“Wow.” I felt like an idiot for jumping to conclusions. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, and it made me squirm. “Tell me, sugar. Why are you so upset?”
“Why?” I went to the wall and fiddled with the buttons for the intercom system to the observation room.
“Yeah. All you want with us is sex. It shouldn’t matter that I’ve gone to jail if all you want me for is my dick.”
My spine stiffened. “That’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I have to get back to work.” I didn’t like this feeling. Remorse, a dash of shame and a whole hell of a lot of confusion.
“You might want just a fling,” he began. “It can’t be just that for you. You care. Otherwise you wouldn’t give a shit about this.”
I pursed my lips, squinted my eyes shut, clenched my fist. He was right.
“Sugar, it’s okay to care.”
I couldn’t listen to him any longer. He was getting through to me in a way no one else had in years. I didn’t like the helplessness, the sense of vulnerability. “I’ve got to go.” I hung up, took a deep breath, then another.
Fuck.
I groaned, looked up at the ceiling. I cared for Finch. Shane, too. Too much, obviously, if I felt more than just sexual pleasure with them. I was in such big trouble.
FINCH
“You sure she’s coming?” Shane asked, checking his watch for the tenth time in five minutes. He paced across his living room as I watched.
I wasn’t any calmer, but there wasn’t room for both of us to wear out his wood floor, so I sat on the couch, my feet up on the coffee table. As soon as Eve hung up this morning, I’d called Shane. Pissed.
I couldn’t believe she’d held the assault against me. Besides the fact I’d done the time, the whole thing had been rigged. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to read the report and know that the system had been out to get me. I hadn’t gone to Cutthroat Academy. I’d woken up before dawn to do chores with the animals. I’d never been destined for the Ivy Leagues or to work for a hedge fund so I could buy a ski-in, ski-out mansion on the slope. Shelly’s family were farmers, so she and I had been a lot alike. It didn’t matter that we helped our families. None
of that mattered because Andy Wade had been a pussy and his father hadn’t wanted it known he’d had to beat up on a woman to feel good about himself. It had all been tossed onto me.
I’d been too wild. Too angry. Too dumb to know better. So I’d gone to jail. What the record hadn’t shown was what had happened since then. Shelly was married now with two kids living on a ranch near Great Falls, happy. Andy Wade had been put into rehab twice before he was twenty-five and was now doing five years for selling cocaine. Daddy hadn’t been able to get him out of that one.
“She texted at lunchtime and wanted to meet. Thanks for offering to do it here.” I looked around his place. Landscape photos on the walls. Basic furniture. “It’s handy that it’s just down the street from the station. No way do I want her changing her mind on her drive out to my place.”
“No problem. Sometimes I forget I even have it.” Shane stopped, glanced about.
I looked around some more. “I think the last time I stayed here was over the summer when we went to that beer festival.”
There was a knock on the door, and Shane rushed to open it. He let Eve in.
“Sorry, I’m a little behind. Mac called and said my car was fixed. I guess it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I went and picked it up.” She looked around. “Explain to me how you have this place and you never stay here,” she said as Shane took her coat and hat.
“I bought the place after college but quickly learned that when my dad was in town, the paparazzi hounded him and me. I’m sure you’ve learned popularity by association is a big thing in Cutthroat.”
She bent down to undo the laces on her boots, and I almost groaned at the sight of her perfect ass. “Definitely. He was here filming a movie in the fall. I saw him once at the Gallows with a bunch of people.”
“That bunch of people were probably all strangers,” Shane clarified. “At least to you and me. To him, there are no strangers. I’m not like him. I don’t give a shit about popularity. You might want it, but only until you have it. I don’t talk with my dad, no matter what the tabloids say about Eddie Nickel, the family man. Especially them.”
“I take it your dad’s not a nice guy?”
Shane’s jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed. He took a deep breath, then spoke. “He hit. Took his anger and frustrations out on me and Poppy. It lasted until I was big enough to hit back. Then he stopped.”
“I can see why Poppy hates him,” she said, her voice neutral. Flat.