Still, trying to look at the big picture, I told myself that anything was better than them leaving. So I braced myself and said, "Sure. I'd, uh, love a good story." Trying not to throw up, I added, "I just, uh, hope it's a good, long one."
A long one?
Heaven help me.
Next to Steve, Anthony muttered, "What the hell?"
As for Steve, he gave me a smile that was pure evil. "Lemme tell you about mom and Bob."
Caught off guard, I shook my head. "Bob?"
"Yeah," Steve said. "The appliance guy." His smile widened. "You know that counter by mom's fridge? Well, I wouldn't be making your sandwiches there, if you know what I mean."
Oh.
Sadly, I did know what he meant, and not because of anything he'd told me. "Oh, my God," I said. "She told you?"
Steve and Anthony shared a look. After a long moment, Anthony said, "She told you?"
I shuddered. "Unfortunately."
"Shit," Steve muttered. "The way it sounds, she told everyone."
From somewhere behind him, a familiar male voice said, "Hey, she didn't tell me."
Chapter 33
I looked toward the sound and spotted Jake, standing in the now-open door to the stairwell.
Thank God.
I breathed a sigh of relief. "You're back."
He moved forward, and the door swung shut behind him. He bypassed Steve and Anthony to join me near the open penthouse doors. He wrapped an arm around my waist and turned to face my brothers. "You coming or going?" he asked.
Steve's gaze drifted to the nearby elevator, and then to the stairwell door. After a long, silent moment, he turned his gaze back to me. From the look on his face, it was obvious what he was thinking. There was no way out of here – or at least, no way that he was eager to take.
I glanced at Anthony. Unfortunately, he had the same look.
Trying to smooth things over, I gave my brothers a tentative smile. "About the stair thing, I might've been exaggerating just a little."
Neither one of them smiled back.
I gave Jake a sideways glance. Talk about awkward. Did he realize what we were talking about? It was hard to tell, and thankfully, he didn't ask.
I looked back to my brothers. They were eying the closed stairwell door with grim resignation.
By now, I was starting to feel almost guilty. "If you want to stay," I offered, "we can order more pizza."
"Screw that," Steve said. "I'm just hoping to keep the last pizza down." He looked to Anthony and said, "Twenty freaking flights."
"Yeah," Anthony said as he began trudging toward the stairwell door. "Man, this sucks."
I bit my lip. Probably, I should've retracted the elevator story instead. If nothing else, it would've saved them a walk down the stairs.
But there were two things that stopped me, even now. One – it would've been an outright lie, which would've boosted the odds of my brothers not believing me. And two – if I'd even hinted at anything to do with that elevator, Jake would almost certainly know exactly what we'd been talking about.
Did I really want him to know that I'd gone blabbing about our sex life to my brothers? No. Definitely not, even if it had been for a good cause.
And then, there was the more serious problem. If my brothers were still heading out for trouble, I needed to stop them.
I turned to Jake and said, "I'll be right back." I left his side and followed my brothers into the stairwell. When the door shut behind us, I lowered my voice to ask, "Hey, where are you guys going anyway?"
"Down," Steve said, not looking too happy about it.
I gave him an exasperated look. "Well, obviously. But you're not gonna go looking for those guys, are you?"
"The ones in that picture?" Steve said. "Hell no. That'd be a waste."
My shoulders sagged in relief. "Good. I'm glad you're being smart about it."
"Yeah, no shit," Anthony said. "You ask me, the dudes are dead. No fun looking now."
I stared at him. "What?"
"Yeah," he said. "Be a waste of time." He turned to Steve and said, "Unless you're up for dumpster-diving. You wanna?"
Steve gave it some thought. "Could be interesting."
I was still staring. "You guys are joking, right?"
"Eh, hard to say," Steve said. "Dumpster-diving…" He made that familiar waffling motion with his hand. "It's kind of hit-or-miss, you know?"
"No, I don't, actually." I gave him a serious look. "You're just messing with me, aren't you?"
