I will. He doesn’t really want me. This is not about me. I believe him when he says it. So let’s figure out his angle. I’ll play my part, and once it’s done, he’ll have no use for me.”
“Stone?”
I blew out a warm breath. “This is not about him. He’ll have to understand. My family comes first. End of story.”
“I did this to you. I’ll never be able—”
“Shut up, Grumpy Jones. I’ve already forgiven you. But only because of one thing.”
“Grumpy Jones?”
I waved him off with my free hand. He still hadn’t let the other go. “I’m forgiving you because you did this for love. And if anyone deserves love, it’s Mari. If she decides she loves you back, you better name a kid after me!”
Harrison grinned. “I’m going to tell her soon, Kee. It’s time.”
“Agreed,” I muttered, pulling my hand from his. I opened my palm and he set the keys into it. Then he walked to the other side and got in.
I’d totally forgotten about the text I’d sent to Mari the same night Sierra was killed, telling her how I thought Harrison was in love with her, until that moment. What worried me, beside my own problems, was the fact that she had said nothing back.
If Harrison was wrong about Mam and her tea leaves? Where did that leave me?
Fucked.
I was truly and utterly fucked.
Harrison didn’t believe the truth in them, but I did.
9
Keely
I t had been one hell of a month. We were not even to the end of it yet, and it sort of went something like this: My entire world was turned upside, but at the same time, it was trying to right itself like it never had before.
With Mari’s help, I started packing up my ratty old apartment, but Cash didn’t tell me where I was going, so that was still a mystery.
In all honesty, I couldn’t wait to step out of my old apartment and into something new. Sierra somehow lingered, and I felt like, for once in her life, she was owed the entire space. She came to me in dreams sometimes, and I’d wake up covered in sweat, my heart about to jump out of my chest. But it was only because she seemed to want this place for herself, and everything in it.
I even admitted to Mari that after Sierra had passed, I felt lighter. Like all of the good things waiting not only for me, but for Mari, were going to start happening. It was the shittiest thing I’d ever felt, but there it was.
Those good things I felt were coming? They felt real for the first time in my life. And that was saying something, since I had to marry a marauder in my near future.
There was also something I couldn’t ignore, though, that was right for Mari but wrong for Harrison.
The night Sierra had been murdered, when Mari had told me she was going out for a bit, she had met a guy named Mac, who owned one of the most prestigious clubs in the city, and she’d fallen for him. Hard. He asked her to marry him not long after. She said yes. “You know when you know,” he’d told her. They were getting married in Italy in the summer.
Sierra had mentioned Mac more than once since she worked at his club. She wanted to marry him. Have his babies. She had said he was the finest man she’d ever seen, and one of New York’s most eligible bachelors.
I’d told her I’d have to see this man for myself, and when I tried to search for him on the computer, NOTHING came up. He catered to some of the richest and dirtiest men in the world. By dirty, I meant gangsters. And I couldn’t find a fucking picture of him online?
What bothered me the most, though, was knowing that I was going to have to tell my brother soon.
The same day I’d told Mari about my feelings toward Sierra, she told me that she had never felt anything but a sisterly love for Harrison. And after Mari told me she’d like to bring the man she called Capo (everyone else called him Mac) to the party at Harrison’s place for my break, I knew he’d lost his chance. I’d never seen Mari so smitten with anything or anyone in her life.
Even though I was happy for her, everything that Harrison had done for her felt like such a waste of his love.