I knew enough about injuries to know that one could have easily been fatal.

“Got myself into trouble with four guys,” Valen said, turning away as he admitted it. “Would have died if Voss hadn’t shown up. My turn,” he said as bent forward to squeeze out a soapy sponge. “Where have you been if you haven’t been in Navesink Bank?”

“Europe.”

“Doing what?”

“Traveling. Working. But it wasn’t your turn,” I told him.

“Working doing what?” Valen asked.

To that, I just let my gaze cut to him, full of all the violence and darkness. And, damn if he didn’t know me well enough to be able to read the look.

Still, I felt like answering.

“Continuing the family legacy.” Sort of.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you do that shit?”

“Why not?” I shot back, turning away.

“Because you could have done anything. You had the whole world in front of you.”

“So did you. And yet, here you are.”

“It’s different.”

“Why? Because you’re a guy?” I shot back.

“Oh, fuck off with that. You know I’ve never thought like that.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever actually known what you thought,” I said, wincing at myself.

“Lulu…” Valen started, voice a familiar kind of soft.

He’d used that same voice on me so many times in the past.

The past, I reminded myself.

“That’s not my name,” I snapped, straightening.

“You used to like it,” he said, coming up behind me.

“I used to like a lot of things,” I agreed. “Including you. Funny how shit changes over the years,” I added, jerking away from him.

I’d miscalculated.

It wasn’t going to be as easy to keep the upper hand as I’d expected.

Mostly because there was still a part of me that was drawn to him, that was reminded of all those times we’d had together.

Before he’d gone and fucked it all up.

Fucked me all up.

Shit.

No.

Nope.

Absolutely not.

I couldn’t let my mind go there.

I was here for one reason, and one reason only, to make Valen’s life a little harder for a while, which I hoped was going to give me the closure I needed to move on with my life.

On that note, I dropped the sponge back into the bucket and grabbed the hose, washing off my hands and arms.

“Where are you going?” Valen asked.

“Anywhere else. I don’t need to be doing your jobs,” I said, pulling the trigger on the hose and spraying him full blast for a second. “Whoops,” I said as he let out a curse at the frigid water.

Was that mature of me?

Absolutely not.

But it made me feel a little bit better, so I was going to call that a win.

I was going to need all the wins I could get in the coming days and weeks of close contact with a guy I thought I was well and fully over, but some part of me still felt drawn to.

And I was never going to get the closure I needed if some stupid, sappy, ridiculous part of me was maybe just a little bit… still in love with him.

Damnit.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Valen

The next few days sort of melded together. Thanks mostly to the grueling days of work Brooks was putting us through because Louana was showing us up.

I hadn’t exactly known Lulu at school per se, but it seemed like she and Vi were on the same sort of level. They pulled decent grades, but were never anyone’s teacher’s pet or valedictorian.

I think not knowing what she was going to do with her future made her not really apply herself as hard as everyone else who was going off to college for sure did.

The only thing I remembered her working her ass off on was going to the gym with her friends.

That said, she had always been busy. Always on the go. Never really the type to sit around and binge TV or anything like that. She liked doing shit.

I guess that was the work ethic she was applying to prospecting. She was always up first, always doing shit first, always showing us up.

Which, in turn, made Brooks harder on us, because she was doing so much.

I really rarely even got time to talk to her, thanks to the differing schedules.

When I did, though, I kept fucking up that whole apologizing to her thing that I’d been planning to do.

She was quick to anger, as she’d always been.

But what had changed—at least with regard to me—was that the anger that I’d always known to be hot and burning was now cold and frigid. I swear to shit, I felt frostbit when she walked away at times.

“Keep looking for her,” Voss said, snapping me out of my swirling thoughts.

“What?”

“Keep looking for her,” he repeated.

He wasn’t wrong, as much as I hated to admit that.

We’d finished our work a good hour before.

But Louana still hadn’t rolled back in from whatever babysitting job she was doing for Carey and Carey’s girl, Abigail, who was in some sort of trouble with some cartel or something.

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