Page 64 of Last Flame
It doesn’t matter.
“Gunnar’s upstairs,” he says.
“I’m aware.”
“With her.”
I’m moving before I decide to. Three steps toward the door.
I stop.
Brock hasn’t moved. He’s watching me with the look he’s had since somewhere around our second century. He already knows how this ends and he’s just waiting for me to catch up.
“That was unfair,” I say.
“It worked.”
He doesn’t push it. He wants to gloat. We’ve been through enough that he knows better.
“She’s fine,” he says. “Gunnar’s behaving. Mostly.” He shrugs. “But the ex knows the building.”
“Ex?”
It’s out before I clear it. Brock is kind enough not to look at me.
“Don’t know the whole of it. But it’s why Erik was there in the first place.”
He doesn’t look happy about it.
Neither am I. Somewhere in the last four seconds the ex stopped being background. I’ll have his name by morning.
“Tell Erik—”
Three years of setting his place, and I don’t have the end of that sentence either.
“I’ll tell him myself.”
Brock nods and leaves it alone, which from him is a kindness with a price on it somewhere down the road.
He looks down the street, at nothing in particular. “Why’d you leave the room, Leif?”
I can’t answer him. I know I can’t and that’s a problem.
In all of our time together I’ve never once lied to these men and I don’t intend on starting now.
My hand finds the back of my neck and squeezes. He’s been toying with me since the moment he stepped out of the building tonight. Maybe before that.
I can’t tell him the moment I smelled her in the elevator I was done for. It wasn’t even the box at that point. And once I walked through her doorway, saw Erik’s hands on her…
After seeing those green eyes make their way toward me I knew I couldn’t stay.
Ten more seconds and those eyes would’ve gotten to mine.
That can’t happen. Not yet.
I don’t know what to do with her, which is new.
I don’t say any of it.
