Chapter 20
TWENTY
Conrad
Tav was a disgusting eater. As he bit into his burger, chunks of lettuce and tomato spilled out the other end into a sloppy, ketchup-y pile on his plate.
Juice dripped down his hand, and his tongue snaked out to lap it up from the base of his thumb before he grabbed the escaped tomato off his plate with pinched fingers.
He tossed his head back and dropped it on his tongue, chewing it along with the food already in his mouth.
He’d managed to get mayonnaise on his chin, and a tomato seed on his cheek.
And I enjoyed every minute of his culinary pleasure. I couldn’t believe how Tav managed to make me like this, fucking lovesick over a man who ate like a Neanderthal. There was something about seeing him so pleased and taken care of and utterly besotted by a good meal that soothed my soul.
“Tav.”
He glanced up, his mouth open. “Wha—?”
I handed him a napkin. “You have…” I waved a hand at my face. “Like all over.”
He grinned at me, lettuce in his teeth. I swooned.
Earlier, after driving both of us a little crazy before putting a moratorium on orgasms for both of us—I believed in fairness—Tav took a nap on the couch rather than go to the gym, mainly because Sam had greatly frowned upon exercise.
As soon as he’d woken up, he’d asked for my phone to check on his sister and nephew.
After reading minute by minute reports of their day, he’d been in a great mood, and that meant I was in a good mood too.
He’d made us burgers, and I had to admit they were very good.
He’d only burned a few, and luckily I had plenty of meat as backup.
When I’d mentioned that to him, he’d laughed long and loud.
And then made jokes about my plentiful meat.
“So is this a cheat meal?”
He gulped his water. “I guess so. Cheat meals for me were less about the calories and more about the cost of the food.” He ran his fingers over the condensation on his glass. “Protein’s expensive.”
“I’ll fill this whole apartment with protein for you. I want you to eat.”
“I’ve already eaten more today than I usually do. Even before…” he poked at his plate. “Even before, my coach had me on a strict diet. Training program. Curfews and shit like that.”
My heart lurched, and I reached for his hand. “I don’t want to control you that way. Only for now, while your safety and your sister’s are at risk.”
He blinked at me and smiled. “Yeah, I know that now. Even if you show it in weird ways sometimes.”
“Relationships are new to me too.” I was winging it as much as him, but I didn’t want him to know just how shaky our foundation was. I’d build it brick by brick until it could withstand anything.
“You talk now,” he said as he reached for another burger. That would be his third.
I spun my wine glass. “About what?”
“I told you what I was like as a kid. What about you?”
He squeezed an ungodly amount of ketchup onto his burger, slapped the top back on, and crammed half of it in his mouth. After only a few chews and a big gulp—he didn’t masticate nearly enough—he said, “Were you always ordering people around?”
“I don’t order people around. I delegate.”
He raised an eyebrow.
I sighed. “Like you, my mother was a drug addict, but she didn’t overdose.
She just… existed in my trailer kind of like a blonde, glazed-eye ghost. I couldn’t control her, and she couldn’t control me, but I could control myself, so I was particular about what little I had.
I liked my room neat, and I chose my friends—Ben and Devlin. ”
Tav chewed the rest of his burger and swallowed before gulping down nearly a third of his water. He leaned back, resting his arms on his stomach, which had sufficiently bulged since he just inhaled three burgers. I found it adorable, and that was ludicrous.
“And crime was just something we did in our shithole town.” Ben’s home life had been a lot like mine, but Devlin’s father had been a violent bastard.
I was glad he was dead. “The only thing I could control was how good we were at it. And we were good. We didn’t get caught. Sometimes I think—” I clenched my jaw.
“You think what?” Tav gave me his full attention.
“That I taught Devlin too much.”
To my surprise, Tav barked out a laugh. “Come on, Con. You were that good of a teen delinquent that you spawned the Detroit Devil himself?”
I smiled at that and shook my head. “You sound like Nik. Maybe I am a narcissist, and I think everything’s about me.”
He reached for the hand holding my wineglass and wrapped his fingers around it. “I don’t think that, but I do think you’re not giving Devlin enough credit.”
“Suddenly you’re a therapist?” I had meant for it to be a quip, a barb. But my voice came out shaky with zero heat.
All Tav did was smile. “Maybe I’ve learned a lot from you in the last few days.
” He scratched at his stomach like a middled-aged dad with a beer belly, and I once again found myself attracted to this.
