Game of Lies

by Amanda K. Byrne

  I nod. “Your father said I was”—I tap my chin—“‘reckless and selfish.’ I got the distinct impression he was trying to shut me out and keep me from seeing you.” I fork up egg as I debate telling him what I overheard of his conversation with Constantine. “Constantine said I was costing you money. Funny thing, Isaiah said the same a few weeks ago.” I pop the egg into my mouth. Nick holds my gaze, dark and steady, while I chew. I set my fork down. “Am I costing you money, Nick? Is your father intent on splitting us apart?” I must have inadvertently stepped into a remake of Romeo and Juliet. “Is someone going to come along and curse both our houses?”

  He draws his brows together. “What?”

  “Sorry. I must not have said that part out loud. The whole splitting us apart thing reminded me of Romeo and Juliet for some reason.”

  He laughs, and a tight knot of anxiety unravels in my chest. “Nice analogy.” He reaches for his coffee. “Yes. My father believes that it would be best for the family and organization as a whole if I stopped seeing you. From a business standpoint, Constantine agrees with him.”

  The lighthearted feeling his laughter brought on sluices away. “So, what, I’m just an all-around bad choice?”

  He sobers. “If I have to answer that, we’re in a worse place than I thought.”

  I turn my attention to my breakfast. The sooner I finish, the sooner I can escape. I make a mental list of errands as I scoop up the last of my eggs. Plate empty, I scoot my chair back and stand. I carry both plates to the sink and rinse them off before setting them on the counter to wash later.

  I know I’m not a bad choice to him. Sometimes his words lash out like a whip, but he’s shown me every day and every night since Turner’s funeral that he chose me.

  I don’t want to be the reason he splits from his family.

  For the first time in weeks, I’m the one who initiates the contact. I need to touch him, ground myself, feel the heat of him against some small part of me. I reach out and cradle his face in my hands. “I have to ask,” I say quietly. “Not because I’m doubting you, but because I don’t want you hurt any more than you already are. Are you absolutely certain I’m worth it? What’s the worst case scenario?”

  He turns his head, presses a kiss to my palm. “Worst case scenario, they cut me out. I give up my place within the family and go straight. I won’t lie. It would be a major adjustment to me. One I’m not sure I can make.” I hate the bleakness and resignation in his eyes. “This is the life I was born into, love. I’ve never had to imagine what it might be like without it.”

  Whereas I’ve spent too much time imagining my life beyond killing. I step into him, and he rests his head on my stomach. “Tell me. All of it. What would you be giving up?”

  “It won’t be like it is for my sisters, if that’s what you’re asking.” His voice is muffled by my shirt. “They’ll withdraw protection from my businesses. I’ll lose some assets. My personal net worth would take a hit. I’ll recover it eventually.” He nuzzles my stomach through the soft cotton. “It’ll be like losing my family. They’ll constantly be on guard about what they can say and what they can’t around me, and eventually communication would die. And that’s just with those who don’t cut it off immediately.”

  He might as well have punched me in the stomach. I don’t want him to lose his family over me. “Then let me go.” He tips his head back and glares at me.

  “Losing family is like being sliced open,” I whisper. “I can’t be the reason that happens to you.”

  His glare deepens. “Do you love me?”

  More than I thought possible, and it frightens me. “Yes.”

  “Then don’t get any ideas about doing the noble thing and leaving me.” His expression softens. “We’ve got some shit between us to take care of. But I love you, and it’s going to take a hell of a lot more for me to end this.”

  I wish I could say I suddenly forgive him and that all is right between us. I don’t. I can’t. I can give him this, though. I bend and kiss him, savoring the feel of his mouth on mine. “I love you too.”

  He lets out a shuddering breath. “I needed to hear that. You have no idea how much I needed to hear that.”

  I did, because I needed to say it.

