Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

It took him a second to get that she was hitting on him. Normally he was quicker, but he had a ton of stuff on his mind. “Oh, I can’t do that,” he informed her. “I’m basically engaged.”

“You are?” she asked, her gaze flicking to me and then back to him.

“Yeah. I asked, it was a yes. We’ve just gotta pick a time to get it done.”

“You’re getting married?” She was flabbergasted, if her tone and how wide her eyes got were any indication.

“Yeah,” he said, looking from her back to me. “Stay here while I go say bye to Rose and her mom.”

“’Course.”

He left quickly and I was alone with Danita.

“Is he marrying you?” she asked cautiously.

Normally I would have remained silent, but I was too proud of calling Ian mine. “At some point, yeah.”

I watched her absorb the news, saw her brow furrow, lips press tightly together, eyes going vacant in that empty expression people had when they were completely lost in thought and aware of nothing else. In moments she was back, her gaze laser focused on me.

She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. I’m just surprised yeah?”

I nodded.

“I didn’t know he was—and Ian’s not—I mean, I’ve always had a stereotype in my head about what gay men look like and act like,” she confessed, clearly flustered, going by the flush of pink on her cheeks and her fluttering hands as she spoke.

“Sure.”

She gestured at me. “You don’t look gay.”

I shrugged. “Gay isn’t just one kind of person.”

“No, I know,” she said, sounding almost irritated, but I was guessing more with herself than with the situation. “I—but you know what I mean—what I’m trying to say.”

I coughed softly. “I think we’re back to those stereotypes you were talking about.”

“Yes,” she agreed, inhaling fast. “Yes.”

Some people wouldn’t have taken the moment, wouldn’t have done any self-examination at all, so it was sad, really, that I wouldn’t get to know her better because of the choice she’d made with Ian that inadvertently nearly cost him his life.

“He loves you?”

“Yes.”

“He likes being with you, then,” she said, and it was more rhetorical than anything else. “So that could be why… I mean, maybe that’s why he didn’t want me. Maybe that’s why he never did anything but kiss me.”

She must not have realized a lot of people were clustered closer than she thought—the living room was only so big—or she’d never have let loose with that confession. As soon as the words were out and she saw me lift my eyebrows—even before I glanced right and then left—in that exact second, she got it, what she’d said, and she lifted her hand to her mouth, covering it, as though that could possibly help.

Odell gasped from behind me. “Wait. What?”

I turned to look at him, and him at me. I saw new anguish there, along with betrayal and so much anger.

“He fuckin’ should’ve said.”

But Ian felt like the thought itself was enough to be punished for. He’d planned on seducing his brother’s wife, and the guilt over that, to him, was the same as carrying out the act. I knew him, knew how his mind worked, and that was the reason for his silence and the acceptance of the judgment passed.

At the same time, though, when he got back, he was purged of the sin and left their company without a backward glance. That too was Ian. Once you were square, he was vapor, and there was no more talking after that. Had Eddie Laird not died, he would have never seen these men again. They were all still carrying him with them, still burdened with their guilt. But to Ian the debt was settled, and he never gave any of them a second thought. As I took in the faces of the men around me, all looking shell-shocked and pained, knowing what they were party to—especially Delaney, who sank into the closest chair to him—I had a moment of peace. I loved closure, and I was thinking Eddie Laird did too.

“Let’s go,” Ian called from the front door, refocusing my attention on him and off the stunned crowd around me before he slipped out.

The four other marshals and I went and hugged and kissed Rose and Janice before we left and were standing outside together on the front porch moments later. Ian was there, taking deep breaths, smiling.

“You all right?” I asked, joining him a few steps away from the others.

“Yeah.”

“Feeling vindicated?”

He shook his head. “No. I did a shitty thing, but I paid for it.”

I moved closer to him. “We’re gonna need to talk about everything.”

His grunt was more of a groan.

“I know how much you love that, but I need to know.”

“Fine. I’ll talk, then you.”

“Me?”

He motioned with his finger to include all of my face. “Cochran.”

“Right. It’s a deal,” I said hoarsely, because listening to Ian recount horrors perpetrated on him always turned me inside out.