Page 61 of A Lick and A Promise
“Most of the guys didn’t even know he had that situation happening in his family.”
That totally tracked when it came to Knox.
Then again, it would. It probably wasn’t fun sharing your father and brothers were drug smugglers/warehousers/distributors, and your sister was hooked up with a man who had ambitions to be a criminal kingpin.
“You can understand why,” I said quietly.
“Sure,” Brady returned curtly. “If he’s going to live his life with them excised from it. His history is his own. It’s when he puts his ass on the line for whatever it is he was doing last Thursday night that’s the problem.”
I could see his frustration.
I also could see Knox would be dealing with even more of the stuff I’d been dealing with, namely not confiding important life stuff to friends, only for them to find out and feel betrayed you didn’t trust them with that important life stuff.
Even if it was understandable that you didn’t.
“I’ve already given him shit about this,” I told him.
“And so has everyone else,” Brady told me.
“Okay. Then I don’t understand how this tracks with us pretending we kinda/sorta are into each other,” I remarked.
“He got in my shit about you.”
Whoa.
This was news.
“What?” This question came out on a gasp.
“A while ago. We’ve been having words on and off because I’ve been making it plain I wasn’t big on the shit he was pulling, even before he got with Cheyenne. But when Gabe and Willow were connecting, he cornered me in the workout room at the office and got up in my shit.”
“What’d he say?”
“That me making a play for you was horseshit. That he knew our game, and it was totally uncool.”
Admittedly, Knox was right. It was foolhardy and smacked of desperation (that last from me, which I was belatedly understanding was not a good look).
“I can’t say I disagree with him,” I said carefully.
Brady had no reply.
“What’d you say to him?” I asked.
“I told him he’d know fucked-up, uncool plays since Cheyenne was a rebound, she was not the woman to bring into our crew because he was eventually going to get shot of her, but he did it so he could shove her in your face. And if he can dish it out, he needed to man the fuck up and take it.”
Oh boy.
Those were fightin’ words for sure.
“Bet that didn’t go over too good,” I muttered.
“I thought he was gonna take a swing at me.”
I flinched.
“Unless it’s company business, he hasn’t spoken to me since.”
Crap.
