by Finn, Emilia
She shrugs. “Not really.”
“Ringing in your ears?”
She gives a gentle shake of her head, but stops with a grimace. “I did earlier, but it’s not so bad.”
“Headache?”
“Yeah.” Her eyes flicker back to mine after each answer. Does it bother her that I hear her weaknesses? “Throbs a little,” she admits.
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Mm. Aaron Scanlon is getting a divorce and he’s unhappy about it. He technically didn’t mean to hit me.”
“Still charging him,” I growl. “Accidental or not, you don’t get to knock someone the fuck out and get away with it.”
Luc’s eyes flicker to me. “Did you see what happened?”
“Yeah. Dude was drunk and sloppy. Looked like she was telling him to move along, he turned a little fast. Looked like he was just trying to get her hands off him. Instead he clocked her.”
Libby nods. “That’s what happened. X sent me here to get him out, since everyone else is busy. Show my badge, move him along. Tink stopped serving him hours ago, but I think he’s taking more than alcohol. He’s way too sloppy still.”
“Ah, well, I’m sure your cop friend will take care of it,” Luc replies. “I can’t do much about your face; you’re gonna look like Rocky for a while.”
Scowling, Libby brings her fingers up to prod at her lip. “It hurts like a bitch.”
He chuckles. “Gonna hurt way more tomorrow. But it should ease the day after that. Go home and sleep it off, take some aspirin before bed.”
“I was already in my pyjamas before this,” she huffs. “I was down for the night.”
“And then you changed your mind and decided to party.” Luc pats her knee and grins. “That’ll teach you. Once someone is in their jammies, they stay in their jammies. Except, of course, when your nurse gets home.”
“You’re such a pig.” Lib shoves him back when he laughs and closes up the bag he brought along. “Kari’s brother know you speak about her that way?”
“Fuck no, and if you tell him, I’ll rip those strips off your face and take the tiny hairs with them. Don’t be a snitch, Tate. It’s ugly.”
It does my heart good to see her chuckle at his jokes. To see her smile, even if it stops again when the split begins to open. It makes me happy that she’s sitting up on her own and doesn’t need to be rushed to the hospital.
I suspect she’s perfectly fine to go home alone tonight, but I won’t tell her that. I’m sticking to her like Velcro, because I’m not ready to let go.
My date with Sophia was a total bust, and though that should enrage me, I find I don’t particularly care. She stands in front of Jay in a way that speaks to my soul. She’s not holding him back, but comforting him, and the fact that he needs comfort helps me see them as… well… vulnerable.
Not in the way that I see his jugular and I’m ready to strike, but in the way that humanizes him. Maybe he’s the bad guy in my story, but maybe he’s not. No matter who he is, I still have Libby sitting right in front of me, bringing me comfort by her presence, the way Sophia brings comfort to the other Bishop.
It takes only a minute or two for Luc and Mitchell to collect all of their shit and leave the room, and without a word, but with a small nod, Sophia takes Jay’s hand and pulls him away too. He watches me with narrowed eyes that speak of betrayal more than rage. How dare someone try to seduce his woman? How dare someone try to break a family?
“Why were you on a date with Sophia?”
I glance up as Libby holds a fresh ice pack to her cheek. She rests both feet on my lap, her elbows on her knees. It’s like history circling around and repeating itself.
I could be eleven all over again. Maybe I could restart what began back then.
Catching sight of a silver rod in the pencil tin in the left corner of the desk, I chuckle and reach out for the letter opener. The universe is fucking with us.
“It wasn’t a date. It was a business meeting.”
Libby’s eyes scour my face as she gives a slow nod. “Okay. Why was Soph at a business meeting in her underwear and stripper heels?”
I force a smile and shrug. “She likes wearing those shoes?”
“Nope.” Libby drops her feet and turns to slide off the desk. “Nobody likes wearing those shoes. I’m leaving.”
