Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Lou
I don’t think I could move if I wanted to. My body is heavy in the best way, but my heart is so light it’s floating.
Foolish of me, and yet…
I don’t know. I just feel it, and I can see Clay feels it, too. I can see him changing his plans in the way he looks at me, the way he looks at Gallo’s, like we’re his future, and instead of that being something to fear, it’s something he’s warming up to.
Somewhere downstairs, glass breaks.
Ah, shit. Either Clay knocked something over or threw something. Whatever he’s dealing with is at least as terrifying as an opossum.
I don’t particularly want to deal with critters, and I don’t hear anything else breaking, so I calmly dress and run a brush through my hair to give Clay enough time to handle whatever got in. I slip into a pair of low-heeled boots since there’s broken glass to clean up, and head down.
But when I open the apartment door, I hear voices coming from the bar. Men’s voices. Clay’s, and—
Is that Travis?
What the fuck is my cousin doing here?
I close the door quietly behind me and walk softly, stopping just before the hallway opens into the bar.
“If Lou finds it, she’ll come for me after she murders you,” my cousin says. “It’s in our best interest to get rid of it.”
I frown. Get rid of what? My hands start shaking, catching on faster than my head or my heart.
Clay would’ve told me if he still had anything to do with my loser cousin, wouldn’t he?
But then there’s Clay’s voice, smooth and confident and detached. “I’m keeping the will as my insurance policy. How much will it cost for you to forget about it and leave for good this time?”
The will? What will?
Gallo’s. It’s obvious. There isn’t any other.
His insurance policy.
My heart slams into my throat. I’m going to be sick.
There’s only one reason he’d need an insurance policy, and that’s to hold over my head because he doesn’t trust me. He never trusted me. Was anything he said true?
No, and I should’ve known better.
Rage and shame spark to life deep inside me, and I impatiently brush at the tears gathering in my eyes.
Twice in one year. First Hayden, now Clay. What the fuck is wrong with me that I keep falling for shit like this? It’s self-sabotage, clearly.
There’s the sound of something being knocked over. A bottle, maybe. Nothing else for a few terrifying beats of my heart.
Then Travis again. “How much is my cousin worth to you?”
That’s enough. I force myself to take a deep breath and step into the bar. “How much am I worth to you?” I ask Clay, crossing my arms.
He whirls around, his face going pale while behind him, Travis gives me a stupid little grin—a whoops, you caught me, but you can’t really be mad at me grin.
Determination settles over Clay’s face as he closes the distance between us. “Wait here,” he says before disappearing down the hall.
Whatever.
I turn my attention back to my cousin and grit my teeth when I notice the spilled alcohol. “What will?”
Travis lifts himself to sit on the back counter. “You aren’t mad at me about selling the bar?”
“I can be mad at you for more than one thing at a time. What will?”
The grin falls off his face. “I’ve been okay, by the way. I thought you might have been worried when you came back and found me gone.”
I drop my hands to my sides and walk up to the bar, but I don’t join him behind it, for his own good, because I am so tempted to drag him out by the ear. “Not really.”
“There’s that Gallo family loyalty. You’re just like Rita.”
She was never Mom to him. Only Rita. She was more Rita to me than Aunt Rita, but to hear him call her by her first name always irritated me. And maybe in the past, this little deflection technique of his would’ve worked, but not today. “The bar was never yours, was it?”
“It should’ve been mine.”
“So why not write me out?”
The answer is that running Gallo’s is more work than Travis is willing to do, especially given the slim profit margin. The look he gives me all but confirms it.
“So you hold it over Clay’s head, and he pays you off. That's the scheme?”
Travis shrugs. “It’s a perk.”
A perk but not the point. “Destroying evidence?”
“They’re contesting a will in Pine Point—a copy of the original turned up. It wouldn’t be a good look if Rita’s were to show up. McCormick wants to clean house.”
That weasel of a lawyer is going to be very busy. He and Travis have spent years forging all manner of shit. But I don’t care about him or my cousin.
I grip the bar. “So you think you can take my bar away from me again?”
Travis grins. “That’s up to Clay, and it looks like you’ve got him wrapped around your finger.”
Right, because it doesn’t matter to Travis if the ownership of my bar is dependent on the whims of a man.
Travis’s grin widens, and he hops down from the back of the bar as Clay walks in, loaded down in duffle bags.
