Leaning back in his chair, he crossed his right leg over his other knee and glared at me. “I’m not likely to want to help you and your brothers if my daughter isn’t happy, and Lola isn’t happy right now, Stefan. What do you plan to do about this?”
Had he, in not so many words, told me to go back to fucking his daughter? My shoulders sagged as the realization that he’d done just that settled into my brain. Now was the time for me to take a stand and tell this fuck to take his thinly veiled threats of not helping us and shove them up his ass.
But then the thought of Cash and Olivia’s wedding popped into my head. For the first time in years, my brother was happy. How could I do anything to ruin that happiness? How could I be the one to take that happiness from him for the second time in his life? If I could just play off Shank and Lola until the wedding or until Cash convinced that councilman to help us, I’d be able to finally make up for all the pain I’d caused him.
“Don’t worry, John. I hear you loud and clear.”
He studied me for a long moment and then grinned as if what I’d said made him happy. As if some guy telling you he’ll go back to fucking your daughter over his desk was a good thing.
“Good to hear it, son. I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
Standing, he extended his hand to shake mine, and I reluctantly touched his skin, sure I should boil my hand immediately after.
“Nice to see you again, John.”
Shank headed toward the door and turned around just before he left. “You know what’s best about you, Stefan? Where Cassian is principled and Kane is just fucking scary, you’re a man I can deal with because you’re always looking out for your own hide. You take after me that way. I’ll be sure to tell Lola you said hi.”
The door closed behind him and I sat back in my chair stunned at his description of me. More accurate than not, it sickened me. But he wasn’t wrong. I’d looked out for myself and not given a fuck about anyone else for so long I deserved to be thought of as someone like him.
But now I didn’t want to be that person anymore. I had the best reason in the world not to be.
FOR THE first time in my life, I couldn’t say I was sure about what I should do. The time Stefan and I had spent together, first as friends and now as so much more, made me happier than I’d ever been with a man. He brought out things in me I didn’t know existed. Countless friends and boyfriends had tried everything from pleading to cajoling to threatening to get me on the water, and never once had I been able to push aside my fears and join them. Like my fear of enclosed spaces, my dread of water had been with me for as long as I could remember.
But Stefan had walked in on those fears and before each one of them could make their case so he’d leave and let them win, he took my hand and pulled me out of where they reigned supreme to go with him. He never told me where we were going but just that he’d be there with me. Never before had that been enough.
A voice in the back of my mind whispered now, “Will it always be enough?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? Right now, Stefan made me smile and laugh, and if I didn’t think about the future, I wanted things to last forever with him.
But they couldn’t.
I had to leave soon. But even more—even if I didn’t have to leave—could what we were now ever last?
Someone knocking at my door roused me from my thoughts and I wondered if Stefan had left his mother’s early. I hurried to answer it and saw Carrie waiting on the other side with a bottle of my favorite wine and two glasses.
“I’m here to celebrate!”
“Did I do something and I don’t know yet?” I asked as I stepped aside to let her in.
“Not you! Me. I found out who the thief was and took care of her stealing ass. So I wanted to celebrate and since you’ve been routinely avoiding my calls, texts, and every other attempt to get together, I figured I’d come over and tempt you with something I knew you wouldn’t say no to. Where’s the corkscrew?”
“Carrie, I have work in a few hours. I can’t drink now.”
Giving me one of her trademark pouts, she said, “Not even a glass? Don’t be such a philistine. Europeans drink with every meal, or so I hear. You need to get practicing for when you go there.”
I rolled my eyes and smiled. “I can do one glass, but that’s it. One. No more.”
On her way to my kitchen to open the bottle, she yelled back, “Fine. One is enough, and while we’re celebrating, you can catch me up on all the things I’ve missed in your life since you’ve been avoiding me.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you,” I mumbled, silently acknowledging that since I’d been devoting so much time to Stefan that it probably looked like I was avoiding her. She returned with two glasses of wine and handed me one. “I’ve just been busy with a few things.”
Clanking my glass, she asked, “Cheers! Anyone I know or want to know?”
I took a sip and nodded. “Stefan March and I have been—” I didn’t exactly know how to put it. “—dating, I guess.”
Stunned at my announcement, Carrie began choking on her drink and spilled half the glass of wine down the front of her shirt. “Dating? He’s a player, Shay. They don’t date.”
“I’m just telling you what he calls it. We’re dating.”
“Why does it sound like you’re reporting the death of someone when you say that?” she asked as she dabbed a cloth on her wine-stained shirt. “Aren’t people usually happy to say they’re dating someone new?”
“I am. I just don’t know if this is something I should be doing right now.”
Carrie screwed her face into a grimace. “Why? You said he was great in bed. What’s the problem?”
“Do you ever think of anything but sex? You’re as bad as a man whore.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Shay, you’re leaving in a few weeks, remember? That was the reason you said you couldn’t get serious with poor Elliot. As long as you’re having a good time with Stefan, what’s the problem? You’ll leave right after Christmas and he’ll go back to doing his thing after you both had a few good weeks together. Isn’t that what you want?”
The thought of Stefan going back to “doing his thing” made my stomach twist into knots. I hated the idea of him being that person I loathed from the moment I met him. That person was so much less than the man I’d seen in the recent weeks. Would he revert back to that man whore once I was gone?