“No, stop.” I lurch forward and press her back until she’s sitting and her eyes widen. Our noses are mere inches apart. Her breath whistles, her nose is blocked with clotting blood and tissues. “I offered her a job with lots of money.” I pause, because I know the rest is going to hurt. “I also implied a type of sexual gratification if she accepted.”
Libby’s lips firm with anger. “You were gonna fuck her? You enjoy offering yourself to every set of legs that walk by?”
“No.” I sit again, making her head and shoulders taller than me, but I pull my chair forward and stop between her legs, resting my elbows on the desk on each side. “You’re the only person I made an offer to and meant it. And technically, your legs are kinda short and stocky, so…”
“You’re a fucking asshole.” She tries to push me back. If she was well, she’d be able to move me, but as she tries now, her burning cheeks turn green. “I’m not short. And not everyone has a ballerina’s body.”
“I like your body.” I pull my chair in closer and rest my hands on her hips. “The thing with Sophia was business. Sometimes people react to money, so I offered her a well-paying job at Griffin Plaza. I mentioned how I live in the penthouse, and how there’s a spare apartment…” I grit my teeth. “Well, close by.”
“And if she’d accepted, you’d happily fuck her in your spare time?”
“No. I was never gonna fuck her, Lib. It was purely business, and I suspect her coming dressed that way was business for her too. She’s either insanely smart or insanely dumb.”
“She’s smart,” Lib whispers. “Word on the street is she’s basically a computer genius.”
I sit back a little with a humorless chuckle, though I keep my hands on her hips and knead. “I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. She’s Checkmate’s computer genius, isn’t she? She’s so fucking smart, she knows to make herself seem like a brainless bimbo if it suits her purposes.” Our eyes meet. “Right?”
She swallows as Libby-the-woman fights against Libby-the-cop. But of course, the cop wins. “I have no clue. She’s not my business to discuss. If you need to speak about Checkmate, then you need to speak to Checkmate. I won’t help you gain some kind of business advantage over them or anyone else.”
I glance down and study the denim pattern of Libby’s jeans while I think through my next move. And between those thoughts, I think about my next move with her. And between all of that, I think through the word Jericho. Why did Sophia say that today, and why did it instantly calm Jay? What does it mean? And why the fuck does it bother me that she has a safe word?
“Why are you here, Griffin?” Lib drags my face up with a hand under my chin. “Tell me why you’re in this town. Why are you popping up everywhere I am? Why are you so interested in the Bishops? Why the secrecy?” Her open eye mists. “And why does this right now,” she points between us, “Why does this feel like déjà vu? Why do you constantly make me think impossible things?”
“What things?” My eyes flicker between hers as I move closer. “What impossible things do you think when you see me?”
She shakes her head, as though to deny what she already knows. It’s too close to the surface, and if she were to blab, my whole reason for being here could be blown. I need to leave this office, I need to stop letting her see into my soul, but I can’t look away. I’ve never been able to look away.
“I dream about your eyes,” she whispers. “I dream every single night. You make me think of things I don’t want to think about, of people I don’t want to remember. You make me remember one particular person I do want to remember. But it’s impossible.”
“What’s impossible, Lib?”
I slide my hand along her thigh and stop to circle her knee with my finger. “Is it impossible that you forgot to have that growth spurt?”
Fat tears explode from her eyes when I say the very thing she’s been hoping and dreading.
“Is it impossible that your dimpled knees are no more? I’ve looked. I looked at the gym, but your knees aren’t fat anymore.”
“It’s impossible,” she cries. “It’s… I don’t know how… I just…”
“It’s impossible that you’ve literally not grown more than three inches since you were nine.”
She shakes her head. She denies me. But those dirty green eyes stay on me.
“It’s impossible that you’ve been holding on to a little boy’s red sweater for two decades.”
“Oh my God.”
I stand and push into her space so our noses touch and she has no choice but to stare into my eyes. “Why do you have that sweater, Elizabeth? How is that possible?”
