Page 33 of If This is Love

I resisted the urge to make a face.

Yeah,everybodywas going to knowall aboutthis. Brennan and Skye were going to hear all about this, then Luke would hear all about it, thenChloewould, and then they were all going to join forces with Liza and Connor to try to finagle something. Because that’s what people did for fun in a place like Algiers Point. And they could go ahead and do all that. It wouldn’t matter or make a difference anyway.

I had too much wrong with me. Ruth might’ve been giving off a certain kind of vibe with me, but that’s because we’d known each other for a handful of days. She also clearly had some kind of serious shit in her history that was probably too much for a guy like me to be able to handle. She needed someone who could truly take care of her, and again, I was basically half a man.

So my nosy-ass friends could go ahead and say all the shit they wanted, but it wasn’t going to change anything.

10

GABE

UPPER NINTH WARD, NEW ORLEANS

She couldn’t be friggin’ serious about this.

Gunner and I stood in front of a dilapidated, rotted-out, flood-damaged building complex that was masked by a forest of runaway weeds. And this hot mess was the location Skye and Brennan had chosen to be the headquarters and facility for their new charity.

I reached down to rub Gunner’s head, surveying the grounds from the parking lot while I waited for them and Ruth to show up, and sighed listlessly. The sight of the buildings filled me with a couple of kinds of dread. One being that Skye chose it because she thought the buildings could just be cleaned up and reused. Unless ahugesurprise was waiting for me behind those walls—you know, like themnotbeing infected to all hell with mold and being structurally sound—all of this would have to be bulldozed.

The other kind of dread was what I wouldn’t be surprised to find in there. Clearing buildings in parts of New Orleans wasn’t all that different from clearing buildings in Iraq.

The sound of a car pulling into the lot made me glance over my shoulder, and I squinted incredulously.

That was Luke’s car. What the hell was he doing here? This was supposed to be a site visit with Brennan and Skye, and Ruth was coming along as the new director.

I approached the car as he and Chloe stepped out. “Hey.” I eyed their expressions. “What’s going on? What are y’all doing here?”

“Hey, bruh,” Luke said, approaching me and slapping the side of my shoulder. “Everything’s all good. I was just giving Chlo a ride because Icannow that I’ve got my badass sales job.” He chuckled as he bent down to rapidly drum Gunner’s haunches with his hands. “No more shift work, no more shift work,”he chanted, patting with the beat of his words. “No more shift—”

“Comeon, Luke.Jesus,” I growled. “Stop that. He’s not apet.”

Gunner turned his head to offer Luke a tongue-lolling grin while he leaned into the storm of pats.

I huffed at them both. “You’re getting soft with age, old man.”

“No, he’sno-ot,” Luke cooed, still patting.

Chloe offered me an amused smile as she reached to touch the side of my arm in greeting. “Yeah, I’m still just following Skye around a lot of the time, but now it’s to get video content for social media.” She held up her phone, which had all kinds of extra shit attached to it, including a mini version of one of those fluffy microphones. “All I ever wanted to do was write great news stories, but now reporters have to be vloggers, too, apparently.”

I smirked and then gestured at the literal urban jungle in front of us. “And I thought I was here to build a facility, not contain New Orleans’ own Chernobyl or whatever the fuck this bullshit is all about.”

“Yeah, goodGod,” Luke chimed in. “Weren’t they planning to demolition all of this years ago?” He rubbed his hand across his face. “And what the hell is that smell?”

“The buildings, baby brother.” I lifted my black Saints ballcap to scrub my hair while I kept staring at the overgrowth. “There’s probably all kinds of carcasses in there, all kinds of actualshit, and a bunch of stuff that’s probably been growing mold since Katrina.”

Luke shuddered, his brows drawing together. “Sick.”

“Yeah.” I slapped my hat against the thigh of my jeans and stepped away from them to approach the chain-link fence and get a closer look through the overgrown weeds. Some of it was even taller than me. There were at least a dozen red brick buildings that I could see; probably more hidden behind those and amidst the brush.

I’d seen dozens of places just like this scattered all across the greater New Orleans metro area for years. Real estate that had just been sitting there rotting and drowning in swamp grass for years because nobody had the money or interest to fix it. Just like all the others, nature had steadily reclaimed this spot over the nearly two decades since the hurricane. Faded graffiti covered the sides of each structure. Some windows were boarded up and some were black holes of jagged shattered glass. The roof was partially caved in or missing entirely on nearly every building, exposing the interiors to years upon years upon years of the suffocatingly-humid subtropical climate. Other than the graffiti, the buildings had been untouched, so God only knew what sorts of horrors lurked just behind the brick walls.

I stepped back a couple of paces, eyeing the property. “There’s no way she wants to try to keep those buildings.”

The crunch of tires on poorly maintained asphalt caused me to turn from the fence just in time to see Brennan’s sick-as-fuck silver BMW roll up with a throaty growl from deep in its engine. He pulled up next to my truck and shifted into park. The passenger side door swung open, and then Liza stepped out.

I blinked, my head tilting to one side. She hadn’t been on the invite list for this either, and I had no idea why Brennan had broughtherwith him instead of Skye, but never mindthat.

“Hey!” Luke hollered. “Where’s Skye? What are you even doing here?”

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