  Chapter 9

  “Cass, I’m trying to understand. And thanks for calling me. I’d much rather hear from you than Nick. But it’s been almost three weeks. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  I shut my eyes in a feeble attempt to block out Denise’s voice. I haven’t seen her since the funeral, haven’t heard from her other than the voicemails she’s left. We haven’t spent any real time together since the day she and Charlie packed for Colorado.

  I don’t want to be around her. I don’t have it in me to pretend I’m grieving for my father when I don’t know what I’m doing. She’s been my anchor for years, and it’s like I’ve cut the rope and I’m drifting off while she remains behind.

  All the destruction I’ve caused is etched on my skin. I’m afraid she’ll see it.

  I shift my phone to my other ear and settle back in my seat. “We need to go by our apartment and clear out the rest of our things. Tomorrow?”

  “That’s not what I meant, Cass. We’ll be too busy boxing up books and plates to actually talk. I’m sorry I’m being—you know what? I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry I’m being so pushy. You’re my best friend, I love you, I’m worried about you, and I don’t fucking care if it’s selfish of me to want to see you and reassure myself that you really are okay.”

  Despite her anger, Denise’s words make me smile. She rarely swears. That she’s swearing now is an indication of just how concerned—and pissed—she is.

  “We do need to clean tomorrow, though,” I point out. “Our lease is up in a few weeks, neither of us are using the place, and once classes start, we won’t have much free time to do it. Might as well get a head start on everything now. Nick won’t be there, either.” The man in question pulls his attention from his tablet to frown at me. “So it’ll be the two of us. Or three if Charlie’s coming.” I hold Nick’s gaze. “We can grab some food after if you want.”

  “Nick won’t be there? Why?”

  “Work.” Not a lie; he should be and likely will be doing as much as he can remotely. “He’s got a project due in a few weeks.” He grunts and goes back to the tablet in his hands.

  “That works, I guess.” I smother another grin at her annoyed tone. She asks, “Do you have boxes? I have a few. Have you found a new place to live yet? We’ll need to move all the furniture out.”

  We discuss moving logistics and set a time to meet, then hang up. I toss the phone onto the kitchen table. “Neese has a point. There’s a bunch of furniture in that apartment that I need to do something with.”

  “Storage unit.” He flicks his fingers over the surface of the screen. “I don’t want it brought here. We’ll store it until we’ve found an apartment, unless we find one before your lease is up.” I tense at his assumption we’ll be living together; I still haven’t decided what to do about that. He waves me over. “Found a couple of places. Thought we could check them out.”

  I drag a chair next to him, and he taps the screen. “This was one of the ones we set an appointment to see a few weeks ago and never got around to it.” I lean forward, ignoring the haze creeping into my vision. We never got around to it because we were too busy tracking down my mother and Turner. A stone lodges in my chest, forcing the air from my lungs.

  Blood dripping down his face.

  I love you.

  The three most powerful words in the English language. They can invigorate. Destroy. They’re their very own shock and awe campaign.

  “Cass?”

  I flinch away from the hand on my cheek.

  “Cassidy.” He drops his hand to mine and works open my closed fingers with soothing strokes. “You all right?”

  “Fine.” I’m fast approaching the point where I won’t be
able to take another are you okay question. I don’t know why I bother with Nick, anyway. He knows I’m anything but fine. “Not that one.”

  He doesn’t question me, just withdraws his hand, closes the browser window, and moves on to the next one. “I know you were looking at one bedrooms, but realistically, a two bedroom would be better.” He taps on a picture, enlarging the floor plan. “It’s about what you and Denise are paying now.”

  It won’t hurt anything to look at a two bedroom. I don’t have to make up my mind today. “Are any of these others two bedrooms, or just this one?”

  He nods, his gaze on the tablet. “I picked out a couple, though most are one bedrooms.”

  “Balconies?”

  “No balconies. No ground floors. Here.” He swipes his finger across the screen. “This one met most of your requirements and mine. We’ll know more once we see it. Small building, in-unit washer-dryer combos, on the fourth floor. It’s about seven blocks from campus.”

  I skim the listing, looking for the catch, because there has to be one. I find it at the bottom. “I can’t afford this.”