“I stole it,” she whimpers. “My friend once told me that it feels good to steal. He told me that when it hurts bad people, but doesn’t hurt good people, it’s okay to steal.”
“Do you sleep with that sweater?” I slide my hand along her thigh and brush the tip of my nose along hers. Her breath hitches, and her hands come up to my shoulders – an embrace? Or to push me away? “Does it bring you comfort to smell that boy in your bed?”
“Not anymore,” she cries. “It doesn’t smell like him anymore.”
I brush my lips over hers and swallow her startled breath. “No. It smells like you.”
“It’s gone now.” Her gaze flickers between mine. “I lost it, and now I sleep with a stomach ache.”
I reach up and swipe the tears from beneath her eyes. “It’s okay. I found it. I’ll give it back to you.”
“You did?” She looks around, as though it’s in this room right now. “You f…” Her eye widens. “You were in my apartment.”
I nod. “I’ve visited a couple times. Once when you were gone. Once when you were home.”
“When I was–” She draws in a shocked gasp. “You watched me sleep.”
I chuckle and continue kneading her thighs. I’ve slipped my hands beneath them now, so all I have to do is pick her up and bring her to my lap as soon as I’m certain she won’t shoot me. “It sounds creepy when you say it like that. I wasn’t being creepy. I was just checking in.” I shrug. “In a manner of speaking. I totally looked in your panty drawer. I guess that was a little creepy of me.”
“I’m so unbelievably confused right now.” She pulls back when I slide my lips over hers again. She denies me. She denies us. “Did Scanlon knock me out cold?” She looks around again. “Is this a dream?”
I should say yes. I should take her to her bed and walk away, because I’ve blown my entire cover, not just for my reasons for being in this town, but the fact that Theo Griffin isn’t actually Theo Griffin. Theo Griffin is Gunner Bishop, and if people knew that, shit could go bad fast.
But I can’t lie to her. I can’t look straight into her eyes and tell her anything but truth. She was my ally back when I was eleven. Things have changed since then. We’ve both grown, and we’ve both been influenced by wholly different upbringings.
But that doesn’t mean she can’t be my ally now.
“You dream of me because you know me, Libby.” Goddammit, Griffin! “You think you dream of prophecy, because you know we’ve met. You know deep in your heart we’re already connected, but your brain won’t let you see it.”
“My brain won’t allow fantasies, Theo. I work with logic. I work with facts. And logically, this,” she points between us. “This is impossible.”
“Says who? Your father?”
She shoots back as though I’ve hit her. “Don’t…” She shakes her head. “Don’t go back there.”
“Why not? Are you defensive about him? Do you think he’s been unlawfully incarcerated? Are you mad because daddy is in prison and you’re out here all alone?”
“No! I was the one who put him in prison.” She shoves me away so hard it makes me almost happy that the knock to her head is wearing off. But then she swings off the desk and backs away. “I was the one that arrested him. I was the one that collected unbreakable proof of his crimes. I was the one who testified with my hand on a bible and told him of the things I saw in my life. I told them of a boy who saw his mother’s murder, and I told them my father was the reason that boy was no longer living.”
I act as though her words aren’t electrical shocks through my heart. I shove my hands in my pockets and slowly meander forward. It’s what lions do; they stalk, they calculate, they approach slowly.
“I’d hardly call the thing with the boy as unbreakable proof. If there’s no body, there’s no crime.”
“He needed justice,” she whispers. “Raymond went to prison for a million other things, but that boy needed to be documented. He needed to be mentioned. He needed justice.”
“Heroic of you.” I circle around as she turns and avoids letting me get too close. “It was brave of you to lock your own father away. I assure you, had that boy known you would be his hero, he’d have wept from happiness.”
“Why do you speak about him in the third person?” She raises a hand between us as I come closer. “You say things that go against what I believed to be true. You imply you’re him, but you speak of him in the third person.”