"If we are," Steve said, "you deserve it." He glanced down the stairwell. Again, he said, "Twenty freaking flights."
Okay, I felt bad and everything, but couldn't he just drop it already? And besides, what a whiner. "Oh for God's sake," I said. "Just take the elevator then."
"I'll do that," Steve said, "when you make a sandwich on that counter."
"What counter?" I asked. But even as the words left my lips, an image of my mom, naked with Bob the Appliance Guy, flashed in my brain.
I couldn’t help it. I stifled a shudder. When she'd told me that story, she'd been really, really descriptive – with sound effects and everything.
Suddenly, Steve was looking a lot more cheerful. Grinning now, he said, "See how that works?"
Yeah, I did. Unfortunately.
And the image was still there, burning in my brain like a naked clown that I'd been told not to think about.
It's not that Bob was bad-looking or anything, but the image of his privates slapping against my mom's kitchen counter was a little too vivid for my liking.
Damn it.
My gaze slid to Anthony, and I felt myself frown. He was smiling now, too.
Well, that was nice.
In unison, they turned away and started heading down the stairs. I called after them, "Text me when you get back, okay?"
For some reason, they thought this was absolutely hilarious. I didn't get the joke, but then again, I wasn't as crazy as they were either. When they disappeared from sight, I could still hear them laughing, probably at me, although I still couldn’t figure out why.
With a sigh, I turned around and headed out of the stairwell. In the hall, I found Jake leaning near the penthouse doors, almost exactly where I'd left him. When I reached his side, he said, "So your mom and the appliance guy, huh?"
Oh great. As if I needed a reminder. There it was again, that same X-rated image – this time, with those dreaded sound-effects. I didn't know what was more disturbing, the mental mom-porno flashing in my brain, or the fact that Jake had overheard me discussing it with my brothers.
How much of it had he heard, anyway? Probably, I didn't want to know.
Deliberately, I changed the subject. "How come you didn't take the elevator up?"
"I did. But I stopped at the office on the way, then took the stairs from there." He flashed me a grin. "Why? You miss me?"
"I might've missed you a little," I admitted.
He reached out and pulled me tight against him. I could hear the smile, lingering in his voice, when he said, "Wrong. You missed me a lot."
I had to laugh. "God, you are so cocky." I pulled back to stare up at him. "Did you miss me?"
His eyes grew dark and intense. "Always."
"A little?" I smiled. "Or a lot?"
"It wasn't a little." He pulled me closer once again. "You want proof?"
I didn't need proof. I could feel it, hard, pressing against my pelvis. Speaking of things that weren't little. My stomach did a funny little flip, the one it always did when Jake caught me off guard.
Breathlessly, I said the same thing he'd just said to me. "Always."
I heard his voice in my hair, and felt his hands slide down to my ass. "Always," he murmured. "I like the sounds of that."
In spite of everything, I gave a happy sigh. "Me, too." No matter how wrong everything else had gone today, there was something about this that felt so incredibly right.
Jake moved his head and spoke low into my ear. "Wanna know what
else I like?"
My voice, when I found it, came out as a whisper. "What?"
"This."
Before I knew it, he'd swooped me up in his arms and carried me through the open penthouse doors. I laughed as he kicked the doors shut behind us and tossed me onto the nearest sofa.
And then, he showed me exactly how much he'd been missing me.
Turns out, it was a lot.
A couple of hours later, we were snuggled up on that same sofa, fresh from the shower and dressed in casual clothes. Wrapped in his arms, I'd nearly forgotten how crappy most of the day had been.
Still, there was something I wanted to get out of the way – tonight, not tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to put the events of today behind us – especially that stupid walk and everything that had happened as a result.
So I leaned my face against his shoulder and said, "By the way, I looked at that picture."
"I know."
I pulled back to look at him. "You do? How?"
"I got a text."
"What?" I sputtered. "From who?"
"Anthony."
