Daring Devlin (Lost Boys #1) - Jessica Lemmon Page 0,74

All things considered.” Tasha touched my arm gently. “Devlin mentioned you.”

And I was going to throw up.

“What did he say?”

“He just… mentioned your name.” Tasha shrugged.

“What did he say, word for word?”

She looked worried. “Word for word?”

“Word for word,” I repeated.

“He said, ‘Is that Rena’s car?’”

She’d borrowed my car the other day and, apparently, drove it to Paul’s house. “So he didn’t ask about me.”

“Not exactly, but he didn’t sound like he hated you.”

I rubbed my eyebrow with my fingers, feeling a headache coming on. “Let’s go talk to your manager. I need a job.”

That’s why I was here, I reminded myself. Gainful employment. My mother had paid my rent for the month. I wasn’t going to let her do that again.

“Are you excited?” Tasha looped both her arms around one of mine and walked with me through the store. Soon, her physical therapy internship would start and she’d be working in her field instead of here. Her manager asked if she knew anyone who could fill her shoes. As it turns out, Tasha and I had the same size feet. I filled Tasha’s shoes nicely.

“Let’s get this over with,” I told my best friend.

“It’s going to be great,” she said.

I wasn’t sure anything could reach the echelon of “great” for me again, but a girl could hope.

Devlin

I picked up the tray from Cade’s unmade bed where he lounged. He ignored me, playing Call of Duty.

I put the tray down on his nightstand, sat on the corner of the bed, and watched the flashing screen awhile. Then I said, “I did the right thing.”

He ignored me some more. I knew because he wasn’t wearing his headphones.

“Should you ever decide to open your mouth when Tasha’s around, if you’d let her know that what I did, I did for Rena, I’d appreciate it.”

He grunted. Out of disagreement, I guessed, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a grunt of disinterest.

“She’s better off without me,” I said to the screen.

Another grunt, only this one sounded more agreeable. I hated when he was right.

“I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t be sucked into the Sonny Laurence cesspool,” I continued, defending myself. But then I hadn’t been sucked in. I’d avoided the swirling waters altogether. I’d visited Sonny in jail last weekend. He’d looked good. Told me he was good, and that the sentence he was serving was a fraction of what he’d deserved. If he hadn’t given up Tex, he’d have been fucked.

He then told me he was proud of me for not ratting. Which was confusing.

“But you ratted,” I’d pointed out. And the man did not look great in orange.

“Older you get, less that stuff matters,” he’d told me. “I have no family, Devlin. No one to protect. Closest thing I had for the longest time was you. If I had a son, I’d take the hit for him. Not the other way around. Not the way Cade tried to do it.”

Sonny had let Paul off the hook for his debts. And, as I’d suspected, he’d paid the hospital bill for Cade, too.

“I held you responsible for your father’s debt,” he’d said, his weary face creasing with shame. “I shouldn’t have. By the time years got away from us, I liked having you around. You were good at collecting. You remember goddamn everything. Computer in your brain, kid.”

I’d felt an odd wave of pride.

“I liked taking care of you. Teaching you the ropes at Oak & Sage. You do good over there. You’re ten times the man your father was, and he was older than you are now when he opened the place.”

My chest had constricted. In many ways, Sonny had been like a father to me over the years.

“You and your girl have a shot at a good life. Figured if I took my hooks outta you, that’d clear a path.”

It had… and it hadn’t. Gamblers had trickled in over the past few weeks, but I’d turned them away, explaining how Sonny went down. The dining room had taken a hit, but business would pick back up… I hoped. My dream of running Oak & Sage with Rena wasn’t a possibility since I hadn’t attempted to repair things with her since the night I fired her.

Her echoed and unreturned “I love you” rang in my ears. I’d spent the better part of the last four weeks aching in a way I hadn’t known was possible.

That day I visited Sonny, he noted my less-than-chipper outlook and asked about her. I lied and said she