CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Blade
Three weeks.
That’s how long it’s been since my Thanksgiving mountain retreat with Jett. Three weeks since I watched him drive away without looking back.
It feels like years.
He moved to Shane’s detail, running security drills, bouncing at Lennox’s club, and backing up Creed. I’ve only seen Jett when Rhys called in a favor to clean up a dead body at his apartment. Rhys has gotten himself into a situation with his neighbor. Dude hasn’t been himself.
When Jett walked into the apartment, I pretended not to look. Pretended I didn’t want him.
It’s been three weeks of pure hell.
Stavros moved back in because he had nowhere else to go. And his name is on the lease, so I had no recourse to kick him out. He sleeps sprawled across the couch, leaving traces of his expensive cologne everywhere. He drops hints of how good we were together, how easy it could be again.
Easy. Boring. Safe.
Every time Stavros touches my shoulder, I flinch. It’s not Jett.
Most nights, I work Connor’s torture tunnel, his little kingdom of pain. Even when some idiot who thought he was smarter than us gets taken apart piece by piece on Connor’s marble slab and screams for mercy, I just stand in the shadows and think about Jett and the way he used to look at me.
Like I meant something. Like I wasn’t the waste of space my father told me I was.
We’re in the home stretch of the holidays, and the city glitters with Christmas lights. I walk the streets to avoid going home to Stavros. Laughter spills out of bars, and couples kiss under the ginormous tree at Rockefeller. It all makes me miss Jett even more.
I hike past it all, because I don’t belong with happy people. I had my chance to be happy, and I blew it.
It’s like a sick cycle. When I was a kid, Christmas was just another day that my father passed out on the sofa with empty booze bottles on the cocktail table instead of milk and cookies for Santa.
There were never any presents, no tree, no cocoa.
Just the hum of a refrigerator on its last leg and the whistling of cold wind through the cracks in the windows.
And yet, this could have been the year I had it all. To spend it with a man I love. Instead, I’m spending it with a man I can’t stand. That is the worst kind of punishment. Because I had a choice.
Grateful that Stavros is out drinking with his banker buddies pretending he’s not broke from his bad choices, I lie on my bed, wishing sleep would claim me.
But my phone rings. Seeing it’s Rhys, I pick up immediately. “Yeah, boss?”
“I need you at my building,” he says, low and urgent.
“It’s past midnight.” I swing my feet to the floor. “Do you need backup? Clean up?”
“Bring a measuring tape,” he says.
That gives me my first chuckle in weeks. “You got it.”
When I get to Rhys’s luxury building, I come up short seeing Jett waiting out front, his warm breath puffs white against the cold.
My pulse spikes. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugs, barely looking at me. “Rhys called me.”
“Of course he did,” I mutter.
“He wanted the best. That’s still me,” Jett taunts me.
I spin to face him. “No one ever said you weren’t the best. But you left the enforcer team for a cushy wardroom and fancy townhouse leftovers like a dog.”
Jett’s mouth drops open, and then he laughs. “Is that what you think being a guard for Shane fucking Quinlan is?”
My chest tightens as I backpedal. “No. I’m just tired and fucking cold.”
And I miss you. But I can’t tell him that.
“Then get your ass in the lobby so we can see what kind of mess Rhys got into now.” Jett opens the door for me.
The security guard just waves us to the elevator, we’re here so much.
“He said to meet him on the seventh floor,” I say, using a card to activate the elevator.
“Seventh?” Jett snorts.
I shrug. “I don’t ask questions anymore. He’s in deep with that neighbor.”
The elevator opens, and I jump back.
Rhys Quinlan, lead assassin for the Irish Mob, stands there in a bright red Santa sweater, the kind with felt reindeer antlers stitched to the shoulders. Pupils blown wide, his eyes are wild and hungry with mischief.
He looks like a man who could rip out a throat and then calmly hang an ornament on the victim’s tree.
“Fuck, Rhys...you okay?” Jett asks with the same startled reaction, because seeing our lead assassin looking one stress fracture away from feral isn’t normal.
“I’m great. We’re stealing a Christmas tree,” he says, completely serious.
I blink. “We’re what?”
“He said, we’re stealing a Christmas tree,” Jett clarifies.
“It’s for Fallon,” Rhys mentions his cute neighbor, who he’s been fake-dating.
“Why are we stealing a tree when you can still buy one down the block?” I ask.
He whispers, “No time to explain. Just back me up.”
Rhys slides a key into the lock of a strange apartment. Jett moves in first and disables the alarm with a small handheld device. Rhys motions for me to guard the hallway.
“Shoot anyone who wakes up with this,” he says, tossing me a dart gun.
“You’re kidding?”
He gives me a look that makes my blood run cold. He’s not kidding.
I stand in the living room, lit up with the glow of lighted wreaths in each window, while Rhys and Jett lug an eight-foot-tall, fully decorated live tree out of the living room. The thing is dripping with bows and glass ornaments that casually fall to the floor.
They pass me, and I’m about to follow them when a little boy in dinosaur pajamas is suddenly standing in the hallway, rubbing his eyes. My stomach drops.
“Who are you?” he asks, yawning.
“Hey, buddy,” I whisper, crouching. “It’s okay. I, uh, work for Santa.”
He blinks up at me. “Why are you taking our tree?”
“Santa sent us to borrow it,” I say quickly. “It’s so nice, he wants to use it up at the North Pole. Your dad’ll get you another one by tomorrow afternoon, I promise. Now go back to bed.”
“Okay. Just don’t take the cookies.” He nods solemnly, yawns, and pads back to bed.
I let out a shaky breath, never so relieved not to shoot someone.
We haul the tree up eight flights after measuring the thing and figuring out it’s too tall for the elevator. I’m only partially surprised to see Rhys use a key to get into the apartment next to his on the fifteenth floor. It’s a cute alcove studio that smells like ginger with plants everywhere.
Inside, Rhys moves around like it’s his place, setting the borrowed/stolen tree up in the corner.
“Where’s Fallon?” I ask softly.
“Sleeping in the alcove,” he whispers, cheeks red. “I put a pill in her tea, so she’d sleep deeply, but be quiet.”
Jett and I exchange a look. He’s trying not to smile, but it’s there. A ghost of the grin I remember because we’ve been watching these Quinlan men fall hard and do crazy shit for their women. This one tops the list, though.
Rhys steps back, fixing a bow and adjusting the sequined star at the top. “Aye, this is perfect. You two can go.”
He doesn’t even turn around when we leave. He’s just standing there. The last thing I see is Rhys getting naked and crawling into bed with his neighbor/fake girlfriend.
Back outside on the sidewalk, the hint of pine on our jackets and the warm spice of the holiday season break through car exhaust and steam. It feels downright...Christmasy. Snow has even started to fall, soft and slow. Jett stands beside me, head tilted back to watch it fall.
For a moment, it’s perfect. Like Rhys says. Because it’s just us again. Like we used to be.
Jett glances at me, eyes catching mine. I watch him back, taking in the way he holds himself, and for a heartbeat, it feels like nothing else exists.