Page 51 of Blackbeard
I huffed. “Killjoy.”
He chuckled and took a breath to reply when something clattered in the kitchen. Blackbeard pushed me behind him, angling his body in front of me, protectively. The fatigue that had clouded my brain a moment ago vanished, replaced with prickly alertness.
“Is anyone home?” he called.
Silence.
Blackbeard grumbled under his breath and reached behind him, curling his fingers around his pistol’s handle, tucked into the back of his waistband.
“Stay here,” he said. “It’s probably a cousin, raiding my fridge in the middle of the night.”
Liar, I thought.
If that was true, he wouldn’t be approaching with a gun in hand. Blackbeard silently crept toward the kitchen and flicked the light on.
“Hey, brother.”
Torch’s voice.
Shit.
I was on the move, skidding to a stop inside the kitchen, next to Blackbeard.
Torch propped his boots up at the kitchen table, tipping his head back as he drained a bottle of beer. Dirty plates and containers of leftover food littered the table before him. He’d been camped out for a while, waiting for Blackbeard to come home.
“Hi, Leigh,” Torch said, tipping his head at me with acknowledgement. “Thought I’d swing by to see how you were doing. Popeye hasn’t heard from you since…you know.”
Since I got shot.
I snorted. Dad hadn’t called or texted me, hadn’t made an attempt to contact me in any way. Except for that one visit afterI was shot, and his primary concern then had been his contract, not my well-being.
“What do you want, Torch?” I demanded briskly.
He shrugged.
“I was hoping we could talk privately. One-on-one. Catch up, have a beer together like old times.”
Ah. So that’s what this was about. Torch missed me.
I studied him for several seconds—his jawline dusted with golden-brown stubble, his dark blue eyes, his barrel chest and thick, strong arms. Objectively, he was handsome, and I understood the appeal I had harbored for him in the past as a fuck buddy.
But I couldn’t conjure up a single speck of that appeal now. Which was strange. To tumble back into bed with him would have been easy.
Blackbeard had diligently steered clear of sex for weeks, apart from that one time after our marriage. I should have been eager to run into Torch’s arms for an orgasm that didn’t come from my vibrator, for once.
Instead, I remained rooted to the spot.
“Go home, Torch,” I said softly. “I’m married now. My place is here.”
Only for a year, at most.But that wasn’t the point.
We had never discussed my willingness to enter into this arrangement. Torch and I weren’t officially…anything. We didn’t have a label, and we didn’t sleep together with any kind of regularity. I wouldn’t exactly call usfriends. And we certainly weren’t dating.
But he showed up when I needed something—a listening ear, an extra hand moving boxes into my apartment, or a quickie on the couch.
I couldn’t say that there was any warmth or affection between us. But we had developed a well-trodden path througheach other’s lives, and now…now my life had taken a sharp turn, veering off into Blackbeard’s world with his club and his family.
Maybe after the Blackjacks crumbled, after the marriage contract was nullified, I could settle back into my old, familiar ways with Torch.
