Ryan (Mallick Brothers 2)

Part of me was thankful to him to ease her into being comfortable with someone other than her uncle and me and the Bry fuck.

The other part was irrationally jealous of how they connected, how he managed to get things out of her that I hadn't even thought to yet. For fuck's sake, I didn't even know she wrote for a living. Holding drugs for her friend was apparently just to supplement her income.

Her anxiety might have ripped her life from her, but she found a way to live other ones, to have adventures and connect with people.

After breakfast, Eli split, having his own plans for New Years Eve that put him with Mark and would likely involve too much alcohol and someone to kiss (and more) at midnight. Dusty insisted on cleaning and proved herself pretty damn stubborn in the process, so I answered a few emails in the living room.

Which was how I heard him when she didn't with the water running in the sink.

Bry.

I heard the knock and was on my feet in a blink.

"Be right back," I called. "Need to take a work call," I added, waving my phone as she gave me a smile and turned back to the dishes.

I walked into the hall, closing the door with a quiet click just as Bry pulled the door open to Dusty's apartment and stepped in the doorway. His entire body froze as soon as he did, his shoulders squaring, his hand on the knob gripping hard.

So he didn't hear me as I stepped across the hall. But he sure as fuck felt it when my hand spread wide and landed in the center of his back, shoving him forward hard and making him stumble into the wrecked apartment.

"The fuck..." he growled, whipping around as I stepped inside and closed the door, leaning against it. "Mallick?" he asked, stiffening. Then, maybe the only thing he could do to redeem himself, he looked around slowly. "What happened? Where is Dusty? She okay?"

"You know, generally, when you care about a woman, you don't put her in a position where she gets her apartment broken into, trashed, and gets a beating no woman should ever fucking be subjected to."

"Where the fuck is she?" he demanded, voice a rough growl from between his clenched teeth. He took a few threatening steps toward me but stopped before it became too much of a challenge. "Is she alright?"

"She's not fucking great with her swollen shut eye and her bruises and busted lip and..."

"Fuck," he cut me off on a loud growl, reaching out to grab what was closest to him, a book on the back of her couch, and throwing it across the room where it smashed into the wall and clattered to the floor. "Did she have to go to the hospital? She's probably fucking freaking the fuck..."

"She's not at the hospital," I cut him off.

So he did give a shit about her. I didn't get to see them together much, just his impatient slamming on her door on drop-off or pick-up days. It didn't give me the best image of the bastard. That and the fact that he would involve her in his illegal dealings didn't exactly shed him in the best light.

But judging by the way he froze about the wrecked apartment, that his immediate questions involved Dusty's wellbeing and not, say, the status of his stash, well, it said something about him.

"Then where is she? I want to see her."

"Why?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Because she's my fucking friend. Because she got beat up and she's not in her apartment. The apartment, I might add, that she hasn't left in years."

"She's at my place," I supplied, my voice empty.

"Why the fuck would she be at your place, man? She doesn't even know you. She sure as fuck doesn't know what you're involved in."

"She knows what you're involved in and she seems alright with that. As for the other point, she does know me. Bought me a Christmas present and everything."

He looked taken aback at that, his mouth falling open, two lines forming between his brows. "She's never mentioned you."

If I wasn't wrong, and I rarely was, he had a thing for her. Not just a 'she's my safe house for my drugs and I want her alive' thing or even a 'we grew up together' thing, but an actual thing. He wanted her. That was why he had touched her when he came in. And, knowing her as he seemed to, he must have understood her recoil from him.

Fucking unrequited love shit.

I almost felt bad for the fuck.

Almost.

But the woman he supposedly loved was in my goddamn apartment with her face fucked up because of a situation he put her in.

"Yeah, well, I'm a new development in her life."