Page 149 of Shattered Veil

She giggled, my hand fell back to my lap, and Claire announced:

“I have been waiting for this to be official public knowledge!”

“Waiting for what to be public knowledge?” Shawn’s voice came from my right, and I turned to him, surprised.

“Oh—hey.”

“Hi, everyone,” he greeted the table, and then fixed his gleeful gaze on me. “What, did you not hear me come in? Didn’t hear that little ring of the bell above the door ’cause you were all…” He mimed embracing someone, his arms hanging in thin air as he comically moaned, closed his eyes, and licked.

Luke chortled, and as Shawn moved to sit down beside me in the third chair gathered around the head, I mumbled, “It wasn’t that brazen, but something like that.”

Shawn pointed at Claire. “If you’re talking about Jassie—”

I grumbled, “Oh, God.”

Cassie laughed—loudly.

Claire’s eyebrows shot up as she questioned, “Jassie?”

“Mhm,” he hummed, moving his finger to gesture toward me and Cassie. “These two. If you were talking about waiting for them to be public knowledge, ya should have been hanging with me.”

She replied, “What is that supposed to mean?!”

Shawn shrugged. “Let’s just say that I like to be in the inner circle of all things Jassie.”

Claire squinted. “Inner circle as in…”

“As in, if ya wanted to debrief—”

“Shawn.”

Without taking his eyes from Claire, he casually chastised, “Don’t first-name me, Jay,” and didn’t skip a beat before continuing, “I’ve got notes. Receipts. Happenings over the last two…three weeks?”

Claire nearly yelled, “Weeks?!”

Shawn bobbled his eyebrows at her. “But the last few days or so? Zip. Zero. Nada. Sounds like you’re not getting the full story from these two, either—we should compare notes.”

“We’re happily living in the present, thank you,” I reminded him. “No need to gossip here.”

“Well, go on, then!” she ushered him.

“Ah-ah,” Shawn stopped her with an index finger in the air. “Not now—I’d hate to activate his grump gene.”

Claire snatched her phone from the table. “Give me your number, Shawn.”

“Brooks,” he corrected her quickly and began to rattle off his cell number. He then asked Luke in an all-too-playful coo, “You wanna join in on the fun?”

Beer half-lifted to his mouth, Luke snorted, took his time taking his sip, set his glass down with a clunk, and upon realizing that Shawn was expectantly awaiting a response, he responded:

“Oh, you were serious. Ah—no. No.” Seeing the side-eye that Claire shot his way, he gently added, “No, thank you.”

“Suit yourself,” Shawn told him with a shrug. “Now—more importantly—this.”

He waved a hand so close to my face that he almost struck me, and I flinched out of his way.

“I told you,” I chastised him. “I was mugged.”

“Yes, you said so,” he remarked with skeptical eyes. “But where? When? How? Weren’t you sick? Someone mugged a poor, sick guy?”

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