Page 50 of Triple Threat

“Aye, it is, and aye, we’ve shared everything including blood.” I felt my chest tighten. There had been an ugly go-round over that – him admitted for what they thought was a previously unnoticed heart condition, me dealing with internal bleeding, and we were a match. Watching him convince a VA nurse and a doctor that he could be a donor despite all of his medicalconcernswas proof enough for me that his jokes about going freelance could actually work.

“So, what’s the difference if the thing we share between us happens to be a woman?” he asked casually. “I mean as long as she’s okay with it, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

“That is going to be the hard sell, Lach,” I said.

“Do you think you can sell that to her? Can you make it an order? I think she respects you more than me. All she really remembers is a younger version of myself. Just a cocky, headstrong boy who was always picking fights and getting his scrawny ass handed to him.”

“I find some of that hard to believe.” I laughed.

“But I think she really cared for that dumbass I used to be, and maybe I need to find some of that kid I used to be.” He looked down at his Italian leather shoes, almost penitent.

“I was going to give her the option to leave, I thought you should know,” I said. “There’s a bag in the Aston, a few grand in small bills, some clothes… if she wanted to go.”

“I take it she didn’t want to leave.” He smiled.

“She wanted Burger World, to eat from the front of the restaurant instead of from the dumpster.” I gave a shudder. “And we’re having that duck tonight, assuming you didn’t already eat it.”

“You know that’s how you tame a stray, warm place to sleep, and hot meals.” He gave me a nod. “And that’s how you’ll be able to hook her with the idea of us sharing her, like a timeshare but not like a fucking horrible real estate deal.”

“I’ve never done bad investments. How does your version of this work?”

“Three days a week, she’s mine. The next three days, she’s yours,” he said.

“And on the seventh day?”

“And on the seventh day, Sadie rests. The day is hers to do what she wants.”

“Magnanimous of us, giving her a whole day off.” I laughed.

“It’s not like anything she’ll do on those six days with us will qualify as labor. She’s not a worker or employee. If I want to do something with her, I set it up for my time, you want to do something, on your time.”

“That actually makes sense,” I admitted.

“Of course, it does. We’ve always been able to handle anything that’s come our way.”

"Aye, that we have," I agreed, although this was still something completely different, wasn't it?

Chapter Sixteen

Sadie…

I waited in the kitchen for the men to return and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed when the door leading to the garage opened and Roan was the only one to step through. The whining roar of an expensive engine starting outside clinched it that Kyle wouldn’t be coming back… at least not anytime soon. I sighed and felt my shoulders drop.

Roan looked at me, a war of emotions on his face, not all of them readily definable.

“You were hoping to speak with him?” he asked in his crisp British accent, and I nodded without saying anything.

He nodded and said crisply, “He’ll be back. Perhaps not tonight, but sooner rather than later.”

“Is… is he going to kill someone?” I asked softly, and I was still struggling mightily that my Kyle would go that far and so easily.

“No,” Roan said with a reassuring smile that was entirely too brittle for my liking. I didn’t honestly know how to feel about Roan and how he helped Kyle to kill people – it was all so Hollywood and dramatic. I mean, things like this didn’t really happen in real life, did they?

Life imitating art or art imitating life, Sadie… honestly, what do you think?

The voice in my head sounded suspiciously like Kyle’s, only from when we were kids. Just another lesson in street smarts, I guess. He’d forever been ‘educating’ me on how life ‘really worked.’

I guess some things really never did change.

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