16. Libby #4
“So maybe they deserve the same benefit. They at least deserve the opportunity to discuss it. They have no clue they even have a brother.” I release the door handle and walk toward him. “They have no clue there’s a third. How is that fair?”
“You…” He hesitates. “You didn’t tell them tonight, while I waited outside the club?”
I shake my head. “No. Because Gunner Bishop has my loyalty. This dude Theo? He’s an asshole. He’s no one to me, but Gunner… that sweet boy?” I look between his eyes. “He has brothers. And all three of them deserve to know each other. They deserve the truth.”
“It’s not my responsibility to mind their feelings, Libby.”
I stop in front of him and bend my neck to meet his eyes. “How old are you, Gunner?”
His lips twitch. A memory from forever ago flitters through my brain.
“I’m thirty-three and a half.”
“Which makes Kane your big brother, and Jay, your baby brother. It makes you family. No, it’s not your responsibility to care about their feelings.
They’ve had each other this whole time, they’re a team, and that’s great for them.
It’s more than you got. They seem to be a pretty impenetrable pairing, and I know that if I was you, I’d be scared of approaching them, because as a Bishop, it’s your rightful place to be beside them.
They might reject you, and that’s scary. ”
I don’t fight when he takes my hand and begins rubbing my stinging palm.
“But if they’re good, if they’re more you than they are him , then isn’t it worth trying?”
Gunner’s chest shudders as he drags in a deep breath and lets it out in jutting spurts. “What if you’re wrong? What if I go to them and simply… ask, but they turn? I’ll have given up my cover, I’ve put my company and the livelihoods of a hundred thousand people at risk. What if they–”
“Reject you?” I repeat on a quiet sigh. “It’s a scary thought, isn’t it?” His eyes are warm like how I remember. The boy is in there, hidden beneath twenty years of fear and loneliness. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“They don’t know who I am yet?”
I shake my head.
“They didn’t ask in that hour I waited outside 188?”
I nod. Then I let the tension coiling in my belly out on a laugh. “Of course they asked. They want to know who you are. They want to know why I shoved you out of a window instead of let my chief see us together. Sophia resorted to blackmailing me to get answers.”
Theo’s eyes darken on the word blackmail. “You say they’re good, but they’d blackmail an officer? What does she have against you, baby?”
I turn my face away when he strokes my jaw. “She’s protecting her family. I think it’s different to blackmailing someone when it’s for your family instead of money.”
“They’re not good people, Lib. No matter what they do or don’t know, no matter what they have to tell me, they’re not good.”
“You might be right. Maybe they’re not perfect, but I don’t believe that they’re bad either.” I swallow and meet his eyes. “Kinda like you, I suppose. Not good, but not bad.”
His brows pull closer. “I’m not a bad person. I’ve never hurt an innocent.”
I cup his hand and press it to my good cheek.
The pain is growing, not easing, and makes me fear for tomorrow.
“Sometimes, when it was necessary, you would steal things to help your mom make ends meet.” I turn and press my lips to his palm.
“Sometimes we have to do what we have to do to survive, and as long as it’s not done cruelly or hurting the innocent, it’s fair game.
Right? It means you aren’t good in the eyes of the law, but it doesn’t make you a bad person either.
It just means you were given a shitty hand, and you’re doing your best to survive without stepping on someone in the process.
” I step close enough that our toes touch, and when I place my hands on his hips and pull him in, we touch from the floor to our chests.
Then he closes the circle and presses his lips to my brow.
“I can go with you to see them,” I whisper. “I have your back. I’ve had it since I was a child.”
“Libby?” His hot breath moves over my skin and forces my eyes closed. I haven’t felt this comfortable this quickly with a man since… ever. “Babe?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think a boy can fall in love when he’s eleven?”
My heart thunders, lodging in my throat and rendering me speechless.
“Do you think it’s possible he held onto it this whole time?
That we possess this pair of hearts that just couldn’t detach in all this time, despite the fact they should have?
It was one hour.” He cups the other side of my face with the gentlest touch and draws my eyes up.
“They were just children, but she saved him on all of those lonely nights in the streets. She saved him just by existing.”
“And he saved her,” I whisper. “He was the only friend she had for a decade, even if he was dead.”
His bright eyes soften as he pulls me closer.
“And now we’re here. In this hotel, in the same town.
I’ve already tasted you, because your body knows what your heart knows.
Your brain is the only thing that has to catch up.
” He leans in and presses a gentle kiss to my tender lips.
“It shouldn’t feel like this, right? This isn’t normal. ”
“It’s not normal for me,” I answer quietly. “It’s impossible.”
“And yet, here we are.”
“We can be on the same team, Gunner. We can have each other’s backs. But I won’t walk with you if you’re hurting people you literally don’t know. I cannot get on board with that.”
“You would be with me?” He pulls back and shows me a shaky smile. “What about your reputation?”
“Well…” My heart skips to a stop. “Would I be with Gunner Bishop; the dude with really unfortunate lineage? Or Theo Griffin, the dude with questionable money?”
He chuckles. “I swear to God, every cent is accounted for and thoroughly audited. It’s not dirty money.”
“How can I know?” I press. “How can you expect me to believe your company turns over that kind of money?”
