Chapter 13 #2
“Lord, you must have been … fourteen?”
“Just before my mom died?” I ask, and Helena picks up her ice water and takes a few sips as she nods. “But you weren’t at her funeral, were you?”
Finn says, “We had a falling out with your father. Us going would have caused more problems, and the day was about Cara, not us.”
“I regret it,” Helena says quickly. “Not going. Not seeing you again. But your dad was going through a lot and—”
“Let’s focus on the now,” Finn says gently. I look between them, a thousand questions on my mind.
“How did you meet my mom?”
Helena says, “We went to the same ballet class.”
“Once,” Finn interjects. “One class.”
“It was still a class!” Helena insists, and I smile.
“We both hated it, so went for milkshake instead. We were inseparable. She was the first person I told about Finn. I had no idea who he was, but she did. She kept my secret even when her family thought it was her dating him. They tried everything to get her to confess.”
“And a Gallagher dating a McEwan would be bad?”
“Those troublesome McEwans,” Colt says from my left. “Bad men, worse husbands.”
“Vicious lies,” Helena says, chuckling. “Thirty-five years of happy memories proves that.” She throws a smile at Finn, who returns it with equal warmth. “Anyway, your mom kept my secret, so when she told me about Nico, I kept hers.”
Finn stops buttering his bread. “You told me you didn’t know about Nico.”
Helena waves her hand. “Secrets between best friends are binding. Anyway, she met Nico at the pub she worked at. She told him to get out if he knew what was good for him. He asked her if she knew who she was talking to. So, she threw a bucket of ice over him and told him to take his DeLuca attitude somewhere else.”
That sounds like my mom. She was always fiery, ready to challenge my dad when she needed to. Ready to challenge anyone. There are so many things I want to ask Helena now that I’m here. I’d anticipated a tense conversation with Finn, but instead I’m being granted a trip down memory lane.
As Helena tries to convince Finn to split a bottle of wine with her, Colt rests his arm on the back of my chair and lowers his voice. “How are you?”
Flush heats my neck when I remember the way I’d sobbed that night. How I’d screamed and hit at him as he’d held me. “I’m fine. You?”
“Are you? Because you didn’t call me back.”
Colt called, too? I hadn’t noticed. I adjust my cutlery, straightening it. “I’ve been busy.”
“When I stopped by, Lewis said you were taking a break.”
“You came by?” I whisper, my eyes wide. “When?”
“The day after.”
I fidget in my seat. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“I was worried. And that jacket you stole is expensive.”
I tut and elbow him, and he tugs on my ponytail playfully before returning his attention to the menu.
While we wait for the food, Finn says, “We should probably discuss why we’re having this lunch.” I straighten in my seat. “The Capellis are under the impression that their man was taken down by one of ours.”
“But they won’t think that for long?” I guess.
He nods. “We’re working on that, but it’s hard when most of a restaurant saw a redhead shoot him.”
“But surely they don’t even know I’m in New York?”
He smiles. “Everyone knows you’re here.”
Well, that’s unsettling.
Finn continues, “We’ll deal with it and keep you safe, but we also need to discuss Spider.
” My spine stiffens further. “He hasn’t made any direct threats, but he was last spotted just outside the city, and I’m not taking any chances.
While you’re here, I’ll keep an eye on you.
You’re under my protection until you go home. ”
My cheeks warm. “I appreciate that, but I can hire my own men.”
Finn shakes his head. “You’re in my city, which makes you my responsibility.”
Irritation prickles across my skin, but he likely means well, so I wet my lips and keep my voice low, respectful. “With all due respect, the Rosalia isn’t even in your territory.”
“No. It’s in mine,” Colt says.
I look at him. “And I don’t need your men, either.”
Helena chuckles quietly beside me, and Colt looks like he’s fighting a smile, too.
“This isn’t negotiable, Denver,” Finn says, and although he says it gently, it’s the words I focus on. “Why wouldn’t you want to ensure your safety?”
“It isn’t about my safety.”
“Then what is it about?”
“I didn’t leave the control of one man to be placed under the control of another,” I bite back, my temper slithering through my words. Helena flexes her fingers as if she wants to reach for me, but I don’t want pity, especially when it comes to my marriage—or what’s left of it.
Colt says, “Then we’ll go a different route. I can give you the details of a private security firm in the city, one Finn and I trust. Charlie’s a good guy. If you don’t feel it’s a right fit, he can give you other names. How about that?”