I sat up. Well, that was great. I felt like I'd been tattled on or something. Trying not to sound as annoyed as I felt, I asked, "What did it say?"
With something like a laugh, Jake reached for his phone and ran a finger across the screen. He turned the phone toward me and said, "This."
I looked. Briefly ignoring what it said, I checked the time of the text. As best I could tell, Anthony had sent it on his way down the stairs.
Maybe that's why they'd been laughing. Those asshats.
Jake flashed me a sudden grin. "Hey, they're your brothers."
Well, there was that. I looked down to study the text. Those 2 guys. Did you dumpster them, or what?
I shook my head. "Dumpster them?"
I knew what it meant. I just wasn't sure of the details. Technically, you could throw a live person into a dumpster. Right?
Or maybe – hopefully – nothing remotely like that had happened. I looked back to Jake and said, "You didn't." I hesitated. "Did you?"
"Nah," Jake said. "I saw them. That's it. No dumpsters involved."
"So my brothers were right?" I pulled away and sat up straighter. "That's where you went tonight?"
Jake only shrugged.
Talk about a non-answer.
There was no way I was going to let this go. "How'd you know where they were? Or who they were?"
"I got a tip."
Right. And I had a pretty good guess which tip he meant. "It was that text, wasn't it? The one you got in your office."
"You might say that."
"Who sent it?" I held up a hand. "Wait. I know. It was that guy, wasn't it? The one who sent you that picture." When Jake said nothing, I added, "I'm right, aren't I?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes. It does, actually."
"Why?"
"Because it involves me," I explained. "And maybe, I don't like the idea of some jerk reporting back to you all the time."
"Yeah? Well, too bad."
I drew back. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You don't wanna know. And I don't want to tell you. So drop it."
"Drop it?" I repeated. If that was supposed to make me miraculously forget the whole thing, he didn't know who he was dealing with. "But why wouldn't you want to tell me?"
"Because, you don't wanna know, just like I said."
"But I do," I insisted.
On the sofa, he said nothing. But the weight of his gaze was feeling heavier with every minute.
Refusing to let him off the hook, I waited in silence.
Finally, he said, "Alright. You wanna know what happened?"
When I nodded, he pushed himself up and stood, towering over me.
I craned my neck to look up at him. "What are you doing?"
He reached for my hand and pulled me up next to him. "Come on."
Chapter 34
A moment later, we were standing outside on the balcony. The night was warm and muggy, with a damp wind that made me shiver in spite of the mild weather.
Standing by Jake's side, I gazed out over the urban landscape. From here, I could see the Detroit River and the area that surrounded it. Next to me, Jake was grim and silent, surveying the view with dark, wary eyes.
When he said nothing, I asked, "Why are we out here?"
"Because I've got a question."
"What?" I asked.
"How well do you know this place?"
I gave it some thought. Like Jake, I'd grown up two hours north of here in a town a lot smaller than this. It was true that after college, I'd moved closer to Detroit, but even then, I'd stuck mostly to the suburbs.
Except for a brief stint in a seedy apartment with a skanky roommate, most of the places I'd lived had been a lot less interesting than this. Was that what he was getting at?
I glanced over at him. "How well do I know what? The city?"
He looked out over the cityscape. "Everything you see now. The city, the neighborhood, whatever. How well do you know it?"
Obviously, he knew the answer. I'd been living here for just a few short weeks. We spent a lot of time on the balcony and inside the condo. But whenever we went out, it was usually by car and farther than a five-minute drive.
"Not that well," I admitted.
"Well, I do," he said. "And so does Moe."
"Moe? The guy who sent you that picture?"
"Yeah. The guy who also saved your sweet little ass."
The statement made me pause, and not because of the compliment. I turned to face Jake head-on. "What do you mean?"
"Those guys who were following you," he said, "you never encountered them. And you wanna know why?"
"Because I outran them?"
"Guess again."
"Honestly, Jake, I have no idea. I never even saw them."
