Page 106 of Bounced!

“I’m serious, you don’t have to put in a dime. You’re already . . . we’re . . . it feels weird taking your money when you’re already my—”

“Mark, stop.” I put my hand over his, over the cup he was strangling. “I want in.”

He blinked. “You don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to. That’s the whole point. Listen to me, please.” I turned his hand over, laced my fingers through his. I made myself say it plain, because this one mattered. Eighteen months ago, I would have found a door and left before I let myself want anything this much. But this was eighteen months and two truck rides later. “For years, I stood at that door and made sure I owned nothing and belonged to no one. That was my whole plan, to never buy in, to never put my name on anything I couldn’t walk away from, to never put myself at risk. It was the loneliest way to live, and this ridiculous bar—this ridiculous family—broke me of it against my will.” I squeezed his hand. “So don’t you dare try to protect me from this. I don’t want to be the boyfriend who came with the owner. I want my name on it, same as Rod, same as Benji, same as everybody who decided to love this place out loud. I want to buy in, Mark. I’ve earned the right. Let me.”

Mark gazed at me for a long moment. I watched understanding dawn, watched him get that “letting me put my money down” was the same lesson he’d just spent months learning from the other side.

“Ours,” he said.

“Ours.” I lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles. “Legally and on paper this time. Put my name on it, Delgado. I’m done just standing in the damn doorway.”

He grinned, that big, helpless one, and Dosty, sensing an emotional moment he hadn’t been consulted on, rose from the bar floor and wedged himself between us and demanded to be involved. Mark laughed and reached down to haul the dog half into his lap. I sat there, buying into a bar I’d sworn I’d never let myself need, and thought, This was on the other side of the door. This was always on the other side.

I just had to be dumb enough and lucky enough—and loved enough—to finally walk through it.

Chapter 36

Mark

Ithought, when the guys saved the bar, that I’d finally earned a little peace.

For about a week, I had.

The paperwork sailed through once Finn and I decided to open the bar up for investment. One by one, the family bought in, some in small slices, a couple of them bigger than I expected. Rod put in for a real piece, fierce about it, because “a man does not cook seven years in kitchen he doesn’t own a part of.” Benji invested his jar. None of us expected that jar to contain a key to a bank’s safe deposit box in which he kept his grandmother’s jewelry, important papers, and a small stack of bearer bonds, the kind no one in their right mind kept in paper form anymore. Outside of Finn and me, Benji secured the largest ownership share, which seemed oddly appropriate for our neon-headed boy. Jacks bought a tiny wedge and immediately started calling himself “an owner” to customers in a way that made Finn wince—and grin. Adrian took a modest share and signed the papers without a word. Still, he signed them, which was its own kind of speech.

And Dante, my beautiful, giant Dante, put his name down alongside the rest, same as everybody, exactly the way he’d insisted. There was no boyfriend discount or special treatment. He was a co-owner of Barbacks in his own right.

The bar belonged to the people who’d bled for it, on paper this time, in every way that mattered.

So, I thought I’d have peace.

I had not accounted for Rod and his endless mission we’d all thought abandoned, because no amount of miracle was going to make Rod drop his obsession with the back print marring his glorious Reina.

About a week into the new year, into us being saved, still feeling the giddy, exhausted relief of it all, he called a family meeting.

Not Finn. Not me.

Rod called the meeting.

He stood at the pass with a red manila folder, which was alarming on its own, because Rod didn’t own folders. We waited until the whole family had gathered for our pre-shift setup, and then he set the folder down like a prosecutor.

“I solved crime,” he announced, verbose as ever.

“Solved what?” Benji asked, with the innocence of a man who knew exactly what had been solved.

“The molestation of my beloved.”

Rod flipped the folder open. There were—God help us—photographs of the back print on Reina, shot from various angles, blown up to eight by ten. Somebody had waited at a drugstore kiosk for these, then used a red Sharpie to circle incriminating sections of the images.

“Four months, I investigate. Four months, I say nothing. Four months, I watch, I wait, I study. And now—” He tapped the photo. “Now I know who humped my queen.”

Benji snorted at the word “humped.”

Jacks cocked his head. He was such a good boy.

Dante, beside me, went very stiff and very still. I felt it happen, the specific stillness of a man who had been getting away with something and just heard the clock run out.