It’s pissing me off that he’s being so …
reasonable. Which is childish of me, but I can’t shake the overwhelming urge to still refuse.
But if my safety is in question, I need the extra help.
Lewis can’t protect me against the Italians or Spider, not on his own.
We don’t even have many weapons with us.
I nod. “I can accept that.”
“Good. Now that’s agreed, let’s eat,” Helena says.
Once our meals have arrived, the atmosphere relaxes. Helena tells me endless stories about her and my mom, things that have me choking on my pasta and dying to hear more. She tells me about getting into clubs with fake IDs and how my mom once stole a car.
“She didn’t,” I say, my eyes wide, my dessert spoon paused at my lips.
“She did!” Helena has twisted in her chair to face me, her coffee forgotten. “Your grandfather was a moody fucker, and when he heard she was still dating Nico, he took her car, but she’d already made plans to see Nico, so she stole a car to meet him.”
“Didn’t think about ditching it, though,” Finn says. “She parked it, spent the entire day with us, and when we were heading back to the parking lot, the police were there.”
“What happened?”
“They saw a McEwan and a DeLuca. What do you think happened?” Finn asks, and I laugh. “They arrested us and left the girls alone.”
Colt laughs from beside me, and Helena cackles. “Finn had pissed me off that day, so I wasn’t exactly sad to see him go.”
“I was not flirting with the Tilt-A-Whirl girl,” he insists.
“You don’t need to flirt! You give them the eyes and they know what it means!” she hisses at him.
The afternoon is strangely normal. But despite how much I laugh, and the stories that make my cheeks hurt from smiling, there’s a small, furious voice at the back of my mind that tells me I’m betraying Ranger.
But didn’t he lie? He told me Finn never offered a hand, but Colt said otherwise. Ranger’s pride stood between him and accepting help, not Finn’s heartlessness.
“Is that really the time?” Helena exhales and takes my hand. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Me neither,” I say, and I really mean it. Helena reminds me of my mom, and knowing I have access to my family’s past in some way … it feels wrong to walk away from it.
“Maybe you could come over for lunch someday?” Helena asks hopefully.
I smile, already knowing I can’t. “Maybe.”
As we say goodbye, Finn shakes my hand this time, but he holds onto it and reminds me he’s always close if I need him. As he goes to pay the check and Helena follows, Colt stays with me.
“So. Lunch with the McEwans,” he says. “And you survived.”
I exhale. “I did, didn’t I? Go me.”
He smiles. “I’ll send you the details for the security firm. Please tell me you’ll call them today.”
“I will.”
The restaurant is quiet, the dishes have been collected, and my coffee is half finished in front of me. I run the tip of my finger around the rim of the cup, focusing on it.
“Thank you again for what you did that night. For not leaving me. I know why you did it, but I appreciate it anyway.”
“And why did I do it?” he asks, and I meet his eye. I don’t need to say it—that every good deed he’s done for me gives me more reason to spare his brother. His brows furrow gently. “Denver, I didn’t do what I did for Wilder.”
My laugh is closer to an exhale. “You did, and that’s fine.”
“I didn’t.” His frown deepens. “Not everyone has an agenda.”
That’s hard for me to believe, given that most people in my life do.
Wyatt might have loved me, but there were huge benefits to marrying a Luxe.
Ranger lured me in to make me powerful because he wanted to keep me.
Ethan was giving information to the police.
Lewis is the only person who’s good to me because he wants to be, but I’m paying him, so who fucking knows?
At least Wesson loves me unconditionally. God, I miss that dog.
I focus on Colt’s strong forearms, and his tattoos, the dark, beautiful ink, skeletal fingers grasping at silk, skulls’ mouths hanging open in endless silent screams. When he changed his shirt in the car that night, I noticed he had more tattoos across his back, but I was pressing myself so hard into the door to put distance between us that I didn’t look at them thoroughly. Now, I wish I had.
“So you did it to be kind?” I ask, lifting my gaze to his.
His smile feels genuine. “Is that so hard to believe? That someone would want to be kind to you?”
“Yes.”
His smile fades. “Then Ranger is wrong. It isn’t you that’s not enough.” I inadvertently take a sharp breath in, blush blasting across my cheeks that he remembered me saying that. “It’s him.”
Intimate words from a man that barely knows me. I want to remind him of that—that we’re strangers who shared one night of … nothing. But the words sit on my tongue, they take root there, and refuse to go further, as if pointing out our divide would be cruel given what he did for me.
My phone lights up on the table. A text from “My Husband.”
“I should take this,” I say, standing.