Chapter 18 #2
I lifted my hands as if it should’ve been obvious. “They steal women. They sell women. I’m not letting you walk into that club and up to known mafia members. I’m not letting you flirt with them or whatever else Briggs had in mind to get them talking.”
Briggs may have started responding—clarifying—but I was too focused on the lift of Mallory’s brow before she said, “You aren’t letting me?”
An edgy laugh bled from me.
“And how exactly do you plan on stopping me?” she challenged, looking so infuriated and beautiful, that I wanted nothing more than to reach across the table and kiss her. Fight with her. Just pull her into my arms again because I could.
“However I need to, Peach.” I lifted a shoulder. “I’d chain you to this table if I thought it’d work.”
Her eyes flared with promised fury, and my mouth twitched in response. “I’ll murder you.”
“Such a violent princess.”
She smacked a hand on the table as she seethed, “Stop calling me that! And don’t think calling me those ridiculous names will make me forget what’s really happening here.
You can’t just decide what I can and cannot do,” she claimed, her voice rising with each word.
“You can’t stop me from doing my job, just the same as I can’t stop you. ”
“I can if it means keeping my wife from sex traffickers,” I snapped back.
A sharp, bitter scoff left her. “Good to know I’m suddenly incapable of handling myself around big, scary men.” Her head slanted in warning. “Have you always thought that?”
“I’ve never thought that, Mallory. I never said that,” I said more calmly than before.
“But don’t—” The words caught in my throat, and I had to struggle to swallow past the sudden knot there.
“We just established these men don’t have morals.
Not to mention, they look for women like you.
Don’t put me in a position to potentially lose you. ”
All her anger faded as her gaze dropped to my shoulder before meeting mine again as if to say Same.
With a sympathetic sigh, she said, “I wouldn’t be going in there alone. We’d be together. I’ll be fine.”
“We wouldn’t be together,” I reminded her. “Something could easily happen to you.”
“You wouldn’t let anything,” she said confidently.
My jaw tensed as every argument and plea rushed to the surface, but all that left me was her name. “Mallory . . .”
“This is what I do,” she nearly whispered, begging me to understand. “This is what we do.”
After a few seconds, my head dipped in acceptance.
I watched her sit back on an exhale before her body tensed and eyes widened when she glanced to the side, realizing at the same moment as me that we weren’t alone, the way we had been for every other argument this past weekend.
Looking in the same direction, I noted Thatch’s veiled amusement and Briggs’ outright shock as he stared at Mallory.
But it was Rush who asked, “Sorry . . . did you say wife?”
My attention snapped back to the woman across from me, gauging her reaction, but she was staring blankly at the table. Not giving me a single hint as to what was going on in that mind of hers.
“You were serious?” Briggs asked, voice low and cautious.
I spared a quick enough look his way to see he was watching me, to know he’d spoken to me, before focusing on Mallory again. Remembering that I’d confessed about our elopement, only to have Briggs throw it back in my face, thinking it was a joke.
“Yes,” I answered thickly.
Seconds passed before Briggs released a heavy exhale and pulled out the chair he never used in meetings to sink into it.
“Y’all are married,” Rush stated dully. “Married, married.”
I waited to see if Mallory would respond in any way—cut in and say technically, flinch, panic, something—but she just sat there. Still as stone. Expression worryingly blank after everything we’d finally gotten through just an hour before.
With a fortifying breath, I laid the truth out there for her and the rest of our team. “Not in the way I wish we were.”
Blue eyes shot to mine and widened with a surprise I wouldn’t have expected after our conversation earlier. But it was there all the same. Surprise and a longing that made me want to do this all over again. The right way. Right then.
A bemused sounding scoff bled from Rush. “Since when?”
“Aruba,” Evans mumbled in that rough tone, stunning me.
My head whipped to the side to see Evans sitting back in his chair, lazily playing with his stylus. Before I could ask how he knew, Mallory beat me to it.
“And how would you know that?”
He shifted the stylus in a gesture like he wasn’t sure how we didn’t know. “I was your witness.”
Another stylus smacked into my chest. “Evans?” Thatch demanded, tone dripping with offense. “You had Evans as your witness? You were my best man.”
