer, and Toren finished almost half the whiskey in one swallow.
“I’m very happy to stay,” I said carefully, “but if it’s better that I go—”
“No,” Riggs said at the same time Toren said, “Don’t.”
A buffer then. I could do that.
Riggs had done so much for me, it wouldn’t cost me anything to be that for him.
But, Jesus, what would Marshall do? How would my brother talk the man he loved through this situation?
Finn would joke himself out of it, and Hunter would probably brood himself through it.
Marshall had never been that kind of communicator, though.
He was confident in himself, sure of his words.
He spoke and moved with assurance, and up until that very moment, so had I.
It made sense that Marshall left me when I needed him most, through in retrospect I realized, I always needed him.
My oldest brother was the closest thing I had to a father figure, and the only reason I turned out the way I did was because of him.
I’d only been brave enough to be with Riggs because of the lessons my brother had taught me.
Shit, I did really need to talk to Marshall.
But that would have to wait because I was sitting in a dirty vinyl booth with the man I loved and his ex-brother-in-law and the two of them needed to dig out of the mess they’d let bury them both over the four years that had passed since Evander, since Ev, had died.
“Do you live around here?” I asked.
“San Diego.”
“I have a brother in San Diego,” I said, wincing as the words left my mouth.
Toren laughed under his breath. “It’s all right. You’re allowed to have brothers.”
“Until very recently, I thought I had too many,” I admitted.”
“How many is too many?” he asked.
“It’s complicated, but I have four brothers.” I thought about Donovan on the dating app, the cookie cutter of Marshall. “Maybe five. Probably more.”
“Maybe? Probably?”
“My dad was not great.”
Toren flashed a smile, and it gave me a look at a completely different version of him. “Mine was.”
“Until your brother died?”
Toren nodded.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s…I can’t imagine.”
“It sucks,” he said, looking up at Riggs. “I lost…everyone.”
“I’m sorry, Tor.” Riggs scratched the back of his head and sniffled, shaking his head like he was fighting off tears.
I rubbed my hand over the top of his thigh and took a drink of my wine.
It was maybe the worst red blend I’d ever had in my life, but I didn’t know what I’d been expecting in a place like this.
Maybe Hunter was onto something with the vodka sodas he loved so much.
I imagined it was harder to mess that up.
“You had your own shit going on.”
“Yeah, but you were still…you were like a brother to me too, and I just…”
“It’s fine, Riggs. I didn’t come here looking for an apology.”
“What then?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Toren frowned into his whiskey. “I just didn’t want to be alone.”