“Alaric, I don’t even know what this is yet,” I admitted. “He barely came over last night, but we’re scheduled to talk later his week.”
“Because I’m here?”
I nodded. “Yeah. He had wanted to come over tonight, but I told him you were visiting for a couple of days and we had to put it off.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He got mad.” I winced at the admission. “He didn’t like waiting so long to…clear things up.”
“Sounds like he might be worried you’re going to vanish again.”
“I didn’t vanish the last time, Alaric,” I pointed out. “I was bullied.”
“If you and Gage work things out, then that means there will never be any hope, will there?” he asked, the subject obvious.
“Alaric, there was never any hope of working things out with them,” I replied. “As long as I carried around this empty feeling, there was no way I’d have ever been able to forgive them.”
“I’m not pleading their case, Mystic,” he said. “But they miss you.”
“I don’t care, Alaric.” I told him, and realized I meant every word. “They listened to Margot’s accounts of my life without evenattemptingto believe me or take me at my word. They sat there and listened to whatever details Margot gave them and started judging me for it. They took someone’s word over mine and treated me like a leper. Screw that, Al.”
He gave me a sad nod but didn’t comment. He knew it was the truth and there was nothing he could say to change it. And even if I had been on good terms with my family, Gage being back in my life would have jeopardized that. The threats they had issued when I was younger were nothing compared to what they could do to his life now. However, he was no longer a teenage boy who couldn’t fight back. Gage was a grown man who didn’t take defeat easily.
Alaric stood up and took me in his arms. He kissed the top of my head before saying, “I love you, kiddo.” His arms tightened around me. “Just…just do me a favor andpleasebe careful, Mys.”
My arms wrapped around his waist. “Always.”
Chapter 32
Gage~
“Man, you sure are one foregone motherfucker.”
Lorcan and I were sitting at the bar of one of his many hotels located a couple of blocks from CI Headquarters, and I wasn’t trying to disguise my surly attitude at all. “Fuck you,” came my witty reply.
“I gotta admit,” he said, leaning further on the bar, “I never thought I’d meet the woman who fucked you up good. But now that I have, I can see how you lost your mind over her. She’s stunning.”
Mystic had always been a little on the curvier side, but her body now was a fucking work of art. I loved the cushion and she needed it if she was going to be expected to survive the abuse I planned on inflicting on her nightly. Her face, though…her face was pure perfection.
“That she is,” I agreed.
“She’s also smart as fuck, Gage,” he went on. “The projects she completed for Reagan were top-notch. She knows her shit.”
I glanced over at him and did nothing to hide my crazy. This man knew me better than anyone, and he still stuck around. I trusted him. “David Booker was assigned to work with her on the Darwin Project,” I told him. “And I don’t fucking like it.”
Lorcan let out a genuine laugh. “Man, oh, man,” he chuckled. “You got it bad, friend.”
“Of course, I do,” I snapped. “You’d know that better than anyone. You know what that woman means to me.”
“Why didn’t you just assign someone?” he asked. “That way you could have made sure her contact was another woman and not some guy.”
“Because I was trying to be professional, goddamn it.” I drained my whiskey and signaled the bartender for another one.
“Christ, Gage,” he muttered. “Just put a fucking ring on her finger already and call it a day.”
“You think I’m not going to?” I threw back.
His brows rose as he looked at me. “Before you lose your goddamn mind, preferably?”
