“Yeah, I get that.” Levi abruptly frowned. “Are those what I think they are?”
Gideon glanced in the direction of Levi’s gaze, down at his left shoulder. Red lines stood out on his skin, scratches from Zoe’s nails. Shit.
“No wonder you slept in,” Levi went on, sounding amused. “Tough night?”
Gideon lifted his head and gazed back at the other man.
There were a number of different ways to play this. He could pretend there was someone else in his bed, some other woman he’d screwed to within an inch of both their lives. Or he could deny all knowledge that he’d been sleeping alone all night.
Or he could tell Levi exactly what had gone on with Zoe.
Almost as soon as the thought occurred to him, he knew what he was going to do. He’d told Zoe everything back there in his room, all the shitty things he’d done, all the black, evil acts he’d committed because he’d been young and stupid and full of rage. And she hadn’t pulled away from him, hadn’t run from the room in horror. No, she’d climbed on top of him, giving him the warmth of her body as if he wasn’t bad all the way through, kissing him as if he deserved it.
He hadn’t lied when he’d told her she was his now, that she couldn’t ask him to tell her everything and expect him to let her go as if none of it meant anything. She’d accepted him, which made her his.
He wasn’t letting her go, not ever. Which meant he needed to tell the others exactly how it was going to be from now on, whether they liked it or approved of it or not.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I guess you could say that.”
“Who’s the lucky girl?” Levi grinned. “Anyone we know?”
Gideon held the other man’s gaze steadily. “Zoe.”
There was a silence.
Levi gave him a puzzled look, his brow creasing. Then it cleared, and he laughed. “Prick. I actually believed you there for a second.”
Gideon said nothing.
The other man’s laugh gradually wound down, the amusement fading, and a slow dawning shock rolled slowly over his handsome face. “You are kidding, aren’t you?”
“No.”
Levi blinked, staring at him, and then, as realization sank in, something else flared in his strange, uneven gaze. Fury. “What the actual fuck, Gideon?”
Gideon pushed his arm away from the doorframe, straightening up. He was prepared for a fight, and shit, Levi had every right to be angry with him. God knew that if it had been Levi who’d been screwing around with Zoe, Gideon would have wanted to kill him. Certainly, he’d have beaten him half to death at least.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t like he’d been quiet about the love lives of his friends either. He’d had opinions, some of which had been unpopular, and he guessed that made him a hypocrite. But it would have been more hypocritical to not say a word, to hide what they were doing like it was some kind of guilty secret. Zoe was his and the whole world needed to know it.
“Zoe and I are together,” he said flatly.
Dark rage flooded over Levi’s face. “You fucking bastard! What the hell do you think you’re—”
“Stop, Levi!” The voice was unexpected and feminine, and before Gideon could react, Zoe was there, putting herself between him and Levi.
She was dressed in nothing but one of his T-shirts, her hair a wild, untamed cloud of black ringlets, and she didn’t have her glasses on either, making her look very small, and very, very young. She threw out a hand at Levi, and the effect was rather like a twig trying to stop two massive boulders from crashing together.
Fuck, she must have come up behind him without making a sound.
Levi’s furious gaze transferred to her, looking her up and down, obviously taking in the fact that she was wearing barely anything.
Possessiveness roared inside Gideon, and he’d looped an arm around her waist, dragging her back against him before he’d fully realized what he was doing. Fucking idiot that he was. Levi was no threat, not to Zoe.
Levi’s expression darkened even further. “Would somebody tell me what the hell is going on here?”
“What it looks like,” Gideon said, holding the other man’s gaze. “Zoe’s mine.”
Her hands had come down on his forearm where it stretched across her stomach, resting there lightly. A soothing kind of touch. Yet he didn’t feel soothed. He felt feral, an echo of the feeling that had filled him last night when she’d disappeared. Like he wanted to do violence to anyone who would take her from him.
