Two
Saylor
Pretending to read a book while lying out beside the pool seemed like something someone who was emotionally stable would do. It was a normal activity on a late Saturday morning. Dodging my mother and her inquiries about my not going to the wedding of Bane Cash and the baby momma of my dead boyfriend had been my main goal. Thankfully, I’d been asleep when they arrived home last night, and I hadn’t been forced to endure a lecture about moving on.
I had moved on. I wasn’t in mourning. It was my choice to decide who I did and did not let into my life. I chose not to let Bane, his wife, and her child into my world. There was nothing wrong with it.
“You don’t read.”
Gathe Bowen’s voice didn’t surprise me. I’d expected to see him this morning. He was later than I’d thought he’d be.
He had texted me ten times last night, and when I finally responded with, You’re driving me nuts. Stop, or I will block you , he’d stopped.
Gathe meant well. Truth was, he worried about me more than anyone else in my life. I hadn’t asked him to choose me over being with the other guys, but he had. Where Crosby Cash was the boy I had been in love with all my life, Gathe was my very best friend. When I needed to vent or talk, it was Gathe I went to, not Crosby. He just got me. Everyone thought he had a thing for me. I thought even Crosby had assumed that was the case. But it wasn’t. We had never had any romantic feelings toward each other.
“I went to the wedding, and now, you’re gonna pretend to read and ignore me?” Gathe asked, sitting down on the edge of the lounger I was stretched out on.
I lifted my eyes to meet his. “No. I don’t care that you went. And I am reading.”
He rolled his eyes. “Saylor, you can bullshit your parents, but I know better. That is a prop.”
He was right, of course, but it annoyed me that he was calling me out on it. I closed it, not caring to mark the page since I had reread the first one at least five times already.
“What can I do for you today?” I asked him sarcastically.
He chuckled and ran his hand through the wild blond surfer boy hair that fell over his forehead. “You can’t stay pissed at me forever. Bane is my friend.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and lifted an eyebrow. “My condolences.”
I really didn’t like Bane Cash. I never had.
Gathe grabbed my knee and squeezed it. “Come on. Ease up on him. We all want you back around. I miss you when we are at their house. Something is always missing.”
Bane Cash did not want me around. He was full of shit. I was one hundred percent positive that he didn’t want to subject his wife—how weird did that sound?—to my presence, for fear that reminding her she had once been the other woman would upset her.
“Bane and Halo are on their honeymoon. We are all getting together at the house tonight. Come with me.”
I did not want to go to the house that Crosby had once lived in. He had lived there with Bane, Than Carver, and his older brother, Ransom, along with Oz and Forge Savelle. Now, Bane still lived there with his wife, and they’d turned Crosby’s bedroom into a nursery for their son. I absolutely didn’t want to see that either. Even if they weren’t there right now.
“I like your house better. Why do they always want to go to that one?” I replied.
Gathe gave me a pointed look. “Saylor, seriously? We both know their house is better. It’s just me and Locke at our house. We don’t have the massive place they do, and our pool is inferior.”
Gathe and his brother, Locke, had moved into their grandfather’s house on their family property after he passed away. The rest of the guys had all moved into the mansion the Cash money had bought. When I say the rest, I mean the other sons in the family—aka the Mississippi branch of the Southern Mafia. They were like wolf packs. Always together. Working together. Killing together. It was a part of my life, and I hadn’t felt left out—being not only one of three girls in the family, but also the youngest—because of Crosby, Gathe, and even Than. He had been Crosby’s best friend, but we had formed our own little pack.
That was no longer.
Everything had changed.
My sister was off in Louisiana, living her best married life to a member of the Louisiana branch of the Southern Mafia.
Opal—Than and Ransom Carver’s sister—had attended an all-girl boarding school in Washington DC, then done some internship with a congressman. After that, in college, she’d focused on whatever it was that helped you in politics. She was very hard to relate to or even talk to when she was home for a visit. We had nothing in common other than our families.
Gathe sighed and moved to sit beside me with his legs outstretched almost touching mine, crossing them at the ankles and placing his hands behind his head. “Stay silent then. I’ll just sit here and annoy you.”
