33 #2
“I don’t care.” I made the mistake of answering too quickly, and both of them caught it.
“Lila.” Evan stretched my name into an accusation, delighted by evidence I had never intended to provide.
“Evan.” I returned the favor, warning him off before he could turn one careless sentence into a full interrogation.
Blue’s mouth twitched, but instead of rescuing me, she changed weapons. “Evan said that Jade has been telling him that Deacon has been coming by a lot.”
I stared at her. Betrayal apparently came in cardigans now. “You too?”
She lifted one shoulder, entirely comfortable with her role in this ambush. “I’m being supportive, offering up my ear.”
Evan nodded gravely, thrilled to have somebody else doing the meddling for once. “That’s a very polite way of saying meddlesome,”
“Thank you.” Blue accepted the insult like a compliment, which only encouraged him.
“I was insulting you.” Evan sounded almost wounded that she had failed to cooperate.
“I know.” She took another sip of coffee, ending that argument with the kind of calm that usually made Priest obey her too.
I looked between them and surrendered one inch. “He comes to see Jade.”
Evan made a skeptical noise loud enough to qualify as commentary.
“And,” Blue said, letting the word do plenty of work, “he seems to make sure he sees you too.”
I hated that they were right. Worse, they both knew enough to wait.
I folded my arms, refusing to give either of them more than necessary. “He’s persistent.”
“That is one word for it,” Evan said. “Emotionally relentless is another.” His grin suggested he preferred his version.
Blue smiled into her coffee, and I pointed at her. “You’re engaged to Priest. You have lost the right to find any of this entertaining.”
“That feels false.” Blue barely tried to sound apologetic, and Evan immediately chose her side.
“It is false,” Evan agreed. “Her rights are intact. In fact, they’ve expanded.” His nonsense pulled a smile out of me despite myself, but Blue watched it fade almost as soon as it appeared.
“How is it affecting you?” Her question landed without humor, gentle enough that dodging it suddenly felt childish.
I looked down at the table. “He came over yesterday.”
Evan went still in that quick, attentive way he had when the joke stopped being the point.
“He came over to talk, to finally tell me the rest of what he was keeping from me about why he left.” My thumb rubbed the edge of Mason’s application. “He was just telling me when Matty showed up.”
Blue’s face fell because she knew Matty well enough to imagine the collision. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “He came in already angry, already acting like he had the right to charge into my apartment and start demanding things.”
Evan muttered something under his breath that was probably accurate and certainly unkind. I kept going. “Then he saw Jackson there and everything went straight to hell.”
Blue leaned in, her attention fully on me now. “What happened?”
A short, bitter laugh escaped me. “What always happens when the men in my life decide to turn every room into a power struggle?”
That got Evan’s full attention, and I told them the rest. Matty storming in. Jackson refusing to back down. Me standing between two angry men while the argument climbed until Jade walked straight into it.
Blue’s hand flattened against the table, dread already building. Evan’s face lost every trace of humor before I even reached the worst part.
“No.” The word came out almost under his breath. He knew from my face that whatever came next was worse.
Then I told them what Matty had called her.
The silence that followed was ugly. Evan’s outrage arrived first. “I’m sorry,” he said, sitting straighter, “he said what to her?”
I nodded once, jaw tightening all over again. Evan’s mouth fell open. “That man is lucky Deacon only hit him once, because I personally would have folded a metal chair over his back and then demanded applause like I was in a wrestling ring.”
A laugh slipped out despite everything. Blue shook her head. “Evan.”
“No, I’m serious. Talking to my gemstone like that? Absolutely not.”
Under all the glittering nonsense Evan used to make the world entertaining, he loved Jade completely. That hit me harder than the joke.
Blue reached across the table and touched my wrist. “How did Jade take it?”
“She went pale,” I said quietly. “Jackson was across the room almost before I registered he’d moved.
He punched Matty. Hard. That knocked some sense into him, he tried to apologize, but realized it was too little too late.
He left. Then Jackson went straight to Jade and held her.
” The memory of Jade folding against him still tightened my throat. “And she let him.”