“It was me.” Zoe’s voice was clear and steady. “I was the one who initiated it. You know how much I wanted this, Levi. The others know too. Well, it turned out that Gideon wanted it like I did, okay?”
“The fuck he did!” Levi’s hands had curled into fists. “He’s your fucking foster brother! He’s older than you, you’re a virgin—”
“I’m twenty-five,” she interrupted. “I’m not a child. And I’m not a virgin anymore. I can make my own choices.”
“Can you?” Levi’s uneven gaze flicked to Gideon. “Well, I guess that makes it easy when your only choice is him.”
There was something sharp and painful in Levi’s voice that slid through Gideon like a sliver of glass under a fingernail. A truth he didn’t want to think about.
Of course she’s in love with you. You were there right from the start, in her life, dominating it. Levi’s right, she’s never had a choice.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded hotly.
“Think about it, Zoe. How can you be sure when he’s the only fucking man you’ve ever had any contact with?”
“Oh, bullshit,” she said, her voice unexpectedly cold. “Don’t talk to me like I don’t know what I want. Anyway, you’re a fine one to lecture me and Gideon when you’re the one who spent eight years in jail.”
The words hung in the air, sharp with anger, burning with a fierce kind of defiance.
Jesus Christ, she really wasn’t holding back, was she?
Levi’s expression closed up, and Gideon found he was holding her even tighter as her slender body almost vibrated with anger.
“Yeah, you know what?” The look on Levi’s face was like stone. “You’re right. I can’t say a fucking word.” His gaze flicked back to Gideon. “But it’s wrong. It’s just fucking wrong and I won’t be the only one who thinks so.”
There was nothing Gideon could say, so he didn’t say anything, not when part of him knew Levi was right. That it was wrong. That he was a hypocrite. That Zoe had never had any real choice about this.
He still wasn’t letting her go, though.
After Levi had gone and Gideon had shut the door, he turned to find her standing in the hallway with her arms folded, a fierce look on her face. “I know, I shouldn’t have said that. But I . . . just couldn’t help it. It looked like he was going to hit you.”
“Actually, I’m kinda relieved you’re being a brat to someone other than me.” He moved over to her, reached out, and pulled her close. “But . . . maybe you should have let him hit me. It might have made him feel better.”
Her hands came to rest on his chest, her head tilting back. He’d said it to make her smile, but she wasn’t smiling and that fierce look hadn’t softened one bit. “He’s not right, Gideon. You know that, don’t you?”
Damn her. How did she manage to hook into his doubts the way she did? “He is right about one thing. I’ve been in your life since you were six years old. You’ve never had a chance to get to know any other guys apart from me.”
She scowled. “Oh, not you, too. That’s just so much bullshit. I didn’t fall in love with either Zee or Levi, did I?”
Fall in love . . .
He stared down at her, watching the color bloom in her cheeks, a red, rolling wave of it. But there was no doubt, not a flicker of it. In fact, if anything, she looked even more defiant. “Come on, like you didn’t know.”
His chest tightened painfully, that sliver of glass sliding deeper, and he wanted to tell her she shouldn’t sa
y things like that, shouldn’t feel things like that, especially not for him. Because how could she say she loved him? She barely even knew what love was.
You can’t keep her. You can’t.
His hands tightened on her hips, the warmth of her easing the tightness, masking the doubt. “You shouldn’t, little one. You really shouldn’t.”
Her color deepened. “Yeah, well, too late now.”
“I can’t—”
“No, don’t.” Her hands slid up his chest and around her neck, her body arching into his. “We’ve had this conversation. I don’t need you to say anything in return. Just . . . kiss me.”
So he did, ignoring the reservations that sat in his gut, slowly eating away at him from the inside. Carrying her back to the bedroom and losing himself in her for a while longer.
While he still could.
Chapter 15
He knew they’d come eventually and sure enough, he’d just finished receiving some intel from one of his contacts during an afternoon break when Levi, Zee, and Rachel came into the garage. It wasn’t the right time, not when he had Novak to deal with, but maybe the sooner they got this over and done with the better. He needed to tell them about Novak, too, especially when it was going to put at risk the plans they all had worked so hard to get up off the ground.
