Chapter 7 Brother’s Best
Friend
Delilah
"No," he says. "They're not."
And I believe him.
That's the part that should scare me. I've known Bishop Morgan for approximately thirty-six hours and I believe him the way I believe gravity not because I've tested it but because something in my body already knows.
I set my mug on the counter.
"There's something I should have told you yesterday," I say.
Bishop is still looking at the door. Still in that braced, watchful posture that hasn't fully left him since the deputy drove away. He turns his head just enough to look at me.
"Cole isn't just your brother to me," I say. "He's my best friend. Has been for four years."
The stillness that comes over Bishop is different from his usual kind.
His usual stillness is controlled. Deliberate. The kind a man builds on purpose when he's learned that reactions cost you. This is something else. This is the stillness of a person who just recalculated everything and doesn't like where the numbers landed.
He turns to face me fully.
"Say that again."
"Cole Morgan is my best friend." I keep my voice steady. "We met at a work event four years ago. He's been my person ever since. He's the one I call when something goes wrong. He's the one who sat with me at the hospital when my dad had a health scare didn't leave until I told him to." I pause. "He's the one whose name I almost called instead of yours last night."
Bishop looks at me like I just handed him something he doesn't know how to put down.
"You're his"
"Best friend. Yes."
A muscle works in his jaw.
He turns away. Moves to the kitchen window. Stands there with his back to me, one hand braced on the counter, and looks out at the lake like it owes him an answer.
I wait.
The marina is fully awake outside. The creak of the dock, an engine turning over somewhere, a radio carrying faint across the water. Normal morning sounds that have nothing to do with what is happening in this kitchen.
"Why didn't you tell me yesterday?" His voice is flat. Careful.
"Because yesterday I needed you to help me first and explain myself second." I cross my arms. "If I'd led with Cole's best friend you might have called him before I got through the door."
"I should have called him the second you showed up."
"But you didn't."
He turns around at that. His eyes are different now. Harder. Like he's putting walls up in real time and I can watch every brick going into place.
I've seen people shut down before. Graham did it with cold politeness a smile that didn't reach his eyes, a subject change so smooth you almost missed the door closing. Bishop doesn't bother with smooth. He just goes quiet in a way that takes up more space than noise would.
It's more honest than Graham ever was.
That doesn't make it easier to stand in front of.
"These changes things," he says.
"Does it?"
"Delilah."
"I'm serious." I take a step toward him. Not aggressive. Just not backing up. "How does it change things? I'm still the same person who showed up here last night. You're still the same person who pulled me out of that crowd and took glass out of my foot and told a county deputy you hadn't seen me."
"You're Cole's best friend." He says it like I don't understand the words. "You're the person he calls when he can't sleep. The person he talks about like" He stops.
"Like what?"
He shakes his head. Looks at the ceiling for a beat. Then back at me.
The look on his face does something I don't know how to name. It's not anger. It's not even frustration exactly.
It's the expression of a man who has been carefully maintaining a perimeter and just realized the thing he was keeping out was already inside.
"He trusts me with a lot of things," I say quietly. "He trusts me with you, actually. The worry he carries. The way he talks about wanting his brother back." I hold his gaze. "He loves you. Even when he's angry. Even when you don't pick up."
Something moves through Bishop's expression. Fast. Painful.
Gone before I can name it.
"That's not the point," he says.
"Then what is?"
"The point is that you're off limits."
The words come out rough. Stripped down. Like he pulled everything unnecessary off them before he let them out. "The point is that you were already off limits the engagement, the life you were living but this." He gestures between us. Nothing has happened between us. Not technically. Not yet. And still the gesture lands like a door being locked from the outside. "This is a line I don't get to cross."
I look at him.
At the tension across his shoulders. The white of his knuckles where his hand grips the counter. The careful distance he's re-establishing between us like if he gets the geometry exactly right, he can undo last night. The water glass in the hallway. The half-open door. The thin walls.
He can't undo it. We both know that.
What I don't know is whether he wants to.
"I didn't come here to seduce you," I say.
He makes a sound that isn't quite a laugh. Low. Humorless.
"I mean it." I hold my ground. "I came here because you're the only person I could think of who wouldn't trade me back for favor. Who wouldn't call Graham or my parents or try to manage the situation back into something neat and acceptable." I meet his eyes. "Cole would have tried to fix it. You just handled it. No questions, no conditions, no agenda."
"I had an agenda."
"Keeping me safe isn't an agenda. It's a reflex." I tilt my head. "There's a difference."
He looks at me for a long moment.
Long enough that I feel it move across my skin. Long enough that whatever wall he's been building has to work harder to hold its shape. I watch him choose not between wanting and not wanting, I don't think that's actually the choice but between what he wants and what he's decided he's allowed to have.
He chooses wrong. I already know he's going to.
Cole talked about him for four years. I know the shape of this.
Men like Bishop Morgan always choose the version of the story where they're the thing someone else needs protection from.
"I know you didn't come here for that," he says finally. Quieter. "I know that."
"Good."
"It doesn't change what I said."
"Which part?"
"The off-limits part."
I study him. The set of his jaw. The way he's not quite meeting my eyes anymore, like direct contact is a variable he's trying to eliminate from the equation before it changes the outcome.
He's not wrong. That's the maddening thing. He's not wrong and we both know it and the air in this kitchen is still thick with everything we're agreeing not to do anything about.
"Okay," I say.
He blinks. Like he expected more resistance.
"Okay," I say again. Steady. "Off limits. Noted." I pick up my mug. "Does that change whether I can stay here until I figure out my next move?"
A beat.
Two.
"No," he says. "That doesn't change."
"Then we're fine."
He doesn't look fine. He looks like a man who just shook hands on a deal he already knows he's going to lose. But he nods, once, and I take it because it's what he has right now and pushing harder won't get me anywhere he isn't ready to go.
I move back to the table. Sit. Wrap both hands around my mug and look out at the lake and let the quiet settle between us like something that belongs here.
I think about Cole.
About the way he'd look if he could see this kitchen right now. His best friend in his brother's shirt at his brother's kitchen table while his brother stands at the window with his jaw locked and his knuckles white and the particular expression of a man fighting something he's already losing.
Cole would lose his mind.
Cole would also, eventually, understand. He knows his brother. He knows me. He knows that whatever this is it isn't simple and it isn't nothing and it didn't start last night.
Bishop's phone buzzes on the counter.
He looks down at it. Something shifts in his posture. Just slightly. A tightening around his eyes, a stillness that's different from all his other kinds of stillness.
He picks it up.
Turns the screen so I can see it.
A text from Cole.
Have you seen Delilah? I'm losing my mind.
I stare at it.
Seven words. And every single one of them lands like a stone dropping through still water, the ripples spreading out until they reach the edges of everything.