“Because he’s dead.” I’m both touched and horrified when fresh tears slide along her battered face. I look over my shoulder to the door, then I look around and pray this room hasn’t been set up with recording devices. “Gunner Bishop was a child that never grew to be a man.”
Libby backs up against the wall and purges her grief. That name matters to her. That name means something.
“Gunner was a stupid name for the boy inside. God knows why his mother named him that, but it didn’t suit. It never suited. In the span of one day, Gunner met his father, he met Elizabeth Tate – the sweetest angel he would ever know – and then he watched his mother’s murder.”
“Where’d you go?”
I step in with a small grin and press her body into the wall. Hip to hip, toe to toe, I lean against her and slide my hands along her hips the way I was envious of Jay with Sophia. “I ran. I was merely five miles from that godforsaken club when I dragged myself into a dark alleyway and made a bed out of cardboard boxes.”
“An alleyway?” she cries. “You were homeless?”
“It’s better than dead, no?”
“Not necessarily!” she snaps. “It was winter, Gu–” Her eyes widen when she realizes how her life has just spun out of control. “Oh my God, you’re Gunner. You’re him.”
“No.” I lean in closer and nip at her jaw. “I’m Theo. I’m a self-made man. I’m no one’s son, and I’m okay with that. But you’re still that angel. Back then, I was just a child. I wasn’t looking at girls yet, so I didn’t know what I know now. But I knew we were family. With just that one meet, I knew we were partnered. I knew we had something.” I bite her warm throat and smile when she gasps. “I walked into your home a week ago and found you asleep in your bed, and I swear, it all ended there for me. You weren’t a little girl anymore, but a woman whose body called to mine. I tried to reason it away, I tried to remember you as a child, but she was gone. In that instant, she was gone, and you were here, and I’ve never in my life wanted a woman as much as I want you.”
“Gunner, I–”
“Theo.” I slide my hands around her hips and stop on the button of her jeans. Her body tenses and her eyes widen, but then I snap them open and her heart stops completely. “I’m proud of the man I’ve become. I’ve worked hard to be who I am now, I’d like for you to use that name.”
“But I don’t know Theo,” she pleads. Her gaze tracks along my face. “I don’t know you. You’re asking me to trust this stranger.”
“You didn’t know the boy, either. We met once, and that once only lasted an hour. Technically you’
ve known Theo longer than you ever knew Gunner.”
“I trusted Gunner,” she says quietly. “I trusted him with my life. I trusted him to keep me safe, which is why I went outside with him. I trusted him to protect me if my father came looking. I…” She pauses, and when I slide my fingers past the band of her underwear, she pushes me back with a rough shove. “Why didn’t you take me with you? I could have gone with you! I spent the next eight years of my life in a kind of prison. I was free in the traditional sense, but I was mourning you, and my freedom felt an awful lot like segregation. I wanted to go with you!”
“You thought I was dead?”
She angrily swipes a tear from her cheek, hissing when she hurts herself. “Yes. I thought you were dead.”
“And yet you wanted to be with me?”
“I wanted to be dead too,” she grits out. “I hated the world. I hated my world. I hated the blood that ran in my veins, I hated the blood that ran through yours. I hated my dad, I hated my school. I especially hated the sour-sisters and their belief that they were better than me. The only thing I had that I loved was the memory of a boy, and if the world was gonna suck as much as it did, I would rather be dead with you.”
“You loved me.”
“You were the only good thing I had!” she shouts. “How can I have only known you for one hour, but you were the best thing I had? How is that possible?”
“Because you loved me. Because the universe wants us to be a team.”
“A team doesn’t break promises,” she hisses. “A team has each other’s backs; they make everything better. They don’t run away.”
“What promise did I break?”
She pushes forward with the intention to slam her fist against my face, but I catch her arm and swing her around so her back presses to my chest. “What promise, Libby? Why are you mad at me?”
“Because I’m hurt! I thought you were dead, and now you’re not, it means you broke your promise!”