I wanted to.
“Are Jax and Jaydon coming to pick us up?” I yelled to Brey in the bathroom.
“Yep. They should be here in an hour.”
“Katie?”
Brey poked her head out and made a face. “Bastian is escorting her.”
“‘Escorting’?” I repeated and scrunched my nose.
“Her words, I swear.”
“Weird,” I mumbled. Katie and Brey had been high school best friends. I stumbled into their friendship in college, but they knew each other much better than I did. They’d all grown up together with Brey living right next door to the Stonewood boys. Jaydon still donned the title of her best friend, and I liked to think I came in at a close-ish third after Katie.
I loved them both but Katie had so many secrets, so many personalities, and a dark side that made her a moving target. I couldn’t always read her, and didn’t know if I wanted to. Some dark places were better left hidden, away from view.
“So, does she know that Bastian is heading up Chicago’sCosa Nostra?” I asked Brey because I knew if anyone could talk sense into Katie, it was her.
“I should ask you the same thing,” Brey grumbled on the other side of the door.
“Oh, care to elaborate on that comment?” I did my hair in front of the mirror, trying to act as nonchalant as possible. She probably knew I told Bastian I would help. The Stonewoods rarely kept things from one another, and she was a Stonewood now.
Our conversation was cut off by the ringtone I loathed. Miranda sang about Mama’s broken heart, and I about threw my phone across the room.
“Don’t you think you should answer?” Brey mumbled. It was the third time my mother had called while Brey was over.
“You forget that my mother takes giving in as a weakness. If I answer, she’ll assume her strategy was effective and ring me twelve times in a row the next time she wants to get a hold of me.”
“Your mom is not that bad,” Brey emphasized.
That was true, and I saw the way Brey fidgeted while my phone kept ringing. So, I grabbed and silenced it. “She’s absolutely not that bad. We just don’t see eye to eye on some things. You know she’s extremely overprotective of me. She’s obsessed with telling me I shouldn’t be living in the city. Don’t you know how dangerous it is, Brey?”
She laughed at my widened eyes. “I honestly wish I had parents who doted on me like yours do.”
I cleared my throat, not knowing what to say but picking my words carefully. Aubrey had lost her mother in a house fire her father had started. She didn’t go visit him in prison, and they didn’t get along.
My relationship with my parents was nowhere near that complicated. I grabbed her hand and squeezed. “I’m sorry, best friend. You can call my parents any time.”
She laughed and shrugged, “I have Jax’s parents. The Stonewood family is priceless.”
“I bet.” After assessing myself in the mirror, I asked, “Do I look the part?”
“The part of what? Tinker Bell inPeter Pan?”
I scoffed. “No, do I look slutty enough to make all the boys look my way but professional enough to be at a work party?”
She sighed. “Yes to the first, not so much to the second.”
“Great! Exactly what I’m going for. Steven will die when he sees me,” I proclaimed.
“He won’t be the only one,” she said. Then she asked, “Do you really care what Steven thinks?”
“Of course,” I replied a little too quickly. “Why do you ask?”
“I just …” she cleared her throat and smoothed a flyaway hair. “He’s a bit boring, Vick.”
“Brey!”