“Because…” he hesitates. “I have the records to back it up. I have proof.”
“Does it bother you that I question your accounts?”
He nods. “I worked hard for that money, and while I was hustling, you were my only companion. For you to question it stings a little.”
“Right…” I pat his chest and ignore the sting that still pulses in my hand. “So when we speak to Sophia, perhaps you can remember that about her money.”
His eyes narrow when he catches on. “Whose fucking side are on you on, Elizabeth? You’re awfully fucking defensive of that family you supposedly don’t know.”
I turn away on a laugh, but make it barely two steps before his arm wraps around my stomach and my small laugh turns into silly giggles. I don’t recognize this giggling version of myself, but Gunner doesn’t care as he picks me up and tosses me to the bed.
My brain rejects the swift movement, but the bed is soft like a cloud, and mercifully, it absorbs my weight rather than bounces me.
Then Gunner follows and climbs over top.
He rests his knee between my legs, his hands on either side of my head, then he blocks out the harsh lights from the ceiling when he’s all I can see.
His strong jaw. His bright eyes that have hurt way too much for way too long. His shoulders are strong, broad, and seem to expand as his muscles bunch and he holds himself above me.
“Stay with me, beautiful Libby? You can’t go home anyway. Someone needs to make sure you wake up again.”
“This is going to end so badly,” I whisper. “Everything we’ve ever known is a clusterfuck. Just because we’re grown won’t change that.”
He shakes his head, and when he moves and the lights flash in my eyes, my brain pulses in the most painful way. “I promise to wake you every two hours. I’ll watch you all night.” He peppers gentle kisses along my jaw. “I would never let you hurt when I’m keeping guard.”
“I don’t mean my sleep.” I scrunch my eyes closed to fight the pain. “I have a headache, not a brain injury.”
“Well…”
I open my eyes to find his smug grin.
“Semantics. I believe a concussion is, quite literally, brain damage. But I’ll keep watch, okay?
” He looks down my body, letting out a dramatic sigh when he has to work on my clothes all over again.
He unsnaps my jeans for the third time tonight and slowly begins peeling them down my legs.
“You need to stop pulling skintight jeans on, babe. It looks tasty as fuck, but I’m sick of them being in my way. ”
He leans in and peppers kisses along the top of my thigh.
“You seem to be awfully comfortable with a woman you basically only just met.” I begin to squirm when heat pulses between my legs. “Like, seriously. From strangers to lovers, from you being on a date with someone else, to me getting smacked in the face with a sledgehammer.”
He tugs the denim off and drops it to the floor with a shy smile. “We’ve never been strangers. Our souls have known each other for…” He shrugs. “Ever. Now we get to explore the physical side too. We’ve been together for more than twenty years. There’s no room for shyness.”
“It’s like our life is a book,” I whisper. “You’ve torn out the middle and peeked at the back. That’s cheating.”
He chuckles. “Someone else told me something similar recently.”
He climbs over top of me, digs an arm beneath me and pulls me up.
I think he’s going to kiss me, but what he actually does it pull my bloodied shirt up and oh so gently peels it over my head so I’m completely naked beneath him.
Tossing it aside and pausing, he takes a moment to look down at my body and study every curve and line.
“This isn’t what I expected to find.” He runs the very tip of his finger along my abdominal muscles. “This is absolutely not the body I’ve been thinking about since I was a kid.”
“What did you expect?” I bring my arms back and rest my head on them. “Twenty years is a long time. People change.”
He scoffs. “I expected fatty dimples. Chubby knees. The cutest, fattest cheeks in the world.”
“You’re an asshole.”
He laughs. “I fantasized about you, but chubbier. You have a six-pack, Lib. What the fuck is that?” He runs his finger along the ridges. “How can you have a six-pack?”
“Lean meat, high protein, no sugar–”
With laughing eyes, he glances up and silences me with a kiss. “You’re so literal all the time. Did you try the ground turkey? It’s good, right?”
“Yes, I tried it. No, it’s not good. It’s disgusting.”
“It’s cheaper, leaner, and good for you.”
“I don’t care if it’s cheaper. I can’t choke that shit down even twice, let alone as often as I eat chicken.”
“Now who’s flashing cash around?” He leans in and nips at my neck when I ball my fists. He laughs against my skin, lowers his bottom half, and silences whatever I might have said when he grinds his jeaned pelvis against my bare core. “Are you sore?”
I shake my head.
That gives him pause for a moment. I know what he’s thinking. I know what he refuses to say out loud. “At least lie to me and say I’m the best you ever had.”
I burst out laughing and wrap my legs around his hips. “Okay, you’re the best I ever had.”
“Ugh.” He gives my neck a punishing bite and grinds against me a second time. “Don’t patronize me, woman.” Lifting just a little, he unsnaps his own jeans, pushes them down far enough to free his cock, and then he touches the tip to my opening.
“Wait.” I pull his shirt up, because I want his skin touching mine.
I don’t want this to feel fast and dirty, I want to feel his heart beating against mine. I tug his shirt off and toss it as far as I can manage, and when our eyes meet, I let out a pleasure-filled sigh as he slides in and buries himself to the hilt.
“That’s better.”