“You won’t be gone that long. Be careful out there.” He yawns. Without his glasses and with his hair a mess, it’s like seeing him without his armor. It’s just another reminder of how well I know this man, regardless of what pitfalls this life has thrown at us. When push comes to shove, there’s one truth I can’t escape.
I love him.
I doubt I ever stopped, even if rage made that love feel a whole lot like hate for a number of years. I open my mouth to tell him but change my mind at the last moment. Now isn’t the time. He’s even more skittish than Harlow is, but at least we have enough history that he might not call me a liar to my face if I told him the truth. Harlow, though? It will take time and patience before she accepts the thing I’ve recognized since that morning when she fucked me to purge away the memory of Eli. I don’t know if it’s love, but I’ve fallen hard for her. Eventually, it will be love, as long as we don’t get in each other’s way.
Eli closes his eyes and rolls over to throw an arm over Harlow’s waist. Maybe I should feel threatened by how quickly they seem to have patched things up, but it’s just one more barrier demolished between me and the ultimate end goal I’ve decided on.
The three of us. Together in every way that matters.
I force myself to turn away from them and slip out the door. I take fifteen minutes to shower and change, and then I go down to the kitchen for coffee. It’s early, but Broderick is an early bird, and I want to sit down with him and start going over how to vet the people we need to hire to staff this place. We’re getting by on our own right now, but eventually we’ll have to start entertaining and the like, and we can’t pull off that shit on our own. I’m sure Aisling and Ciar wouldn’t be surprised if we served them grilled cheese—we’re Raiders, after all—but to play the game properly, we need the proper weapons.
That means a chef. It also means either bringing a tailor in to work on retainer or losing our shirt in bargaining with Old Town. I’m not quite ready to take that step, and no doubt Broderick has ideas.
Eli will have some ideas as well. I’m still getting used to the idea I can trust him. I don’t really think this is all a ploy to get close enough to strike, not when he could have sunk a knife between my ribs or shot me dozens of times in the last few days. Plus, doing something underhanded like recommending a chef who intends to poison me and my brothers puts both Harlow and the rest of the Brides at risk. He might succeed in killing us, but the other two factions of Sabine Valley would come for his blood, so victory would be short-lived.
No, I believe him when he says he wants to try. I don’t think that’s simply the past talking, but I’m being cautious all the same. I want him, I love him, but I’m gambling with more than my life and safety. I have my six brothers, their six Brides, apparently now a bodyguard and Beatrix of the Mystics. Not to mention the people who have chosen to follow me over the years, currently housed in the barracks. They’re all trusting me to guide us through.
I can’t make decisions with my heart.
Fuck, I didn’t think I even had a heart anymore.
I have the coffee going when I sense someone behind me. I don’t hear him, but then I never hear Cohen when he walks. When we were kids, Donovan and Ezekiel once ambushed him and tied a bell around both his wrists so we’d have some kind of warning when he moved around. He didn’t find it as funny as the rest of us, but then Cohen’s never had much of a sense of humor. Being exiled from Sabine Valley killed what little softness he had. Or maybe that was losing Samson at the same time. Impossible to say.
One look at his face, and I know I’m not going to enjoy this conversation. “What happened?”
He glances at the coffee. “Enough in there for two?”
“There’s a whole pot,” I say mildly. Normally, that would be enough for several people, but Cohen doesn’t sleep much, and his coffee intake reflects that. I grab two mugs and pour us each one. I pass his over. “It’s not like you to stall.”
“Not stalling. I’m fucking exhausted.” He takes a long drink of coffee, apparently oblivious to the fact it should be burning the fuck out of his mouth. “I was doing rounds last night.”