Page 67 of Obsession
“That was after the six months.”
Moth says, “I have maintained several functional arrangements.”
Bricks turns to him slowly. “Arrangements?”
“They were efficient.”
Bricks snorts. “That sounds romantic as hell. Did you schedule feelings on alternating Thursdays?”
“Feelings were not the purpose.”
“Tragic, but unsurprising,” I mutter.
The impulse to throw them both out comes quickly, but it dies before it reaches my mouth because under Bricks’ crude grin and Moth’s clinical dissection is the thing I haven’t been able to cut out since Oisín left the room. He wanted me. Not because I ordered it. Not because I gave him a place to kneel. Not because my hand at his throat made the world simple enough for him to breathe. He walked in while I was buried in business, turned my face away from the report, and kissed me like wanting me belonged to him first.
I don’t know what to do with that.
Bricks’ voice lowers. “It’s okay to need someone, Saint.”
Need has always been a bad word. Sol taught me that before I had language for it, before I understood that lessons could be cruel without anyone raising a hand. I remember my mother in his office when I was nine or maybe ten, old enough to know I shouldn’t stand in the doorway and young enough to do it anyway. She asked him to come home earlier, to look at me when I spoke, to stop turning every mistake into training. She didn’t say she needed him, but the need was there in the way she kept her hands still by force, in the hurt she tried to make dignified, in the careful way she made a request that should have been safe inside a marriage.
Sol shut her down gently, which took me years to understand was the cruelest part. He told her softness made boys weak. He told her she knew what he was when she married him. He told her the club didn’t bend because she was lonely. Then he kissed her forehead like he had forgiven her for wanting too much and went back to his papers while she stood there with the hope emptied out of her face. A few months later, she left. Sol never said her name unless he had to, and when I cried for her, he taught me to stop giving people handles they could use to drag me.
It makes a person stand in a room and ask to matter, then teaches them what they cost when the answer is no.
I look at Bricks. “Need gets people left.”
Neither of them jokes.
Moth speaks first, quieter than usual. “Maybe Sol was wrong.”
If Bricks had said it, I could dismiss him as sentimental or loyal past the point of usefulness. Moth is different. Moth doesn’t offer comfort. He offers conclusions after examining structure, data, and failure points. If Moth says maybe Sol was wrong, he means the framework has been tested and found unstable.
I don’t know what to do with that information either.
Bricks leans back and watches me with less humor than before. “Nobody’s saying you need to start writing poetry and making breakfast.”
“I’d shoot myself first,” I tease, though there’s no humor in my words.
“Oisín would probably correct the rhythm anyway.”
Moth adds, “Tally would object to you using her kitchen.”
Against my will, my mouth almost curves, and Bricks points at me like he just won money off a bet.
“See? Progress.”
“Don’t make me regret not throwing you out, Bricks.”
“You already regret everything. That’s your whole personality.”
Moth looks toward the door Oisín walked out of earlier. “He’s not asking for softness as performance. He’s asking whether what you do has meaning beyond possession.”
I hate that the whole clubhouse has eyes and ears. Even the private conversations are rarely private, someone always listening just beyond a door.
Bricks sighs. “Moth, buddy, I love when you translate human emotion into a crime report, but sometimes a man just needs to say, ‘Yeah, I want you.’”
“I am not your buddy.”
