Crazy Eights (Stacked Deck #8) - Emilia Finn Page 0,85
can hear. I’m certain that if Quinn could hear it, she would stop hurting me. She would show me mercy while I die a long, drawn-out death.
“There was this other guy,” she continues as I lean back over the bed and fetch my jeans. “Jeremy. Holy hell in a handbasket. His tongue. Jamie! His tongue.”
I snag the keys from my jeans pocket while Quinn drivels on about her past conquests, and unsnapping the cuff from around my wrist, I catch her briefest smile of victory, but that quickly turns to a scowl when I snap the cuff over the metal frame of the bed.
“Wait, what?”
“I’m going to have a shower.”
She rattles the cuffs, yanks them in an attempt to go free, then her fiery eyes come back to mine. “Jamie! I’m not done telling you about my life. There was also this dude, Derek. He was a fighter.”
My eyes snap to hers.
She grins. “I guess I have a type. But this guy, Derek, he’s a heavyweight. He liked my ass…” She lifts a challenging brow. “And I don’t just mean how it looked in jeans.”
“Yeah? Awesome.” I cross the room and stop at the doorway to the bathroom. “I’m glad you’ve had fun in our time apart.”
“Wait!” she calls out when I go to slam the door shut. “Aren’t you gonna tell me about your last four years?”
I stand in the doorway for a moment and pray she can’t know how her words hurt me. How her callous dismissal stings, and how the way she freely gave her body away over the years breaks me.
“There’s nothing to tell.” I meet her eyes. “I fell in love with a girl when I was eighteen.”
“You—” Her eyes soften. “What?”
“In my world, once we know, we know. So there was no point in me looking elsewhere.” I shake my head. “But since you found Derek and the guy with the tongue…” I turn into the bathroom and slowly close the door. “I dunno. I guess I had it wrong.”
Quinn
Okay, That Was Mean
“She’s not talking to me. Oh, and she’s on a food strike too.” Jamie drives along the freeway one-handed, uses his knees to help him steer, and uses his other hand – the one joined to mine – to stuff fries into his mouth. He yanks my arm up and down with no care for the burn in my torn ligaments. “She’s stubborn. And more annoying than I remember.”
“Bubbles…” Will’s deep voice echoes through the car speakers. “You need to stop being an ass. Eat before you pass out from low sugar.”
Jamie glances across to me with a lifted brow.
He’s waiting. He expects me to break for my brother. But of these two men, I’m more angry at Will than I am at Jamie.
I turn away from him, lift my feet to the chair, and watch the world fly by my window.
“She’s not talking to you either,” Jamie finally says. “She’s grumpy as fuck. Did McGrady come looking for her last night?”
“Yeah. He had some dude knock on our door around eleven. Maxim. Victor. Igor. Something Russian and annoying. The guy asked where she was. I said she was at work, then I closed up and went to bed.”
“You’re relocating today, right?”
“Yup.”
I know I’m not talking to Jamie, or to Will; I know I’m angry at these men who think they get to control my life, but that doesn’t mean I don’t listen and absorb every single morsel of information Will gives.
“Your Sophia called me last night and said she has a place set up for me. Not so far from here, still living in squalor,” he laughs. “But at least I won’t be in bed when McGrady’s people turn up and put a blade to my throat. He won’t know where I am when he realizes Bubbles is officially outta here.”
“And Soph is working on the Nate stuff?”
“Yeah. She said all the same stuff you did. And she gained access to the computers at McGrady’s M.E. pal’s office. Those remains were definitely Nate’s.”
So he’s really dead.
“He’s really dead. Which means my charges will be raised to murder in the first. There’s a bullet hole in the guy’s forehead, and a broken neck, like they wanted to make sure, so…”
“Damning,” Jamie jokes. “Definitely not an accident.”
“Soph said she’s piecing some shit together, so for now, I’m to keep going to work. I have to watch my back, but she’s sending a friend up to help keep me alive.”