“Here,” Clay snarls, hefting a bag at Travis as he walks over. Travis catches it with a grunt, the other four bags landing one by one at his feet, each with a loud thump. “This is all the cash I have. Take it and go, but the will is Lou’s.”
I freeze, the blood draining from my face. He’s willing to part with all of it for me? Was I wrong? He lied about the will, but—I’m worth everything he has?
Travis laughs, wide-eyed and delighted. “You’ve been holding out on me. Fuck, I should’ve asked for more. I’m still going to need the will.”
“No.” Clay isn’t looking at Travis. He’s looking at me. That grim determination is still in the set of his jaw, in the depths of his eyes, but there’s something else there, too. A plea, maybe.
My heart picks up speed. I want to fling myself into his arms, but I’m frozen in place. I barely hear the zip on the bag Travis is holding. Clay lied about the will, but he’s willing to give up all that money for me. Warmth fills me because this is more than I ever expected anyone to do for me.
Travis barks out a hollow laugh. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with these?”
A Gallo’s beer coaster hits Clay’s shoulder and drops to the ground.
Oh shit.
I forgot. How could I forget?
Clay frowns as he looks down at the coaster by his feet. His eyes move to Travis as my cousin dumps the duffel bag full of coasters onto the floor. I watch them—mostly still wrapped in their packets of one hundred and twenty-five—as they land with the impact of a bomb.
“Either you’re fucking with me, or Lou already got to your cash,” Travis says, sounding amused. “Going by the look on your face, I should be talking to her about getting paid off.”
I don’t want to look at Clay, but my gaze moves anyway. The face that twenty minutes ago looked at me with tenderness, nearly shining with love, is now full of pain and bewilderment. Words fail me as he gains control, closing off the emotion until all that’s left is the cold disdain I first knew.
“I moved it,” I finally manage to say. “To a safer place. I was going to tell you.”
“When?” he asks in that flat, cold voice.
I don’t have an answer. Not a good one. So I fall back on a bad one. “When were you going to tell me about the will?”
His jaw twitches. “When I left.”
Travis sighs. “I don’t want to get in the middle of this spat. Lou, give me half the cash—”
“No fucking way.”
“—and Clay,” Travis continues, “go get the will, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Fuck off,” Clay tells him, but his eyes are still on me. “I’ll be taking my money back, Ms. Gallo, and leaving. The bar is yours.”
My heart is breaking, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing it. If he can be all cold and business-like, then so can I. “You’ll give me the will?”
“As soon as you give me the cash.”
I stomp over to the duffel bags and open the nearest one. Bundles of cash are inside, not Gallo’s coasters, so I pick up the bag, shoving it into Clay’s arms as I will my tears to stay put. “We’re going for a hike, then. Do you want to pack your stuff first?”
“There’s nothing here I can’t replace,” he says in that icy tone.
“Ouch,” Travis says, but we ignore him.
“Let’s go,” Clay says, slinging the long strap of the duffel bag over his shoulder.
“After you.”
“So the will is somewhere in the building?” Travis asks as we head to the door.
“Good luck finding it,” Clay says with a sneer as he unlocks the front door.
I follow him out into the early morning sunlight, leaving my cousin patting his pockets inside.
“I can’t believe I trusted you,” Clay mutters.
A disbelieving laugh bubbles out of me. “Same. Was any of it real?”
He stops and whirls on me. “You tell me.”
“I thought you were different.” I can’t help the little tremble in my lip, but I will not fucking cry now.
“So you thought this time, you’d be the one to do the stealing?”
“I didn’t steal it, I moved it. You were keeping ten million under your bed—which is absolutely stupid, by the way. I thought you went to some fancy rich kid school a million years ago—didn’t they teach important shit like how to hoard wealth?”
He holds up a finger in warning: don’t bring his past into this.
Fine. And even though I can tell from the expression on Clay’s face that the truth will change nothing, he needs to hear it anyway.
“Travis’s friend was looking for something in the bar—likely a will I knew nothing about.
I didn’t want him to find the bags of cash under the bed. Like I said, I did you a favor.”
“Don’t do me favors.”
A bitter little laugh escapes. “Oh, those days are over.”
“Don’t act like I’ve hurt your feelings,” he chides. “You were using me—for the money or the bar or both.”