23
SAVANNAH
This time yesterday,I’d predicted I’d be eating roasted beef or chicken with two types of potatoes, gravy so thick you could stand a spoon in it, green bean casserole, and cauliflower au gratin, not BBQ in the cold.
But I was glad to be here.
We stayed until it started getting dark and the brothers and their Old Ladies with kids began their short journeys home.
We could have stuck around longer—the party definitely wasn’t stopping—but I really needed my husband’s dick in a part of my body,andCade, one of my guards, had had some kind of allergic reaction to a bite. He said he didn’t need to head to the ER, but he kept on puking.
For both reasons, it was time to leave, but I was grateful for the escape. It was a brief prelude to a change in mine and Aidan’s relationship. More than that, I’d gotten to know the women Star considered family.
Before we left, I headed to the restroom. That was when Katina popped up.
"Do you want to see Star’s office?"
Surprise had me pausing in the hall. "I thought you’d gone to bed."
She snorted. "It’s, like, nine PM. Star lets me stay up later."
Because I could imagine Star and boundaries weren’t really a thing, I let it go. I wanted to see Star’s office, after all. I just didn’t feel like starting a turf war as I went snooping around Lily Lancaster’s home on the hunt for her rooms.
"You don’t mind showing me?" I asked softly.
"No. She said if you turned up then I had to take you in there."
I stilled. "She did?"
What fucking game are you playing, Star Sullivan?
"She did." Katina squinted at me. "Do you really mean it about taking me to that concert?"
"I do. Alessa said yes."
"Alessa thinks you don’t mean it."
"Well, I do. I’m like Star—we don’t break our promises."
That had her biting her lip. "I don’t like it that she had to leave."
"I really don’t like it either," I concurred with a pout that teased a small smile out of her. "So I bet you don’t, honey. But you talk to her, don’t you?"
She dipped her chin. "Almost every other day."
I tried to hide the fact that my heart started racing at her admission. "Do you know where she is?"
"I know where I can reach her if I need to," she hedged with all the suspicion of a kid who’d been in a foster home.
Squatting down in front of her so that she stood taller than me, I murmured, "When I was your age, I was the only person who used to get Star out of trouble."
"She saidshegotyouout of trouble." She beamed a grin at me. "I think you were both bad."
"You’d be right," I said sheepishly. "But she was definitely worse."
Kat’s grin widened before, abruptly, it sank. "She’s not in the US right now."
"She isn’t? Where is she?"