Blue’s expression softened, understanding exactly why the embrace mattered more than Matty’s apology. “That matters.”
“It does,” I admitted, because Jade choosing Jackson for comfort had said more than either of them knew how to say aloud.
Evan leaned back with a long breath. “Well. Your brother owes that girl approximately ten thousand apologies and one expensive dessert.”
“At least.” I could think of several additions, but none of them would undo what Jade had heard.
Blue waited until some of the anger had settled before asking, “Before Matty got there, did what Deacon said clear things up between you two?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure, It was pretty bad. I wasn’t expecting to learn what he had to say. It definitely changed my world view on things from back then.”
The truth of that sat heavier than I wanted.
Jackson had told me enough to show the danger he had been in: a club moving women, kids, guns, drugs, and cops helping protect it.
I could understand why a nineteen-year-old boy who thought he had been spotted overhearing that would panic, especially knowing my father was deputy chief.
But the question circling me hadn’t changed. Why hadn’t he gone to Dad? Why hadn’t he trusted the man who had helped raise him to protect me and help clean up whatever Jackson had stumbled into?
Evan watched me for a long moment. “Do you think you could forgive him?”
That was the question I kept avoiding, and Evan knew it.
I stared at the floor plan pinned to the wall without seeing any of it.
“I don’t know,” I said finally. “Some days I think maybe I could understand it. Other days I just want to shake him until every secret falls out of him and then be furious all over again.” I let out a breath, the admission already escaping farther than I intended.
“He keeps looking at me like he’s already decided I’m still his, and part of me wants to slam every door I have left just to prove he doesn’t get to do that. ”
Neither of them spoke, and their silence told me I had said more than I meant to.
I picked Mason’s application back up. “Anyway. Mason Reid. Skilled. Solid. Working together might be a little awkward at first, but professionally, there’s no reason not to hire him.”
Evan made a dissatisfied noise. “You are not escaping that easily.” He looked ready to drag me right back into the subject if Blue gave him half a chance.
“Watch me.” I put Mason’s application on top of the stack like paperwork could build a wall around my personal life.
This time Blue actually shifted the target. She looked at Evan with the same steady concern she had just aimed at me. “How are you?”
He blinked, immediately suspicious of the sudden attention. “Excuse me?” The deflection came fast, but not fast enough to hide the way his shoulders tightened.
“You left family day like the building was on fire,” she said. “And every time we get anywhere near the subject of Ink, you start tap dancing in a way that is not even remotely subtle.”
For once, Evan had no comeback ready. He straightened the edge of an application that didn’t need it. “I’m fine.”
I knew that move. I had watched Jade do versions of it all morning. “No, you aren’t,” I said quietly.
He let out a humorless laugh. “Well. That is invasive.”
Blue’s voice softened. “Evan,” she said. “We love you. We just want to make sure you’re okay.”
He stayed quiet for a beat before looking up. The performance was gone from his face. No sparkle. No exaggerated offense. Just hurt he wasn’t ready to hand over.
“I love you both too,” he said. “And I get it. But I’m not ready to talk about myself.”
We let that sit. Then he looked away and added, “Or the emotionally constipated tattooed biker who only seems to let me into his orbit when it’s convenient for him.”
That hurt worse for how quietly he said it. Blue’s expression sharpened, protective anger replacing concern, while I thought about how all three of us had somehow ended up tangled with men who could bruise us without ever raising a hand.
Evan caught the softness on our faces and pointed at us. “No. Do not get tender with me in this awful trailer. I will walk directly into traffic.”
I glanced toward the construction site outside, grateful he had left me an opening. “There is no traffic,”
“Then I’ll find some.” The speed of the answer sounded more like him, which eased something in me.
Blue’s mouth twitched despite herself. Evan saw it and sighed. “I’m serious. I’m not talking about it yet.”
Blue nodded first, accepting the boundary instead of arguing with it. “Okay.”
I followed. Evan had a line, same as Jade did, same as I did. Push him past it and all we would get was more humor and less truth. He wasn’t ready, and loving him meant letting that be enough for now.