Still Waters (Greenstone Security 1)

Yet.

I sipped my coffee. “My brain is still firmly in my head. In fact, it was working correctly this morning after malfunctioning all last night,” I said, my cheeks heating up with the memory of it. My legs were tender everywhere. His touch remained, hours after he’d left the house. The memory of it was all I had, and that made the ice return.

“Were you not sucking face outside this very establishment not two months ago?” she accused, pointing her black-painted fingernail to the parking lot. “Two months,” she repeated for emphasis. “And yet, here I was, blissful ignorance.” She paused. “Well, not so ignorant considering I know he was into you in a big way, and obviously you were into him because you’re not blind. But I thought you did your ice thing.”

I frowned. “Ice thing?”

Rosie gave me a look. “Oh, come on, Luce. You know, the look that you get on your face even that bitch from that Frozen movie couldn’t replicate. You freeze them with it and they go running.” She paused, her face furrowing. “Keltan didn’t seem like a runner.”

The words hit me with a pain that I knew Rosie did not intend.

Because she didn’t have the words circling around in her head like poison.

“You’ve gotta save yourself. I’ve gotta let you. I’ll wait. And hope that’s gonna happen in time for you to realize that you’re not the only one who’s broken. And you’re not the only one you need to fix.”

Around and around.

I scowled at Rosie, eager to jump off that carnival ride currently playing in my head. “I do not.”

“Then why is it that some of the most attractive men in the country—heck, the world—have grown up with you and somehow not managed to do the horizontal tango with you? And it’s not because they don’t find you attractive. They aren’t blind,” Rosie said with a pointed look.

I ran my finger around the rim of my mug. “They haven’t slept with you either,” I accused, searching for a way out.

It was all I had been doing lately, it seemed. Searching for escape from the holes I found myself in.

She rolled her eyes. “Because I have a brother who would legitimately castrate them for doing so. It’s not from lack of trying, but they’re all just strangely attracted to their junk, which I can understand considering it’s the only thing I want them for anyway.” She sighed, cradling her mug. “Apart from Gage. I have a feeling his fuckery goes well beyond his male member, though I’m thinking even that would be a ride to hell and back.” She waggled her eyebrows at me. “In a good way.”

“What’s a good ride to hell and back?” a deep voice asked.

Both Rosie and I snapped our heads to the owner of the voice, who’d managed to sneak up on us since we were both so deep in conversation.

Luke’s twinkling eyes were focused on Rosie, and his hand rested easily on the belt that held his gun and badge.

Rosie proceeded to hastily put her cup down on the table, spilling coffee everywhere.

“Shitsack, ballfuck,” Rosie hissed, hastily mopping up the mess with her napkin, glaring at me for smirking and then glancing back up to Luke with fluttering lashes and a composed smile like the last ten seconds of frantic coffee mopping and awkwardness hadn’t happened.

His eyes twinkled more as he focused on her, his grin widening even more. “Those are some interesting curse words. Even I haven’t heard them, and I lock up criminals for a living,” he teased.

She blinked once. Then twice. Then her face turned hard, and the dreaminess from before was gone. “Yeah, well, I picked up a few things growing up with bikers who use ‘fuck’ like a comma,” she replied, doing an impression of my tone that even I couldn’t reproduce.

The easiness of the air was gone, replaced by the chasm that had always been between the two of them, even before Luke realized what he was missing.

His knuckles whitened as they no longer easily rested on the belt that held the badge, the shining and reflective piece of metal that seemed so small and insignificant before but now was larger than anything else in the room.

Even I, someone well versed in silence, and comfortable with it, found the following quiet unnerving. Because of the sheer amount of pain in it. On both sides.

A real Romeo and Juliet situation. One I would make sure didn’t end the same way. Happiness was what my friend deserved. I just couldn’t decide whether the man in front of us promised that or heartbreak.

Then again, it wasn’t my decision to make.

Luke cleared his throat. “Well, try not to scare too many children with your vocabulary.” His eyes went to the hastily mopped-up coffee, then to the white shirt Rosie was wearing, tucked into ripped white jeans and exposing a lacy bra underneath. “And be careful with flaming-hot liquids when wearing all white. We don’t want any wet T-shirt contests without proper permits.”