Zoe was up in the apartment sleeping, hopefully. He’d given her the day off, which was totally him being an indulgent boss, but hey, she’d kind of earned it. It also made him a dirty bastard for even thinking about it in those terms. Then again, that’s exactly what he was. A dirty bastard.
He put his phone in the pocket of his overalls and leaned back against the workbench that ran along the rear wall of the garage, watching as his friends approached, all of them looking as if they wanted to kill him.
Fair enough, too. He would if he were them.
“I guess this is about Zoe,” he said into the tense silence, not making it a question.
Rachel stopped not far away from him and folded her arms. “What do you think?”
“Yeah, well, spare me the lecture. Levi already delivered it this morning.”
Levi had come up next to her, Zee on the other side, the three of them standing there staring at him like a jury staring at an accused murderer.
“Whose decision was it?” Zee asked in his rough, gritty voice. “Jesus Christ, she’s your—”
“You think I don’t know who she is? She’s my—former—foster sister, yeah, I know. And it was her decision.”
“And what?” Rachel was scowling. “You didn’t say no?”
What could he say to that? Only the truth. “No. I didn’t.”
“Perhaps you should have.” Levi thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Fuck, she’s so much younger than you are. She’s looked up to you her entire life. She’s a kid and you know it.”
Gideon stared at him. “Just because the last time you saw her she was a teenager does not make her a kid now. She’s only a year younger than Rachel.”
Levi glowered, unable to refute that particular fact, while Rachel and Zee looked uncomfortable—as well they should.
“Stop underestimating her,” he said, his tone hard. “Yeah, she seems young, but that doesn’t make her an idiot. Or unable to make her own decisions.”
“She’s young because you kept her that way.” There was no denying the accusation in Rachel’s voice. “Whether you meant to or not, that’s the way it’s turned out. She’s an innocent, Gideon. And you, taking advantage—”
“Don’t say it.” Anger twisted inside him, the edges of it all the sharper for knowing, deep down, that she was right. “I didn’t take anything from her that she didn’t want to give.”
“Really?” Her dark eyes were uncomfortably direct. “So if you’d let her go to college like she’d wanted, let her get a job outside of Royal. Let her have some kind of experience of the world, this would still have happened?”
He shifted against the workbench, the edge of it digging into his back, the dark possessive anger twisting away inside him, wanting to tell her she was wrong. That of course it would still have happened. But underneath that, the sliver of glass, the doubt, lay embedded in his soul.
He had stopped her from going to college and from getting a job outside of Royal, but that was because he hadn’t wanted to draw attention to her. To make sure she stayed hidden from Novak.
Are you sure it’s just because of him?
Gideon ignored the thought, folding his arms tightly. “She made those decisions, not me.” Which was only half true. “Anyway, I’ll be fucked if I listen to you giving me shit about this. Zoe knows her own mind, I didn’t force her into anything at all.”
“Right,” Levi said. “So it’s fine to give me shit about Rachel, but we can’t call you out when it comes to Zoe?”
Gideon met his gaze. “Yeah, I gave you shit. But who was it sitting in your fucking apartment telling you to man up and go get her when you thought it was all over?”
Levi’s glower deepened, his jaw tightening. But again, the guy said nothing because he had no comeback to that. Sure, Gideon had given him crap about him and Rachel, but he’d also given him advice when it looked like Levi wasn’t going to pull his head out of his ass and admit he was in love with her.
Another tense silence fell, broken by the clang of the door at the garage entrance opening, then shutting behind Tamara’s slender figure. She looked to be in full-on corporate mode, in a pencil skirt, nice blouse, and heels, her blond hair in a neat bun. “I wondered where everyone was,” she said, coming toward them. “Zee wouldn’t answer his phone. . . .” She trailed off, obviously sensing the tension in the air. “What’s up?”