I shot him a scowl. He would do exactly that too. Gathe was the best and worst friend at times. I didn’t know what I would have done without him after Crosby’s death, but things were so different now. He knew it, and I knew it, but he kept acting like it was the same. I wanted him to be with the other guys. He enjoyed his life, and I’d kept him from so much of it for months. It was time I found my own way. A life for me. What that was, I had no idea.
“I have plans tonight,” I blurted, surprising myself.
I hadn’t been sure if I was going to go back to the Catholic church, but it seemed that I was. Not just because the priest was hot either. But he was. Very, very hot. It was probably a sin to have naughty thoughts about a priest. I didn’t know the rules and all with religion. That didn’t change the fact that the man was gorgeous though.
“You do?” The shock in his tone was insulting but understood.
When was the last time I’d had plans without him? I couldn’t even remember.
“Yep,” I replied, hoping he didn’t pry, but knowing he was going to.
“Do these plans include leaving the house? Because if not—if you’re going to sit at home and binge-watch some show you’ve seen already and eat an entire bag of Takis—then that doesn’t count.”
He normally sat with me when I binge-watched shows and talked about me eating the taste buds off my tongue with the hot chips I loved.
I shook my head. “Nope. Not doing that. I am leaving the house.”
He dropped his hands and turned to me, looking intrigued now that he knew I had somewhere to be that was without him. “Okay, so what is it?”
We both knew I had no other friends. When you grew up inside the family, with built-in friends, why look elsewhere? I had that answer now though. Because you grew up and things changed. Shit happened.
“I’m going to a meeting, gathering, whatever kinda thing it is where others who have dealt with loss are there and we talk,” I told him since lying about it was pointless.
They could track me. All of them. Any woman in the family had a tracker on her at all times. More than one, in fact. A phone could be taken from you, and that wasn’t enough security.
“So, this is with a therapist?” he asked me.
I shook my head. Father Jude was definitely not a therapist. “No. It’s kinda like AA for those who have lost someone. I know I have more than that to deal with, but I thought it might be helpful.”
He was quiet for a moment. I knew he was being careful with his response.
“Do you, uh, want me to go with you?”
No, I did not. He’d get one look at the priest and know exactly why I was there. The last thing I needed was for him to go telling my father that I was lusting after a man of the cloth. That would go over just great.
“I need to do this on my own. But thank you. I’m ready to heal, move on, find my new path in life, and I can’t keep leaning on you. Or anyone.”
Gathe blew out a breath. “All right. Yeah, I get that. I mean, I’m glad you are there. But I don’t want you to feel like you’re alone in this.”
But I was. It was my life. Not his. I was alone in it, and I had to handle it that way.
“Thanks. I know you’re always there. I just want to do it myself.”
He nodded with a solemn look on his face. I knew he was thinking if he should argue with me or not. He had dropped everything for me these past ten months. I loved him for it, but it was time I closed that door. Set him free.
“If you get there and they’re weirdos or some shit, call me. I’ll come after you.”
I laughed. “I’ll have my car.”
His brows drew together. “You’re driving alone? Why not have someone drive you?”
My father had several men he used as drivers and protection, which he needed since he had been the head of the Mississippi branch before his Parkinson’s got too bad.
“I’ll be fine. Where I am going is safe.”
“Where is it?”
“Holy Rosary,” I replied since he could check for himself tonight easily enough on his phone.
“What the fuck is that?”
I laughed. “The Catholic church in town. The one across the street from Vapiano,” I told him.
Vapiano was our favorite Italian restaurant.
“You’re going to a Catholic church? Don’t they have Mass on Saturday nights? Won’t they try to pray for you or something?”
“It’s just a meeting. Open to the public. Not a Mass.”
He looked at me with uncertainty, then shrugged. “All right. If that is what you think will help.”
It wasn’t. Not really. But seeing as how I was twenty-one years old with no friends outside this bubble I lived in and I wasn’t in college, where else was I going to interact with other people? I had considered going to college. Maybe moving somewhere else. But the fact was, I hated school. The thought of having to sit in classes again made me want to run and hide.
“It won’t hurt to go give it a try,” I told him.
He smirked. “Yeah, well, when they bore you to death, come over to the house. Everyone wants to see you.”
That would not be happening. Even if I hated this meeting and left minutes after arriving, I’d just binge a show and try something else tomorrow.