Crave (The Gibson Boys 3)

“Did we order any brandy?” he asks.

“Yeah. Two bottles, I think,” she replies. “Remember? You made a comment about how you never sell it, but if you stop carrying it, everyone orders it.”

I watch them banter back and forth, my heart splintering in my chest. He was here. After all that with Spencer. And he couldn’t even call me, let alone come to me?

My stomach drops, and I consider just going to the apartment. But just as I do, he drags his eyes back to mine.

“How are you?” he asks carefully.

“Confused.”

Navie gathers the trash bag and broom. “I think I’ll go inside. If, um, yeah …”

Machlan steps outside and holds the door open for Navie. It closes softly behind her. He looks at me but doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. I’ve seen him pull away from me a number of times in my life. This look hasn’t changed.

What has changed, though, is I’m not going to just let it happen and go suffer quietly. No. I’m done with that.

“What happened today?” I ask.

He leans against the brick wall of the building and angles his chin to the sky. “Nothing.”

“No, Mach. What happened?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Well, I do. You didn’t come back. You didn’t text me, and clearly, you were right here. So why wouldn’t you have told me to just come here with you or at least told me you had work to do? Why leave me to sit there all day not knowing what was going on?”

He squeezes his eyes shut before lowering his chin. He still says nothing.

We’re having two different conversations on two different wavelengths. He’s not hearing anything I’m really saying. We’ve been here a million times before, and despite what I’d hoped, he’s still on that level.

Frustration pours through me as I set my jaw. “What happened with you and Spencer?”

His head whips to mine. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Because he called me and said there was an incident that ended with the police being called.”

“He called you? That motherfucker called you?”

“He seemed to be more talkative about his day than you are.” I glare at him. “I love getting information like this secondhand.”

He shoves off the wall. “He …” His lips press together as he shakes his head. “Yeah. We had words. The deal is off.”

“Can I do anything?”

“He called Kip on me, Had. Do you think there’s anything you can do? Not that I’d want you to at this point anyway.” He refuses to look at me. “Everything’s fine.”

“He called the sheriff. It doesn’t seem like everything is fine. But what do I know? I’m getting my information from the enemy.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault?” Now he looks at me. “I mean, I get it. I’m the bad boy. Always my fault.” He turns to the door, but I won’t have it.

“Go ahead. Walk away. That’s what you do best.”

He spins around. “I walk away, so you don’t get drawn into my fuckery. Don’t you get that?”

“I’m already drawn into it, Machlan.”

“And you shouldn’t be, and I hate that you are,” he says, his eyes on fire.

“You want to know what I told him?” I say, my teeth gritted the same as his. “I told him I was behind you one-hundred percent even though I didn’t even know what happened. Yet you don’t have enough faith in me to even fucking tell me.”

Something shifts in his eyes, but it doesn’t stay. Instead, he pulls the door open.

We stand, staring at each other, a hundred emotions flittering between us. I fight back a set of tears as I feel whatever we had last night dissipate.

If I could reach out and grab it and hold onto it forever, I would. But as I look at him, see the coolness come back to his eyes that I’ve seen so many times over the past few years, I realize what reality is. And what dreams will never come true.

“I’m supposed to go back to Vigo tomorrow,” I say. “They want me to start this week.”

My breath stalls in my chest as I hold onto the final strand of hope that this will be the moment I’ve waited on: the moment when he asks me to stay. That he’ll see our fate is in his hands. He can ask me to stay or tell me to go. As he looks at me with a crooked brow, I say a silent prayer he’ll come to his senses.

He slips the chew can out of his pocket. He opens his mouth to say something but closes it just as quickly. He looks at the ground and shakes his head. “Drive careful.” And then he’s gone.

Thirty-One

Hadley

“I don’t know, Em.”

My best friend tucks her bra strap under her shirt. “I do. You’re going to go out strong.”

Rolling my eyes, I gather the last of my things scattered around the apartment and stuff them into my bag. Everything will be a wrinkly mess when I get back to Vigo, and the bottle of lotion tucked between a shirt and a pair of socks may or may not have been completely closed.