  “I can.”

  “I’m not letting you pay my rent, Nick. We’ve been over this.”

  He slides the tablet away and reaches for his phone. “You have a budget. I’m paying for the portion over your budget.” He types in the number and raises the phone to his ear.

  “Nick—”

  “Hello. I was calling to see if the apartment you listed is still available?”

  Annoyed, I scoot my chair back and get up for a glass of water. I won’t have Nick paying for something he may not be using. Allowing him to pay half or more on a place when I can’t decide if I want him living with me isn’t fair to him or me.

  “We leave now, the property manager can show it to us first thing. She’s got a long list of showings. Says it’ll be first come, first serve.” His phone hits the table with a clatter. There’s a grating shriek as he scrapes his chair back, followed by a soft thunk as he positions his crutches. “Need to check something, then we can leave.”

  I open my mouth to protest. We’re just looking. I’ll make my mind up in my own time. I drain the water and set the glass on the table. “Fine.”

  * * * *

  The apartment is practically perfect.

  Fourth floor, exactly as promised. There’s thirty units in the entire building, an elevator on one end, stairs on the other. Both the stairwell entrance and the elevator are easily seen from every doorway on the floor. The front door to the building requires a separate key. Street parking only, which will be a pain in the ass once I buy a new car. I’m tired of borrowing one of Nick’s whenever I need to go somewhere. The unit itself faces the street, giving us a clear view of anyone walking up to the front door. As advertised, a stacked washer-dryer combo is tucked away in a utility closet near the kitchen, and the kitchen itself boasts plenty of counter space. There’s a coffee shop at the end of the block, and the south end of campus is, indeed, only seven blocks away. I’ll have to add in extra time to get to class, since most of my classes are on the north end of campus, but it’s doable.

  It’s also five hundred dollars more than my last place.

  Half listening to Nick’s conversation with the property manager, I stand in the middle of one of the bedrooms. My skin’s too tight. Weeks ago, I never would have heard of this apartment, wouldn’t have needed to. Neese would have been in the next room, and I wouldn’t have been calculating the time it would take to get from here to my first class.

  Rubbing my arms in an effort to ease some of the tightness, I wander to the window and check the street. In deference to Nick’s injury, we didn’t attempt to park several blocks away, opting for the shortest route from the car to the front door. It made him antsy and brusque, barking out short commands until I wanted to slap some tape over his mouth to get him to shut up.

  Then I remembered Andreas and his determination to get me away from his son, and my frustration fell away.

  The street below is busy in that way a lot of the residential streets around campus are—a cluster or two of people on the sidewalks, usually students, the occasional car cruising by, searching for a parking spot. The angle of the sun prevents me from seeing into any of the cars.

  It’s all so fucking normal. Normal.

  Maybe this would have been the semester Denise and I parted ways. Maybe I would have been looking for a new place. Maybe it even would have been with Nick. But normal would have meant I’d call my mother and ask about dinner plans, and she’d answer in that slightly harried, distracted voice that said she was in the middle of a case. Normal would have meant Turner and his silent disapproval. Normal would have been a quiet Christmas and a rowdy birthday, and I’d have all my textbooks already and I wouldn’t be wondering how the hell I was going to get through the next four months without thinking one of my classmates was going to sneak up on me.

  A warm, strong hand closes over mine and gently pries my fingers from the windowsill. “Hey.” Nick’s at my back, his strength jerking me back to reality. There’s no Turner. No Mom. I didn’t even celebrate Christmas this year. “Cassidy.”

  The soft and confident way he says my name rolls over me, easing me back from the edge. I am going to break. It will be soon. And Nick will be the one to pick up the pieces. Whether they’ll fit back together, I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s any glue in the world strong enough.

  “He should be here,” I whisper. My legs start shaking, and I lock my knees. “Here. Not a pile of ash in a metal container, waiting to be scattered.”

  Nick wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me close. “I know.”

