Touch And Go - Aiden Bates Page 0,75

squeezed my hand. My stomach clenched with excitement, and he opened his mouth—this was it, he was going to let me in, treat me as an equal, trust me back, value me as a partner, and—

“Raincheck.” He lifted my hand and pointed straight ahead.

My heart and my stomach plummeted, and I followed his gaze and stopped short. The hulking frame of Big Ben. I’d recognize it anywhere. And he was surrounded by the silhouettes of Derek’s seven brothers at the quiet end of a dock. He didn’t look so big compared to them. I should have been surprised to see him. I knew that they’d tracked him down, largely with the help of Matt and Hunter’s contacts, and were giving him the chance to see me. But I hadn’t expected him to accept the offer. I half-expected we’d spend an hour on the docks waiting for him to show, then call it a day and get some pizza.

“Ready?”

“Hell no.” I wiped my free hand on my shorts and clenched his hand even harder. “But let’s do it anyway.”

I let go of Derek and approached Ben with my bruised and cut chin held high.

“Hey, Seb.” He nodded.

“Hey?” My voice shook with anger as I stepped closer. “Where have you been?”

“Um. How are you, uh…doing?” He looked nervously at the brothers. His jaw ticked, his gaze darted from them to me and back, and his hands shook like their convincing him to come hadn’t gone so smoothly for him. Good.

I clenched my fists and swallowed my anger, but it bubbled right back into my throat. “How do I look?” I was bruised and swollen, and the red-faced anger probably accentuated my injuries. And I wanted him to feel bad about it. Wanted his remorse and his shame. He deserved it and I’d earned it.

Ben winced and scratched the back of his neck. “You look like shit, if I’m being honest.”

“Oh, now you’re honest.” It took all of my strength not to scream at him about everything he’d done to me. “What the fuck did you get us into?”

“Ah, man…I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked around, probably scheming a way out, but the wall of testosterone I’d first encountered in Derek’s apartment was here and not giving him an exit. Eight men had my back, and they weren’t going to let him go without giving me an explanation. “Things got away from me, little bro.”

My breath caught. We were blood. We’d shared a childhood. My dead parents were his dead parents too. I softened a smidgen and stepped closer to him. “What happened? Why do you owe every bookie in the metropolitan area?”

“I have a gambling problem.” He sounded hoarse and embarrassed. “I played a little right after the accident.” The one that had taken our parents. Somehow, I knew he’d bring it up, use it to his favor. He always did. Leaned on it as his excuse when he apologized for treating me like a dog. For saying shit about my sexual preference. He used our parents the same way he used me. “Then, one night turned into two, the bets got bigger, the losses too much. I didn’t know what to do.”

I swallowed a wad of sadness, and nodded, urging him to go on. Finally, he let me in on what he’d been going through.

“I started to lose more money than I could cover, so I took a little off my clients.” His voice grew stronger, and he stiffened, stood up proudly. “You know they wouldn’t miss it. Whatever, it’s a white-collar crime, no big deal.”

I waited for an apology. I’d been threatened, beaten, thrown into a street. He owed me an apology, but Ben shrugged and smoothed down the front of his shirt. Anger rushed through me, but so did a gut-crunching sadness.

My voice shook more than I liked. “Okay, but why did Roland tie me to a chair, if you’d stolen all that money from your clients?”

He scoffed and rolled his eyes like he used to when we were kids and I was asking questions he deemed as ‘stupid.’ “I borrowed it. I’m going to put it back, but it takes time, Sebastian. That’s what I was saying the day you fixed my laptop, but you wouldn’t fucking listen. It takes time to get the money, wash it, get it back on US soil. And as much as I stole, it wasn’t enough. That’s why Rollie came after you.”

Derek stiffened, and I struggled