"Right. Because where you grew up–"
"Don't you mean where we grew up?"
Jake made a scoffing sound. "Baby, if you think we grew up in the same place…" He stopped and shook his head.
I was almost insulted. "It was the same town," I reminded him. "We even hung out together. Remember?"
For some reason, this made his lips twist into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Uh-huh."
I crossed my arms. "Well, we did."
"Wrong," he said. "You were slumming it. I wasn't."
The more he talked, the more insulted I felt. Growing up, I hadn't had a lot of money, so the idea of me "slumming it" with anyone was ludicrous.
"I was not," I insisted. "And besides, we didn't live that far apart."
"Maybe not in miles. But inside?" He shook his head. "You know what. Forget that. You wanna know what happened? I'll give you the short version."
Gently, he gripped my shoulders and turned me outward again, facing the night cityscape. "Somewhere out there," he said, "are people who like nothing more than fresh meat. And today, wanna know who the meat was?"
"Oh, stop it," I said. "I'm not meat, if that's what you're getting at." Again, I turned to face him. "And you know what? I'm getting a little tired of the lectures. We already talked about this. Can't we just drop it already?"
He gave a wry laugh. "Right."
"What's so funny?" I demanded.
"You," he said. "You want answers. But you don't wanna talk about it."
"Except you're not giving me answers," I pointed out. "You're just giving me a hard time."
"Baby, I'm not the one you've gotta worry about." His voice grew darker, harder. "I'm not the one who's gonna drag you into some building, make you bleed, and brag about it after."
At the ugly image, I yanked myself away. "Just stop it. You're exaggerating."
He gave that same laugh, but lower and uglier. "It's nice to think that, isn't it?"
"No," I told him. "Nothing about this conversation is nice."
"I know. And that's my point." He leaned closer, and his voice grew quie
t. "You really wanna know what happened tonight?"
From the look on his face, I suddenly wasn't so sure. Still, I made myself nod.
He leaned a fraction closer. "They're dead."
"What?" I drew back as visions of dumpsters and dead bodies flashed in my brain. "Did, uh, you—"
"No."
I stared up at him, searching his face for clues. Desperately, I wanted to believe him. "Would you tell me if you had?"
"Maybe."
I made a sound of disbelief. "Or maybe not?"
"I dunno. But it doesn't matter, because I didn't touch them." He smiled. "But that doesn't mean I wouldn't have."
"What?"
"If they'd hurt you—"
"But they didn't," I reminded him.
"And now they won't." He shrugged. "See? Problem solved."
His words were so cold, they made me shiver. "None of this is making any sense," I said, recalling what he'd told me just a few minutes earlier. "Tonight, you told me that just saw them."
"I did."
"So, did you talk to them?"
"By the time I saw them?" Jake gave a cold smile. "No point in that, considering their condition."
His words, along with that smile, made take a step backward. The implication was obvious, and it made my stomach roil. "What are you saying? You saw their bodies?"
"Eh, what was left of 'em."
Okay, that wasn't helping my stomach.
Suddenly, I was glad to be out on the balcony. If I had to hurl, I was in the right place, well, except when I considered the people on the lower balconies.
Obviously, they'd see things differently.
I shook my head. "I don't get it."
"What don't you get?"
"All the inconsistencies." Quickly, I rattled them off. "You know them, but you don't know them. You saw them, but not alive." I swallowed. "They're dead, but you had nothing to do with it."
"Pretty much."
I gave him a hard look. "And how, exactly did they die?"
"Badly."
"Badly? Is that a joke?"
"Eh, just quoting Moe. Although, he didn't put it so nice."
I threw up my hands. "See? That's the kind of stuff I mean. You're quoting him, but you're not quoting him."
"Trust me," he said. "The exact quote? You don't want it."
I hesitated. Okay, about this, he might be right. Besides, I had another question. "And how is it that you came home looking so cheerful?"
Jake Forever (Jaked Book 3) Page 16