What’s wrong with me? But I knew the answer.
Tav. Tav was what was wrong with me. Everything he did was perfect.
He could probably pull his toenails off with his teeth, and I’d still worship him.
I picked up our plates and carried them to the sink to rinse them before loading them in the dishwasher.
Tav followed me and pulled himself up to sit on the counter beside the sink.
If literally anyone else sat on my counters, I would knock their teeth out.
But Tav just sat there swinging his legs, and it reminded me so much of his nephew that my heart ached.
“I’m impressed you came from that to this, Con,” he said, pulling a leg up so one bare heel resting on my counter. A bare foot. On my kitchen counter. And all I could think about was how great he looked with his head leaned back on my upper cabinets.
“Don’t make me into some self-made success story,” I said. “I was a criminal well into my twenties, and I did not commit victim-less crimes. Mostly financial ones, but still. Crimes.” I shut my dishwasher and leaned a hip against it. “Okay?”
“Okay.” He studied me. “Is that why you made Soto? To help your guilt over those crimes? Is it only about Devlin?”
I wrinkled my nose. “No who’s poking around in whose head?”
His expression didn’t change. “Tell me.”
“No,” I answered honestly. “I don’t care that I stole from billionaire’s hedge funds.
I don’t care that I extorted shitty men who did shitty things.
That’s how I got to be CEO Conrad Stafford.
But the robberies I made as a teen? The ones where I held up a gun to some single mom who was just working the overnight shift at a Speedway to make extra money? Yeah, that weighs on my soul.”
I stepped in front of him, and he ran his hand up my chest and around to the back of my head.
He tugged there, until I was forced to lean into him, my face in his neck.
I closed my eyes, fighting back the memories of my desperate teenage self, the scared look in Ben’s eyes, and Devlin’s unhinged glee.
I hadn’t seen the warning signs in Devlin until it had been too late.
Tav’s other arm came around my back, and there was the hug again, so warm and strong that I sank into it with all my weight. Tav smelled like burgers and the leather of my couch where he’d fallen asleep on his stomach, face smashed into the pillow. I had checked to make sure he wasn’t suffocating.
His hand drifted up and down my back. “Is that what you see in me? A way to make up for what you did?”
I lifted my head only so that I could touch our foreheads together. “No.”
“No?”
“I wanted you before I knew any of this about you, Tav. I just wanted you.” My hands clutched at his waist, and I let my fingers play up over his ribs.
“I wanted the way you come alive under my hands. The way you let yourself be vulnerable with me. Your dimples. Your eggs in the morning. I wanted it all, and every hour I spend with you, it just gets better. I just watched you eat three burgers with the manners of a toddler, and all it did was make me want to kiss you. So yeah, this has nothing to do with cleansing my soul, but everything to do with desiring you so badly that it makes me insane.”
His hand on my neck drifted up into my hair, and then he yanked my head back. His eyes narrowed. “Manners of a toddler?”
“Tav, you have ketchup on your earlobe.”
He shoved me away with a laugh that boomed through my apartment, and I swore my heart levitated at the sound.
“It’s all set,” Nik’s gravelly voice said over the line. I heard a door shut in the background, followed by the sound of a car ignition starting. “Anything else?”
I exhaled slowly, feeling some of the pressure ease in my chest. “No, go home. You’ve done more than enough the last few days.”
“I’m going to make a few more rounds and check on the crew.”
“Nik—”
“He’s there?”
While I stood in my office, Tav was laid out on the couch watching some reality TV cooking show. He said he liked the competition ones, and I noticed he always rooted for the underdog.
“Yeah?”
“Did you hide the knives?”
“Oh fuck off.” I could hear the smile in my voice, so I’m sure he did too. “Maybe come by tomorrow. Meet him properly without a western showdown.”
I could hear his turn signal in the background. A few horns from the traffic. “I’d like that.”
“Text first.”
“I learned my lesson.”
The call disconnected, and I stared at my phone for a while. After checking the reports on Tav’s sister and nephew and ensuring all was okay, I went out to join Tav.
He sat on the couch, volume low on the TV, starting at his phone on the coffee table.
His hands were clasped in his lap, and he jiggled his one thigh.
When he glanced at me, I could see his nerves were back.
We were approaching ten p.m. Chen check-in.
But thanks to Nik and my crew, I had a few things to go over first.