Page 64 of Together We Burn
“Really?” I asked, glaring at him. “This is how we’re going to do this? Fake pleasantries and small talk? Cut the crap, Alex.”
Alex flinched like my words physically struck him, and my heart ached at the response.
Stay strong, Stevie.
“I never knew,” he said, looking down to the paper cup cradled in his big tattoo-covered hands. “I promise, Stevie. If I had, I would have told you straight away.”
“Like how you told me about Jake working for your brother ‘straight away?’” I asked, my fingers creating quotation marks as venom dripped from my question.
His gaze flicked to mine. Looking crestfallen, he tried to argue, “That was different, Stevie. You –”
“Different because it was you who was kept in the dark this time?” I scoffed, my grade-A bitch coming out in full force.
“That’s not fair. You were hurt. I–I thought I’d lost you.”
Silence hung heavy between us as Alex returned to scrutinising his cup like it held a set of instructions for mending our fractured friendship rather than coffee. Rocky came to lie on the floor between us, not picking sides.
“Jake swears you didn’t know,” I murmured, breaking the silence after what felt like an eternity. Alex looked hopeful as he glanced up and placed his cup on the coffee table. “And Mac? Did he know?”
He scrubbed a hand at the back of his neck and nodded. I closed my eyes and held my breath as a new wave of hurt lapped over me. At least one Jones brother, the one I called my best friend for fifteen years, was my friend out of true loyalty and love.
But the other… the one I would have believed hung the moon if he told me, the one I trusted with my virginity, the one who took charge and stopped me from free-falling into a dark abyss when I killed Ronan, was a fucking liar.
Alex moved closer, coming to sit beside me and taking my hand in his, squeezing it tight. I looked into his dark brown eyes and wished I hadn’t. Alex’s eyes always seemed like they could look deep into your soul and pull out your darkest desires or the secrets you wanted to keep hidden. On rare occasions, they were the gateways intohissoul.
He was hurting. Hurting worse than I’d ever seen, and it was because of a letter written by a man I hated.
“Where is he?” I asked, and Alex cocked his head questioningly. “Mac? Why is he not here now?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “He seemed pretty messed up last night when he came over, and that was before he found out about the letter. I think shit is going on with his club.”
Silence.
“It doesn’t change anything, Stevie,” Alex whispered, and I rolled my eyes. “He’d be here if he could. He loves you, Stevie, you have to know that. You’re his family. Mac couldn’t fake that, not even if he tried. I think that’s the reason he joined the Bulldogs.” I narrowed my eyes as Alex hung his head. “I hate that he agreed to do it in the first place and that he lied to us. But, I don’t think he gave Dad any information like he wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he wasn’t around as much. The older you got, the more he stayed away. Unless it was something big like homecoming or whatever,” he said with a shrug. “Then joining with his crew, Dad disowning him… He stopped hanging out with us, remember?”
He glanced over the living room toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. Another pregnant silence filled the room as I thought over Alex’s words. I never realised it at the time, but Alex was right. As soon as Mac turned eighteen, it was like he didn’t have time for us anymore.
Pushing up from the sofa, I walked toward the window and peered out.
“I’m tired, Alex,” I admitted after a pause. “So fucking tired of everything.”
I heard the sofa groan as Alex stood and was then at my side, the pair of us staring at the busy street below.
“I wished I’d never met you,” I whispered out loud, watching the wince ripple across Alex’s face in the reflection. “Thought that maybe if I hadn’t, my life would be different. But no matter which way I tried to envision that normal life, it looked boring as fuck.”
I laughed, leaning my head onto Alex’s shoulder. After a beat, his head tilted, and he rested his cheek on the crown of my head.
“Do you really want a normal life?” Alex quizzed, the reflection of his eyes looking down to meet mine in the glass.
I shrugged. “I’m an assassin for Carlin Valley’s most influential man. Normal isn’t a luxury I can afford.”
Alex shifted, grabbing my shoulders and turning me, so we were face to face.
“What if there was a way out, Stevie?”
