Page 37 of The Hangman's Rope

I raised an eyebrow at that, and said, “Oh?”

He gave me a meaningful look and let his eyes dart up the hallway and back to me. I nodded. He was right. We’d flirted with being overheard and hurting her feelings or scaring her even more enough for today. If she hadn’t already overheard us already.

I went in and finished getting dressed, leaving him to do his work with a lift of my chin.

He threw some chin back, and off I went into my bedroom to look up at the corner above my rigger’s stand at the new white camera up there.

I sighed thinking to myself,even in the bedroom, huh? Fuck.

There were no lights, so it wasn’t operational yet.

I pulled an older, threadbare, and faded tan henley over my head and down over my stomach. Dropping onto the end of my bed, I worked on putting on some socks, while I thought about things, trying like hell to work them out in my own head.

I wanted to go for a ride but felt like I couldn’t.

That morphed into imagining what it would be like to ride with Lorelai behind me.

I had some thoughts on that… none I wanted to let see the light of day.

Part of my issue was I’d never been so damn comfortable with having someone in my space before.

She was this glorious shade that haunted this place with her beautiful melancholy, but when she smiled and that malaise of sadness and distress eased off of her for a minute? I didn’t think I’d ever seen such a beautiful and vibrant creature. The glimpses of that woman were exceedingly rare at this point, but she was in there, and she made me wonder if that was predominantly theherofbefore…

If it was,shit, the motherfuckers who’d dulled her sparkle deserved to die slow alright. Days to even months slow if at all possible.

It took Requiem almost the whole day to put up and wire up the apartment’s new system and to bring it online.

I had to spend some time out in the cemetery doing my thing, I made sure to get on back to the old caretaker’s house to fix some lunch for the three of us, only to find Lorelai in the kitchen almost done making a big bowl of salad to go with the sandwiches she’d crafted out of what she’d found in my fridge and cupboards.

Requiem and she seemed to be getting on pretty well. Definitely better than Specter and she had. Hell, even way better than she and Syn had – both of which I laid squarely on my brothers’ attitudes, considering Lorelai was as sweet and demure a good girl from next door type as she could be.

There was honestly nothingCruel Intentionsabout her that I could see. She grew up rich, but she didn’t seem to have the head for the mind games the rich kids liked to play with each other.

Fuck knows, the lot of us had seen plenty of that shit growing up among the elite at the fucking boarding school we’d all been unceremoniously dropped into so our parents didn’t have to be bothered.

I felt a pang of guilt. I knew that my mom wasneverbothered by raising me, my dad on the other hand? Big inconvenience. It was like he couldn’twaituntil I was eighteen and not his problem anymore. Fuck, no matter how high I’d reached, no matter what achievement I’d made, none of it was ever good enough for him.

When I’d joined the military, I’d hoped he’d finally be proud of me… and to be fair, he was for a minute. The optics of his son going off to be some big heap American war hero had made him all sorts of proud – until I’d come back a broken man.

Sometimes I genuinely thought that my surviving is what disappointed him the most.

That if I’d died, he would have been able to hold that up somehow – his great sacrifice for his country. Losing his only son… my life sure as fuck didn’t make one bit of fucking difference to him. I was sure he’d all but cut me out of his will. I was surprised to find out he hadn’t when he’d kicked off.

Fuck that guy…

I wish my mom would’ve left him. Or that he’d have kicked sooner like Fear’s old man, leaving her out of it… neither were in the cards it seemed. I mean, I could’ve been so fucking lucky, right?

I was down, closing the gates, when I saw the girls coming. Walking up the street loaded with shopping bags, laughing, and talking.

I finished securing the padlock and big chain and sighed, putting my hands on my hips, and waiting for them to reach me.

“What’re you three troublemakers up to?” I called out as Madisyn, Lainey, and Valory all laughed.

“We come bearing gifts,” Valory called holding her shopping bags up.

“Ah, yeah?” I called back. “You clear this with Original Syn?”

Madisyn looked annoyed, Lainey looked uncertain, and Valory, bless her heart, just looked as affable as ever with just a hint of mischief.

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