“Everyone’s pissed Zoe and I got together,” Gideon answered, because he’d be fucked if he let any of the others explain it for him.
Tamara broke into a radiant smile. “Wow, well, that’s awesome.” Then she glanced at the others and her smile faded as she took in the stony looks on their faces. “It’s not awesome?”
“Think about it, baby,” Zee said, wandering over to her and putting an arm around her waist. “Zoe’s kind of sheltered, and Gideon’s her foster brother. He’s way older than her. It’s wrong however you look at it.”
Tamara frowned. “I still don’t get why.”
“Tamara, seriously?” Rachel was staring at her.
But Tamara ignored her, stepping away from Zee and looking at each of them. “No, I don’t get it. Zoe’s a grown woman, she can choose for herself. And as to wrong . . . well, lots of people still think Zee and I are wrong too.”
Gideon hadn’t expected support from any of them, not about this, and Tamara’s words eased a tension he hadn’t known was there. But not the doubt, that was still there. A doubt he didn’t want to acknowledge.
“That’s different,” Zee muttered. “Zoe’s different.”
“How?” Tamara stared at him. “Lots of people told me I didn’t know what I was doing when I got involved with you, that I didn’t know my own mind. Some of them still do. Hell, I’m not much older than Zoe myself.”
Levi murmured something inaudible, and Rachel kept right on scowling, but none of them argued with Tamara.
Of course they didn’t know the truth, the root of the doubt that sat in Gideon’s gut. That yes, he’d made sure Zoe stayed sheltered and safe, and at his side. He’d made sure she didn’t go out on dates or go to college or do anything a normal twenty-something woman would do. He’d kept her right here with him. To protect her.
It wasn’t for her. It was for you. Because she’s yours and you didn’t want to let her go....
“Enough of this shit,” he growled, not wanting to talk about it anymore. “There’s something else about Zoe you all should know.”
“Really?” Rachel gave him a belligerent look. “You sleeping with Zoe is ‘this shit’? And no, I don’t think it’s enough. I think I want to know exactly what the fuck you’re doing with her.”
It took effort
to keep his grip on his temper, but he managed it. “This is more important, Rachel, believe me. It concerns the development plans we have for Royal.”
Another silence fell.
“What about them?” Levi’s tone held a dark edge, which was kind of understandable seeing as how the plans were his baby.
Gideon met his gaze. This was another thing they were going to give him shit about and that was all on him. He’d made the decision to keep Zoe’s parentage secret, and he was okay with that because, quite frankly, it wasn’t anyone else’s business. Certainly the last thing he’d needed was either Zee or Levi going off on Novak and drawing attention. No, he’d made the right decision there at least.
Did you really, though? Or was that another thing you kept secret so no one could interfere?
He shoved the thought away. “Novak’s a problem,” he said shortly. “And the reasons are complicated.”
“How complicated?” Levi took a step toward him, obviously sensing that whatever it was that Gideon had to say, he wasn’t going to like it.
Gideon let out a breath, shifting against the workbench again. “There’s a reason Zoe and me left Chicago, and it had to do with the people I used to work for.”
“Who?” Zee’s question was sharp.
“Just in case you can’t guess, Novak was one of them.”
“Jesus,” Rachel murmured. ‘You used to work for Novak?”
“And not photocopying election pamphlets, right?” Levi said, his gaze narrowing. “Do we want to know what kind of work you’re talking about?”
“No,” Gideon replied shortly. “Though you can probably guess.”
Something shifted in Levi’s expression. “I knew it. Politicians, man. They’re all the fucking same. All into the same shady shit to get as much power as they can.”
Zee gave Gideon a look that was very clearly assessing. “That kind of work, huh?”
Gideon stared steadily back at him. Out of all of them, Zee was the most likely to understand the kind of jobs he’d undertaken, mainly because Zee’s old man used to be one of Detroit’s godfathers of crime. “Yeah, that kind of work,” he said. No point in denying it.
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