Page 11 of House of Scarlett
Under any other circumstances, I’d ignore the question or brush it off with a bullshit answer, but I can’t this time.
“She’s different, Q. She’s ... fuck, she’s everything I never knew existed. It wasn’t just sex, it was—”
Q holds out a hand. “Stop right the fuck there. I don’t know what you’re telling yourself, but you need to get your head out of your ass, and remember who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish. A woman like that is nothing but trouble for a guy like you. I love you like a brother, Gabe. You’re the most driven man I know. Don’t let some princess from the Upper East Side take you off that path. She can’t walk it with you.”
Q’s words are the common sense I need to hear, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to swallow. I stand in the night air, still warm enough with the heat of the fading summer, and shake my head.
“What the hell am I supposed to do? Let something I know is fucking amazing walk away? You should’ve seen her when I told her to go. I might as well have slapped her across the face.” I rake my hands through my hair for the thousandth time since I left my office.
“I don’t know about that. But Idoremember the look on your face when you showed up at my folks’ door, interrupting dinner all those years ago. You had a bleeding kid with you and your world was gone. We picked up those pieces once. I don’t ever want to see you like that again, man.”
Q’s memory is right on point. I can still smell the mac and cheese coming from Mrs. Quinterro’s dining room table. I’d smelled nothing but blood and filth for the days it took to drive to New Jersey, switching cars every couple of states just in case Moses’s boys were tailing us. I’d look over at Bump every few minutes to make sure he was still breathing. I kept thinking he’d be dead before I could get him the help he needed, but I was too afraid to stop. We left Jorie behind, and it still tears me apart to this day.
The idea of something happening to Scarlett, like it did Jorie, makes me want to puke my guts out on the pavement beneath my feet.
No. She’ll live a long and happy life ... without me. It’s better for her this way.
I’m not a noble man. I don’t know the first thing about selflessness, but ... I know I shouldn’t drag her into my mess.
The sound of her voice as she came on the desk in my office sneaks into my head, but I block it out.
She’s better off without me.
Six
Scarlett
“Someone called you?”I ask Flynn, who is the only familiar face at Dolly’s Diner when I walk in the door at a quarter to twelve.
“Kelsey did. What happened?” my former stepsister asks, dressed more like the college senior she is in white jean shorts and a gray T-shirt, compared to the badass street-racer getup she wore the other night.
I glance around the diner, scanning past the mural on the wall of the busty cowgirl, but I don’t see the rest of the crew yet.
Flynn crosses her legs and pats the open spot beside her. “If you’re looking for your friends, you know they’ll never be early. On time is a stretch. I already put your name in for a table, though.”
I plop down on the bench. “Thank you, Flynn.”
She nudges me with an elbow. “You’re not answering my question. From what Kelsey said, it sounds like I need a getaway car or a hit man. Possibly both. She was really vague on details, but all I got was that last night, you went for it, and now Legend needs to die. So ... you’re going to have to fill me in here, because I’m coming up with way too many scenarios by myself.”
“If I say it’s a story I really only want to tell once, will you understand?” I turn sideways to see if her expression confirms I’m off the hook. At least for a few minutes. I knew coming to brunch was going to mean rehashing last night, but I’ve only got it in me to do it one time.
“Fair enough. I’ll tell you about the car I picked up last night then. She’s a beauty.” Flynn dives into a description of the back-country roads in Pennsylvania where she, and some guys she has no business dealing with, raced for pinks. Thankfully, the story ends with her winning and the guys not killing her.
Just then Kelsey walks in the door, ahead of Monroe and Harlow.
“We’re only two minutes late. That has to be a record,” Harlow says, checking her diamond-encrusted Rolex.
“I’m going to need a bloody mary, stat. Spicy, and a double,” Monroe replies, walking up to the hostess stand.
Thankfully, our table is ready for us and everyone is too busy ordering drinks to interrogate me. At least, until the server walks away. Now all eyes are on me.
“Are you okay?” Kelsey asks first.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s ... whatever.” I flip my hair, like that’s somehow going to get my friends to buy my lame reply.
“Did you bang him?” Monroe goes right for the kill, and Flynn elbows her in the side.
“Give her a few softball questions to warm her up, why don’t you?”
