Page 32 of Holiday Scars
He moved to Shane’s detail, running security drills, bouncing at Lennox’s club, and backing up Creed. I’ve only seen Jett when Rhys called in a favor to clean up a dead body at his apartment. Rhys has gotten himself into a situation with his neighbor. Dude hasn’t been himself.
When Jett walked into the apartment, I pretended not to look. Pretended I didn’t want him.
It’s been three weeks of pure hell.
Stavros moved back in because he had nowhere else to go. And his name is on the lease, so I had no recourse to kick him out. He sleeps sprawled across the couch, leaving traces of his expensive cologne everywhere. He drops hints of how good we were together, how easy it could be again.
Easy. Boring. Safe.
Every time Stavros touches my shoulder, I flinch. It’s not Jett.
Most nights, I work Connor’s torture tunnel, his little kingdom of pain. Even when some idiot who thought he was smarter than us gets taken apart piece by piece on Connor’s marble slab and screams for mercy, I just stand in the shadows and think about Jett and the way he used to look at me.
Like I meant something. Like I wasn’t the waste of space my father told me I was.
We’re in the home stretch of the holidays, and the city glitters with Christmas lights. I walk the streets to avoid going home to Stavros. Laughter spills out of bars, and couples kiss under the ginormous tree at Rockefeller. It all makes me miss Jett even more.
I hike past it all, because I don’t belong with happy people. I had my chance to be happy, and I blew it.
It’s like a sick cycle. When I was a kid, Christmas was just another day that my father passed out on the sofa with empty booze bottles on the cocktail table instead of milk and cookies for Santa. There were never any presents, no tree, no cocoa. Just the hum of a refrigerator on its last leg and the whistling of cold wind through the cracks in the windows.
And yet, this could have been the year I had it all. To spend it with a man I love. Instead, I’m spending it with a man I can’t stand. That is the worst kind of punishment. Because I had a choice.
Grateful that Stavros is out drinking with his banker buddies pretending he’s not broke from his bad choices, I lie on my bed, wishing sleep would claim me.
But my phone rings. Seeing it’s Rhys, I pick up immediately. “Yeah, boss?”
“I need you at my building,” he says, low and urgent.
“It’s past midnight.” I swing my feet to the floor. “Do you need backup? Clean up?”
“Bring a measuring tape,” he says.
That gives me my first chuckle in weeks. “You got it.”
When I get to Rhys’s luxury building, I come up short seeing Jett waiting out front, his warm breath puffs white against the cold.
My pulse spikes. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugs, barely looking at me. “Rhys called me.”
“Of course he did,” I mutter.
“He wanted the best. That’s still me,” Jett taunts me.
I spin to face him. “No one ever said you weren’t the best. But you left the enforcer team for a cushy wardroom and fancy townhouse leftovers like a dog.”
Jett’s mouth drops open, and then he laughs. “Is that what you think being a guard for Shane fucking Quinlan is?”
My chest tightens as I backpedal. “No. I’m just tired and fucking cold.”
And I miss you.But I can’t tell him that.
“Then get your ass in the lobby so we can see what kind of mess Rhys got into now.” Jett opens the door for me.
The security guard just waves us to the elevator, we’re here so much.
“He said to meet him on the seventh floor,” I say, using a card to activate the elevator.
