Page 2 of Fire
He gives me a long look. “Would you still want me to walk away if I told you I’m not here to recruit you back into the Reivers?”
“Then why in the hell are you here?” I snap at him, irritated that my fucking curiosity is winning out over my common sense.
“I’m here to convince you to help me and a few other people from our past destroy them.”
Grave goes on to drop the bombshell, saying that his real name is Jack Navarro and Grave Merrik was a deep cover meant to infiltrate the Reivers and bring charges against them.
“Bullshit,” I keep repeating, trying to figure out the angle to whatever play he’s running on me.
“You’ll believe this,” he growls, frustrated at my disbelief. Then he drags me all the way to a restaurant on the east side. When we walk in, I immediately see the kid who I thought he’d killed, very much alive and waiting on a table in the bar.
The kid hasn’t changed much from what I remember of him—still sporting several piercings, tatted up, and with platinum blond hair, but now, instead of hot pink, the tips are rainbow-colored.
Grave’s eyes go soft as he spots the young waiter, who, seeing us enter, walks away from the table, jumps straight into Grave’s arms, and kisses him. Grave immediately pulls Dream closer and returns the kiss with an unmistakable, fiery passion.
My head spins at the sight.
The Grave I knew before wasn’t capable of looking at anyone with such pure adoration. He viewed the world, and everyone in it, with cold, dead eyes that ran a chill up your spine if he looked at you. That man is nowhere in this room right now.
Grave was right. Seeing him with Dream kills any suspicions that he’s been lying to me.
“Get a room,” a bartender teases from the service well, her face set in an amused smile.
If anything, the comment seems to fuel the fire as the kiss between the lovers ramps up. Just when I’m wondering if clothes will start coming off, Dream pulls back despite Grave’s growl of protest.
Dream looks behind Grave to see that most of the customers and staff of the busy restaurant are an audience to his PDA. A triumphant smile crosses his face. “That was just a little showfor the new waitress who keeps flirting with you.” He gives a tug to Grave’s goatee. “I wanted to let her know you’re taken.”
“What waitress?” Grave asks cluelessly.
“Good answer.” Dream drops a light kiss on Grave’s puzzled brow and then steps back from him. “She better have paid attention. Cause if not, next time I see her pretending to bump into you so she can rub her tits all over you, I’ll remind her by dumping a bowl of clam chowder over that expensive new haircut she keeps bragging about.”
I chuckle at Dream’s clearly pointless jealousy, and he turns his attention to me.
“Luca, right? I remember you from the diner.” He holds his hand out to shake. “You were one of the few Reivers who didn’t suck.”
I shake his hand. “The bar was set pretty low.”
“Sure as hell was.” Dream huffs but then smiles at me. “But you never called me any ugly names and always left me really generous tips.”
At the time, I’d been hoping he’d use them for a bus ticket out of Adeline, Kentucky. I’d known how close to danger a guy like him with his pink-tipped hair and rainbow-colored barbed wire tattoo was in that town.
“I’m just glad you made it out of there alive,” I tell him, knowing there were too many others who weren’t as fortunate as Dream.
Grave’s muscular arms wrap around Dream protectively. “He came way too close to not making it out of there.”
“But I did.” Dream pats Grave on the chest. “We both did.”
Grave lets out a long breath and turns to me. “Almost losing him was what finally made me see that I was never going to take down the Reivers through a law enforcement agency, even a covert one. There were too many higher-ups making sure thatdidn’t happen, no matter how much evidence of their criminal activities I collected.”
“The Reivers are too powerful to be brought down.” The words burn in my gut no matter how many hundreds of hours I’ve tried meditating, trying to make peace with it.
“Not anymore,” Grave insists.
“What’s changed?” I demand. “What’s different now than when you were undercover? They’re still in bed with a lot of nasty, powerful people who make them untouchable.”
“Cash Mcree.”
“Digger’s son? I heard he’s the Reivers’ lead enforcer now.”
