Page 65 of Backlash

“We should go.” I don’t trust myself to say more. It’s not her fault that this happened. I shouldn’t have been so stupid as to think I could fit in enough not to raise questions.

“I’m sorry that happened,” she says. “They had no right to treat you like that.”

“Don’t they? I don’t belong in a fancy suite at the Eaton. I don’t belong in Valmont. I certainly don’t belong with you.”

“Don’t,” she orders me. Adair strides to me and grabs my chin. “You don’t get to decide who belongs with me. I do! And I choose you. The rest of them can have their vapid cocktail parties and keep score of how important they are. They have to, because they have nothing else to offer the world.”

“And I do?”

“Yes, you do,” she says. “You’re smart and kind and better than all of them combined, and I would trade all of this to be with you.”

“You say that now, but wait until you’re stuck in a studio apartment in Queens trying to keep the lights on. I can’t give you this life.”

Her eyes close, and she takes a deep breath.

“Why can’t you see what I do?” She holds a finger over my lips when I start to answer. “I don’t want this life. I want you.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I kiss her instead. When I finally release her, she says, “I’m going to find my shoes. We can go to your dorm or my place. Whatever.”

She disappears into the hall and I follow, spotting Francie’s silhouette waiting by her door. Our eyes meet and it’s clear she heard everything Adair said to me.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admit to her in a low voice.

“Believe her,” she says softly, “and believe in yourself, because she’s right about you.”

18

Sterling

Present Day

The last thing I want to do after seeing her is deal with business, but this situation with Noah can’t be ignored. Plus, I’ve just agreed to do the one thing I promised I would never do, and that means it’s time to talk to my brothers.

The Barrelhouse is only a few blocks from Adair’s office, so I text Luca to meet me there. I find Jack behind the bar, prepping for the evening crowd. His shirt, bearing the blues bar’s iconic logo, stretches tightly across his chest, the fabric blacker than his skin. He greets me with a smile and guilt surges through me.

“You look like a man who needs to confess,” he says as I take a seat at the bar.

“Luca is already on the way,” I say, bypassing his preternatural greeting. Maybe he can sense what I’ve come here to tell him. “We need to talk about Noah and stuff.”

Jack raises an eyebrow before nodding and grabbing another glass from the sink.

“Why do you think he’s here?” he asks as he dries the tumbler. He adds it to the stack of clean ones at the end of the bar.

“You always do your own dishes?” I ask.

“It’s distracting,” he admits. “I keep waiting for Noah to walk through that door. Better to keep busy than go crazy.”

None of us should be that surprised over Noah’s appearance, but that doesn’t mean we’re excited to see him. Luca’s been tracking him all week, without much to report, and he doesn’t seem concerned. But Luca could stand in the eye of a hurricane and not look ruffled. Jack, on the other hand, tends to worry. I see it on his face now. He didn’t buy this bar, effectively planting roots in Nashville, to hide. He won’t be willing to run. He did it to move on and start fresh.

“Jack, he’s here for me,” I say. “Maybe Luca.”

“The last I checked,” he says, leaning down to the bar and lowering his voice so that the handful of his employees setting up for the night’s performance don’t overhear him, “I’m just as responsible for what happened in Afghanistan.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I say with a shrug. “But he can’t do anything about that. He already tried, remember? Now he’s just going to try to punish us in other ways, and you’ve kept your nose clean since then.”

“I have. Maybe you should get out of town,” Jack adds. I know what he’s really saying. Maybe I should disappear. Start a new life. Leave all this behind. That might’ve been an option a few months ago. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure I would have returned to Valmont if I’d known Noah might come sniffing around again. I cover my tracks well, but it will only take one mistake—maybe not even my own—to give the FBI the excuse they need to investigate further. That begs the question: did I fuck up? Did someone else? Or is this just a courtesy call to remind me that he’s not giving up?

“I need to know why he’s here,” I say. “Until I do, I can’t move on anything.”