Andre stalked to his pile of clothes and got dressed without looking at her. He didn’t bother strapping his gun belt back on, just slung it over his arm. The silence between them was thick enough to choke on. He spun back around, all the tenderness he’d held in his face a few minutes earlier gone. “Is it the fame thing, Evan?”
“Andre—”
“Or are you really just money hungry?” he asked, the words as sharp as barbed wire.
She reeled back, the accusation stinging as much as if she’d been slapped. “You can go.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”
TWENTY-TWO
The sharp smack of the door slamming reverberated through the loft and almost made Jace drop the beer he’d grabbed. He kicked the refrigerator shut with his foot and peeked around the corner of the kitchen to find Andre storming through the living area, fury on his face.
Hell. Jace had thought he’d had a bad day, but based on Andre’s grand entrance, someone had already cornered the prize for shittiest day.
“Um, hey,” Jace said cautiously.
Andre threw his keys onto the glass coffee table with a loud clink and collapsed into the armchair. “Hi.”
“You look like you need a drink.”
Andre looked up, glanced at the beer in Jace’s hand. “We have any Jack Daniels left?”
Uh-oh. “Yeah, I think so. I’ll grab it.”
Jace pulled the nearly full bottle out of the liquor cabinet and poured a shot into a juice glass.
“He’s fucking gay,” Andre announced without preamble. “Gay!”
Andre stared at him as if he should know what he was talking about. Jace frowned. Considered the glass. Made the shot a double. “Okay . . . who are we talking about? Your suspect?”
Andre’s eyebrows knitted. “What? No. Dr. Dan.”
Jace gripped the glass. “What?”
“Evan’s fiancé. She’s going to move away from us to marry a guy who doesn’t even like girls.”
Jace stared at him. Digested the words. Downed Andre’s whiskey.
The liquid burned the back of his throat and he coughed. “And you know this, how?”
Andre ran a hand over the back of his hair. “I went to see her tonight.”
“At her job?”
“I needed to see her. I . . . I had a bad day and, God, I don’t know, I wanted to see her.”
Jace knew the feeling. He’d been more than disappointed when Evan had texted him that she wouldn’t be stopping by tonight. But going to her studio was a big no-no. They’d all agreed to keep their relationship—or whatever the fuck this was—separate from her “real” life. “You shouldn’t have gone there.”
“You don’t think I fucking know that? I couldn’t help it.”
Jace poured another shot and walked it over to Andre. “So what happened?”
“I made love to her. Not sex, Jace. Way more than that.” He knocked back the shot, made an ugly face. “And, goddammit, I know she was feeling it, too.”
Jace sat on the other side of the couch, his breath whooshing out of him. “You love her?”
Andre set the empty glass on the coffee table, his expression turning guarded. “What? You’re the only one who’s allowed that privilege?”