She sighed and looked moonily toward Nash, who was bent over the pool table, his spectacular ass on display. “My fiancé is the most amazing man.”
“With the most amazing ass,” I added, admiring the view.
She snickered. “It’s true. If I weren’t me, I’d hate me.”
“How did Lucian feel about…everything?” Naomi asked.
“You’d have to ask him. He got out of county lockup, we fought, and that’s the way it’s been ever since.”
“What the hell did you fight about? He should have been worshipping the ground you walked on,” Lina pointed out.
“You’re not only beautiful, you’re also incredibly astute,” I told her.
“I know,” she said with a wink.
“And you’re stalling,” Naomi pointed out.
“You guys are supposed to be too drunk to follow the story by this point,” I complained.
“We had two drinks each,” Lina said smugly.
“We just wanted you to feel safe opening up,” Naomi added.
“Sucker,” Stef teased.
“You sneaky, conniving, sober—”
“Compliment us later. What did you fight about when Lucian was released?” Lina said.
“He accused me of ruining his life and being selfish and stupid. I accused him of being ungrateful and stubborn. It went downhill from there.”
“Well, you sure as hell didn’t ruin his life. You’re a goddamn hero,” Lina said, tipping her glass in my direction.
“There’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity,” I admitted.
“So he goes all dick mode on you for the rest of your lives?” Stef asked.
“Not to side with the enemy, but I can see it from his perspective. A little. Even though he’s very, very wrong,” Naomi amended when Lina and I whipped around to pin her with twin glares.
“What’s his perspective?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
She shrugged daintily. “He was a seventeen-year-old boy who felt responsible for keeping his mother safe. That’s a heavy burden for a grown adult, let alone a teenager. I’d guess this was an escalating situation that he’d dealt with on his own for a long time, and that kind of long-term trauma can take a toll. He probably saw you and your parents as some kind of idealized version of a family he could never have.”
I snorted. “That’s just stupid.”
“As stupid as deciding to make yourself the target of a raging alcoholic with a history of violence?” Lina pointed out.
“Hey!”
She held up her hands. “Don’t get me wrong. Team Sloane all day every day. But Witty over here paints an empathetic picture.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not teenagers anymore. We’re adults. It’s our job to learn more and do better. But he hasn’t changed. He gets all alpha over some pile of dead rats. You know the drill, ‘You’re not staying here alone’ blah blah blah. Then the next morning, he says he wasted enough of his life with a woman who didn’t care about self-preservation and that he’s not going to do it again.”
“Ouch,” Naomi winced.
“He said what?” Knox sounded pissed off and baffled at the same time.
I hadn’t noticed he and Nash return.
“Fucking idiot,” Nash muttered.
“Where did he go that morning?” Lina asked, her eyes on her fiancé.
“He came to see me,” Nash said evenly.
Knox slapped his brother in the chest. “Did you make him dump her?”
“Ow!” Nash rubbed his pectoral. “Watch the bullet hole.”
“There was no one to dump because we weren’t together,” I said despite the fact that no one seemed to be listening.
“Hotshot, you’ve got some explaining to do,” Lina said.
Nash sighed. “He wanted to know what we’d found about the threats. I told him what we had. Then he wanted to know my theories. So I told him.”
“And what were those theories?” I demanded.
“That either you pissed someone off over late fees or some shit, or maybe the timing meant there was a possibility you were being targeted because of your relationship with Lucian.”
“Once again, I don’t have a relationship with Lucifer. Second, we were sneaking around. No one knew we were not having a relationship. And third, I’m nothing to him. No one would try to manipulate him by threatening me because he literally doesn’t care.”