  A shudder works its way through my body as I struggle to pack it all away. This is my normal now. A heart of cold, twisted metal and a man determined to stay with me anyway. One day, if I let him, he’ll melt it down and replace it with the living, beating organ it once was.

  Not today.

  I stroke a finger over the back of his hand. “You shouldn’t be on your feet so much.”

  He presses a kiss to the top of my head, the sweetness of it tearing through me like a whip. “I’ll be okay for a little bit longer. I’ve given the property manager the check. You just need to sign the lease.”

  I blame Nick’s attentive tenderness for the fog around my brain. He hasn’t shown me much of it the last few days, so it’s settled in thick. I ease out of his arms. “You did what?”

  “We’re taking this apartment. We keep looking, we may not find another one that works as well as this one.”

  There is actually a one bedroom on the list that might work, at least on paper. But I arrow in on his first statement. “We are taking this apartment?” I cross my arms over my chest. “Am I the other person in this we? Because I don’t remember agreeing we’d live here. Or live together, for that matter.”

  His face morphs into that cold, implacable expression he has whenever he’s made his decision and nothing and no one will change his mind. Well, tough shit, because he’s not winning this round. I edge around him, shut the door, and let the fury out.

  “We are not moving in together.” I ignore Nick’s shock—and my own—and push on. “You doped my coffee and then you try to pull this shit? You expect me to live with someone I’m not sure I trust anymore? And what about you? You honestly, seriously, want to sleep next to someone who has proven reckless and dangerous in the past? We can’t do this, Nick. I won’t.” I suck in a breath and shut my eyes, reeling in the anger. It won’t do me any good now. “I need time,” I say quietly. “You hurt me. I hurt you. I need time, and space, and I want to start over.”

  Love is painful. Love is hell. I can’t live with Nick, not after what he did and what he’s just done.

  “You’re right.”

  Those two words mean more to me than anything he could say, including I love you. He’s saying them because he loves me. I open my eyes, and the shock has been replaced by resign
ation. “We need time to fix this, and we don’t have it. Not yet.” He hops over to the windowsill and leans against it, taking some of the weight off his injured leg. “I’ll give you the time you need, love. But take this apartment, and let me pay for it. I can secure this place so you’re safe, and I need that for me.”

  It’s too big for one person. “Nick, I can’t stay here. I don’t need this much space.”

  He waves an impatient hand. “With everything that’s going on, I need a place to work away from the office. Unless you have any objections, I’ll use the other room as my workspace. I’m not moving in, Cassidy,” he adds when I shake my head. “We can’t start over. We’ve come too far for that. But we can take a few steps back, slow it down.”

  The relief racing through my veins is icy cold, and I stiffen my spine to keep from trembling. “Thank you.” My voice is calm and steady. I walk to the door and open it before I can change my mind.

  After signing the lease agreement and handing over the deposit, we’re back on the sidewalk. “What next?” I unlock the car and take Nick’s crutches so he can fold himself into the passenger seat.

  “I need to get some work done. Do you want to grab lunch on the way to the warehouse?”

  Interesting that he doesn’t say home. I wait until I’m behind the wheel and buckling my seatbelt before answering. “I could eat.” I curl my fingers around the steering wheel. “Take out or do you want to stop some place?”

  The engine roars to life, and I pull away from the curb. “El Dorado?” he asks. “I swear this time I’ll get the mole sauce.”

  I laugh. “You better. I’m not sharing.”

  True to his word, he orders the mole sauce. Our meal is interrupted several times by his buzzing phone, and each subsequent text spins the dial on his mood into glower territory.

  I push my plate away. “What is it?”

  He shakes his head. “Nothing important.”

  She’s costing us money.

  A month ago, he would have told me. The thought we’ve drifted this far apart sends another pang of hurt rippling through me. We’ll never get back to where we were if we don’t start talking. I slide out of my side of the booth and into his. “Not gonna fly. Talk to me.” When he levels a blank stare at me, I reach up and cup his jaw. “Nick. You’ve spent the last couple of weeks propping me up. Let me help you.”