I held up a hand to placate Thatch because the last thing I would’ve expected was choosing Evans as a witness to a drunken elopement, but Evans said, “To Gray’s credit, I think the only reason they asked was because I was passing by while on Wren Watch.”
A huff forced from my lungs. “And all these months, you never said anything?”
Evans’ brow furrowed irritably as he glanced between Mallory and me. “Well, y’all didn’t exactly look like the happy couple the next morning,” he reminded us. “Then Monroe took off without you, and when you left, Wren went with you.”
Frustration bled from me on a laugh. “That,” I said through a tense smile.
“That has been one of the things keeping Monroe and me apart these past months—y’all being so sure I was with Wren Pearson in Aruba, when I’ve never done anything with her.
” I tossed a hand in Evans’ direction. “She was either trying to make you mad or ditch you, but she wasn’t with me. ”
Evans’ hand stilled for a few seconds before he resumed his lazy movements.
“Regardless. With how things were between y’all when Monroe came back from California, I figured it’d been annulled as fast as it’d happened.
” One of his shoulders moved in a ghost of a shrug. “Didn’t see a point in bringing it up.”
Rush slowly looked at me, surprise coating his expression before he tipped his head back and laughed. But that laughter faded into something exhausted and worried as he dragged a hand over his face and beard.
With a long look at Briggs, silently conveying something, Rush glanced between Mallory and me again before asking, “So, it hasn’t been annulled yet?”
“Ever,” I corrected. “It won’t be annulled ever.”
I watched the corner of Mallory’s mouth twitch before she was able to control it. She could fight that smile all she wanted, the heat slowly creeping into her cheeks gave her away.
But I was so focused on studying her and the light in her eyes, that I didn’t notice the heavy silence filling the room after my declaration until Briggs cut through it.
Clearing his throat, he leaned against the table and started speaking, only to hesitate.
Briggs never hesitated.
He spoke with confidence, never worrying about how his words would be taken, even if they offended every last one of us. So, for him to hesitate over this?
I spared another glance to see Mallory just as tense and stone-faced as before as she waited, but that wasn’t anything new for her. Thatch and Rush’s solemn expressions? Those were new. And they were just as worrying as Briggs’ hesitation.
“I’ve waited for this,” Briggs finally said.
“Not a surprise elopement, but just the two of you together. I’ve also worried about when it would eventually happen.
” Nodding to Mallory and me as he spoke about us, he admitted, “I knew you’d do something to break her heart, and I knew you’d try to kill him. And I knew it’d wreck our team.”
He’d said something eerily similar last week, in this very room, and yet, there was something about his tone and his expression that told me this conversation was about to go very differently.
A pit opened in my stomach as I watched him hold his hands out above the table before letting them fall flat. “Look at our team.”
“That—”
“That’s my fault,” Mallory said over me. “I pulled away and hurt your company because I was trying to protect myself. I take full ownership of that, even if it means losing my position.”
“Don’t,” I cut in before Briggs could respond, one hand outstretched in Mallory’s direction. “Don’t fire her. She was reacting to things I had done and others I’d unintentionally made her think I’d done.”
“Should the rest of us be here for this?” Evans asked on a low rumble.
“Family,” Thatch muttered softly but meaningfully. “We get through things together by walking through them together.”
Briggs dipped his head in confirmation, then drew in a deep breath and focused on Mallory. “We talked.”
“We did,” she confirmed.
“From that conversation, I was sure you would no longer be here in two weeks.”
A muscle in my jaw feathered as I forced myself to remain silent, waiting for her next response.
Not that I was questioning anything she’d confessed to me earlier. But those confessions let me know just how much Mallory Monroe could surprise me. And leaving Shadow? That . . . that would surprise me.
“I was too,” she finally said, and I went still. “But this is my home. Like Thatch just said, this is my family.”
My attention drifted to find her watching me, and I felt my pulse quicken.
Briggs grunted some sort of assent before asking, “And what happens when the two of you are at each other’s throats again? What happens when Gray pushes you to bodily harm, Monroe?”
“That clearly hasn’t changed,” I responded for her as the corner of my mouth slowly lifted into a smirk. “I hope it never does.”
I practically felt Briggs’ hesitation that time before he carefully said, “What happens when y’all decide you can’t do this anymore?”