Page 488 of Summer Heat
It’s a good look for him.
“I was wondering when you were going to come for me,” Daniel says as we walk back to the office. I keep him in sight even as he looks over his shoulder to check on her.
“You think she’s going to run off?” I ask him jokingly, but it only makes his expression harden. Maybe he’s still blind to it. But it’s obvious she loves him. It was obvious five years ago too.
Silence escorts us until I close the door to the office with a loud click.
Daniel takes a seat in front of the large desk and rather than sitting at the head of it, I take the seat across from him, feeling the worn brown leather beneath my hands.
“I need that package,” I tell him and wait for whatever the hell it is. He’s already been here for hours, but Addison needed him for a little while. I could afford them that.
With a nod, Daniel slips the envelope from his back pocket. My teeth grind against one another. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in trades and a war between drug lords are on the line over whatever the fuck the Romanos are offering us.
And it’s only a thin envelope, folded and creased down the center.
Our fingers brush as he hands it to me, but he doesn’t let it go.
With my arm outstretched I look back at my brother, waiting for what he has to
say, but nothing comes. A second ticks by and he releases it, sitting back in his chair but still not saying a word.
“What’s gotten into you?” I ask him. Ever since Tyler died, Daniel’s been a shell of who he once was. Until recently. Until she came back and brought him with her.
“She reminds you of Tyler?” he asks me.
“She reminds me of what you were like when he died,” I answer him without thinking. And it’s true. “You were on the edge of going one way or the other back then, but it looks like you’ve come back around.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you were going to take care of her back then.” I bite my tongue, wondering if I should tell him what Jase told me when Addison broke up with Tyler. When she said her goodbyes, she could hardly even look at Tyler. Instead she kept looking upstairs toward Daniel’s room.
Everyone knew how Daniel felt about her. She was only seventeen and we had bigger and better shit to concern ourselves with. But that day it was more than obvious why she was leaving.
It was only the three of them who were blind to it.
Daniel shakes his head as if what I’m saying is ridiculous. Even after all these years he can’t admit it.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re back, and she’s with you. I don’t care about anything else and neither does anyone else.”
It’s quiet for a long moment and Daniel runs his hand down his face, letting his head fall back and looking at the ceiling before he breathes in deep.
“Do you think he’d ever forgive me?” he asks me.
“Tyler forgave everyone,” I answer him and it’s true. He was the only good one of us. Of course he’s the one who died young. “And Tyler wanted her to have a home. To have a family.”
He nods his head, although it takes him a long moment before he looks back at me.
“It feels too good to be true,” he says softly and I know why.
“Did you tell her the truth?”
“The truth?” he asks as if I don’t know.
It only takes me glancing at his side where he was shot for him to understand my question.
“She has no idea. She thinks it was random. A coincidence.”
“Is it Marcus?” I have a bad feeling in my gut, but he’s the only person that this leads to.
