Page 19 of Finn

He drops his head back in exasperation. “What is with your lady hard-on for this guy? Didn’t you just fucking meet him?”

I shrug because I’ve been wondering the same damn thing myself. “Do you want the truth as I would give it to Jaz? Or a shortened version?”

He sneers. “Spare me.”

“He’s just nice, okay? And he owns his own business. Two of them.”

“Out of the goodness of my heart,” he interjects.

His gang leader persona is back, but at his core, my brother has a big heart so I’m going to keep at him. “My point is, who else has that?”

“Me.”

I roll my eyes. “You have to admit there are plenty of other worse options for me, and you’re making me pine for this guy like Romeo and Juliet when I haven’t even had a date with him to know if I should be this worked up. Regardless, you shouldn’t be punching him.”

My brother smirks as if he’s congratulating himself internally. Then it falls off his face as easily as it came. “How do you know about that?”

Shit. Well, I’m already in it, and I don’t want to lie to him again. I lift my chin in the air. “I may have gone to his gym today.”

He scrapes a hand over his cheek. “Really? After apologizing to me in a text, you went and did the exact opposite of what I’ve been asking you to do?”

“I had to apologizefor you.”

He barks out a laugh. “Fuck that, I meant to punch his ass. Asshole pissed me off.” He bends down to grab his cereal bowl and stomps off to the kitchen.

“Because he didn’t listen to you?”

“Yes,” he calls back sharply. “That’s exactly why.”

“Well, he’s not a Dragon. Duh.”

“Clearly,” he yells back as he rinses his bowl out.

I follow him, standing on the other side of the gray and silver marble-topped island. “Cole, you can’t throw your weight around inmylife like that. I’ll die an old, unmarried, cranky-ass woman.”

His shoulders sag. Spinning to face me, he leans against the sink. “His defiance pissed me off.”

“So you threaten their livelihood?”

“The livelihood I allow them to have? Yes.”

I drop my head to the side, letting him know just what I think about his pompous attitude.

He groans through a clenched jaw. “I don’t like him.”

“Because he didn’t listen to you.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much all I need to know.”

I glare at him. “Just don’t touch their businesses, Cole. That’s not fair.”

“Will you stay away?”

“Not likely.”

He shrugs as if to tell me I’m digging my own grave, but I get in his way when he comes around the island. “You need to be my brother right now, and not the leader of the Dragons.”

“It’s hard to be both,” he grinds out. “I see this city differently than you. You’re calling me a cockblocker, and you’re right. No one is good enough for you here. I don’t care if they’re not in a gang. The Heights breeds bad shit. If I wasn’t so selfish, I’d have moved you all away by now.”

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