Cherry. Sometimes I actually want to live a little,” he says softly.
My shoulders slump, my resistance draining out of me. I grab his hand and tug him to the door. Saying goodnight to my guys, we head down to Reid’s car.
“My place or yours?” He winks after we both climb in and the engine begins to purr.
“Yours,” I answer like I always do.
“You know I’m starting to get a complex. You never take me home with you. You’re making me feel like a dirty little secret.” He turns to look at me, his words light, but there is a dark undertone to his voice.
“You saw it the day you showed me around. It’s nothing special, it looks exactly like your apartment. It’s just a place I lay my head, Reid, but it’s cold. I felt more at home on the streets,” I tell him as he grips the steering wheel a little tighter than before.
“An apartment is an apartment. I’m hardly ever there, that’s all.” I try to soothe him. I don’t want to piss him off, but I’m not taking him back to an apartment full of cameras that Zodiac can enter whenever he likes.
“I know you’re never there—”
I cut him off. “You know? You watching me, Reid?” I tease, but there is no hiding how sharp my voice is.
“I mean, you’re always at that bar. I’m just making an observation.”
Observation, my ass.
“Did you know Zodiac lives in my complex?” I question lightly. He whips his head around to glare at me.
“Zodiac has a house on the outskirts of town. A massive place that looks more like a fucking hotel than a home,” he replies.
I don’t answer him because Zodiac having a house does not change the fact he has an apartment too.
“Does he have a wife?”
Again, I’ve done my digging, but it’s always nice to know if Reid will tell me the truth or start in with the bullshit.
“Yeah, but don’t ever mention Estelle to him. He will skin you alive if you so much as breathe her name.”
I wave him off. “It never crossed my mind. I have zero interest in her. Her life must already suck donkey balls being married to him. No, what I’m saying is, he might have a home and a wife to go back to, but that doesn’t change the fact he has an apartment, or perhaps a fuckpad, right next door to my apartment. So, as I’m sure you can imagine, being at home for me is about as relaxing as swimming with sharks.”
“Fuck,” he curses before switching on the radio, effectively shutting down any more conversation.
Warmth fills my chest when I realize he genuinely didn’t know and that he seems pissed about it. I turn to look out the window, biting the smile playing on the edge of my lips. Yeah, it’s not nice being the last person to know shit.
Still, I can’t help the spike of apprehension that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up because I can’t figure out what Zodiac’s end game is and just what it has to do with me.
I close my eyes and think about how much has changed in the last year, some of it good, some of it not so much, but all of it an inevitable step in the right direction. And that direction is freedom from Zodiac.
Reid sits slap bam in the middle of everything at the moment. I think if push came to shove, he would still side with Zodiac. His loyalty to him has always been unwavering, despite how he might feel about me. But even knowing all this, I can’t stay away from the man any more than he can stay away from me.
Pulling up at Reid’s apartment, I’m filled with a sense of déjà vu like every time I come here. Granted it isn’t often. Only on the nights he comes to my office with a bloody face and a bleeding heart. But being here always takes me back to that first night. It feels like a lifetime ago now, where a different girl merged from this same car with a knife in her pocket and tape covering the hole in her shoe.
Now my shoes have blood-red soles, and my knife is sheathed beside my gun.
I wait for Reid to climb out and walk around to open my door for me, holding out his hand for me to grasp. We walk silently, hand in hand until we reach the elevator.