Chapter 25
Lennon
Indigo pulled Sheila into the private parking area of The Goldfinch, refusing to allow the valet driver to park her.
She looked good—no, more than good. Indigo looked genuinely happy.
And I don’t just mean the freshly fucked kind of happy, though that was definitely a part of it.
She just looked…like she was thriving for the very first time in her life.
She glowed. The clothes I’d ordered for Indi looked amazing on her now that she’d put on some weight and was no longer malnourished.
I knew she was embarrassed about accepting handouts when she first arrived, so I told her a teensy little white lie that made it easier for Indi to accept my additions to her wardrobe.
She thought that sent me incorrect sizes, when, in reality, I was her secret shopper and overall fashion fairy godmother.
Her amazing indigo hair was piled up on top of her head.
I’d refreshed her color earlier in the day shortly after the guys left.
Two space buns were wound on top of her head with wispy tendrils framing her face.
Indigo pushed her heart-shaped sunglasses up her nose and took a noisy slurp of her strawberry shortcake milkshake.
She’d spent the afternoon dissecting her time with Priest, and I’d done my best not to gag or heave when she told me about their intimate activities.
As her bestie, I was thrilled she was getting the good D, but as Priest’s quasi-sibling and Ellis’s best friend, I was nauseated at the idea of him in any sexual capacity.
I sipped my chocolate-banana milkshake and pondered what Ellis would have thought about her brother being in a relationship with Indigo.
I think she would have liked Indi. They both were fierce, hardheaded, and vivacious.
Ellis wasn’t as savage as Indigo, but then again, she hadn’t needed to be.
Until she did. I’d probably never stop mourning my friend, but meeting Indigo had reminded me that there was more to life than what we were born into.
Before we lost Ellis, I had dreams. We’d talked about opening a spa together one day.
I’d handle the beauty treatments and the books, while Ellis became a licensed masseuse and handled our aesthetic and social media presence.
The plans we made went up in smoke the day she died, and the haze of grief that surrounded me for the following two years left me feeling lost.
I didn’t feel lost anymore.
I knew what I wanted, I just knew I wasn’t going to get it.
I wanted to open my dream business with my friend.
I wanted the man I’d been in love with since I was a teenager to love me back the way I needed to be loved.
I wanted my mother to be there on my wedding day, helping me get ready and giving me advice on how to keep my husband in line.
And…I couldn’t have any of it. That reality had dropped into my stomach like a stone the morning after my attack, when I woke up to an empty room.
The side of the bed Bones had slept on was already cold.
He’d been gone a while. Bones left without saying goodbye, like I hadn’t mattered at all. I was alone. Again.
I promised myself right then that I’d stop pining and wasting my time on a man who was never going to choose me.
I’d tried, for such a long time, to convince Bones that this thing between us was worth the risk.
He kept insisting that it wasn’t safe for me to love him, when he was really just protecting himself.
Bones couldn’t bear losing control, and when you loved someone…
really loved them, you lost all control over what happened to your heart.
Bones wasn’t protecting me. He was protecting himself and sacrificing my heart to do it.
Well, I was done. I was done waiting for someone to think I was worth the risk to fall in love with.
Now, I just needed to figure out what that meant for me and where I went from here.
“You finished?” Indi said with a smack of her lips, pulling me from my thoughts. I pulled one last sip from my cup.
“Yep, let’s go see how the other half hangs out when they aren’t doing gangster things.
Maybe we can hit up Allure later?” We climbed out of Sheila and locked her doors.
Indigo and I walked arm in arm into The Goldfinch and were met by Riordan’s personal assistant.
It only took me a moment to realize who she reminded me of as I eyed her deep burgundy blouse tucked into a sleek charcoal-gray pencil skirt that ended mid-calf.
The heel on her shiny black high-heeled Mary Janes clicked on the marble floor of the foyer.
The sound triggered my memory, and I realized that Astrid reminded me of Christina Hendricks when she played the fierce and ambitious Joan in TV’s Mad Men.
“Welcome back to The Goldfinch, Indigo, Ms. Campbell,” she said as we approached the private elevator.
Indigo and I both said hello, her with a hug and me with a polite wave. “And please,” I add, “call me Lennon.”
“The pakhan is currently in a meeting, but Mr. Petrov and Mr. Fedorov are waiting for you upstairs. Follow me, ladies.” Indi and I followed Astrid, and I disarmed when asked at the door to the penthouse.
Astrid and the guards knew better now than to demand Indigo also lose her weapons.
She might not have a gun on her at the moment, but I knew for a fact she had at least two blades hidden in her boots, a taser on her keychain, and a rock in her pocket that she said “looked cool” when she found it in the driveway back home.
I didn’t know what she could really use it for other than a projectile, but knowing my bestie, she’d find a way to turn it into the world’s most randomly lethal object.
To be completely fair, the rock was flat and roughly the shape of Snoopy the dog’s head, so… I guess that was kind of cool?