“At least you left the garage door closed this time,” Calisto said.
Cross had heard his step-father’s approach, but continued his work cleaning the assault rifle he had dismantled on the metal table. “No need to scare the neighbors.”
Again.
“Wolf give you that?”
“More like I took it after he made a deal on a couple dozen of them.”
Calisto came closer, admiring the gun before he said, “Make sure you lock it up after you’re done. We don’t need anyone accidentally stumbling on it or something.”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Your interest in this has never really gone away, has it?”
Cross glanced at his step-father, but quickly went back to his work. “Guns? No, not really.”
Calisto picked up the large clip, and flipped it over in his palm. “Guns is a very small part of our particular side of business, Cross. We’re not the family making money on illegal gun sales in this country. We keep a supply for our territory to sell, but that’s really it.”
“It could be a bigger part, if you made the effort.”
“We do quite well in our syndicate, focusing on what we do.”
Cross shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“You know you can’t focus on dealing or running guns, and also la famiglia, right? It’s impossible when it would mean pulling your attention in two entirely different directions.”
“Yeah, you’ve said that before. And Wolf. Zeke, too.”
And every other made man who picked up on Cross’s interest for gunrunning and arms dealing.
Yet, Cross kept wondering …
“I don’t care what you do, Cross. You know that, son, don’t you? You can work with this,” Calisto said, waving a hand at the dismantled gun. “Or, you can keep mentoring under Wolf for our side of things. It’s always been your choice, regardless of what anyone else says. They’re just noise in the background.”
“Loud noise,” Cross muttered under his breath.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” Cross wiped down the long barrel, wanting to change the subject. “It’s nothing, Papa.”
“Men say things to you? Famiglia men?”
They had been saying things to him his whole life.
Mostly when Calisto’s back was turned.
“Like what?” Calisto demanded when Cross stayed quiet.
“Just drop it. It’s not important.”
“It is to me if someone is pressuring—”
Cross scoffed. “What, like peer pressure, but for mafia and criminals? Do we have something less juvenile to call it?”
Calisto sighed heavily. “Persuading? Influencing?”
Those were slightly better.
“No one is making me do anything in the family,” Cross said. “They talk a lot. They try. They like to point out who I am and where I came from, like it’s going to make a difference to what I should or shouldn’t do. Some make it sound like this is all I can do. I hear it, that’s all. It makes it hard when I hear it more often than I don’t.”
“This has always been your choice, Cross.”
Yeah, he knew that, too.
He didn’t have to be in the family business. He could drop it today, or tomorrow. Anytime he wanted, he could stop. He could go to college if he wanted after he graduated high school. He could do anything.
But this was what he wanted.
He always wanted it.
Cross simply preferred certain aspects of their business more than others—like guns.
“What if I tried?” Cross asked his step-father.
“Tried what?”
“Gunrunning and Cosa Nostra.”
Calisto cleared his throat. “I think you’re going to find then that you will make sacrifices to one more often than not to handle the other. Because that is the very nature of this business, Cross. You give your all to one thing, and it succeeds. You spread yourself between too many things, and you fail. That’s why there are only three major syndicate families in New York, one controlling Vegas, and the Outfit down in Chicago. It’s because each of these criminal organizations have put their focus into what they do best, while the little families around them have drowned trying to do too much.”
“You forgot one.”
“Hmm?”
“The Canadians—Guzzi,” Cross pointed out. “Cosa Nostra syndicate, everything from arms, to drugs, to whatever they feel like.”
“They’re a very special case.”
“Why?”
“I suppose because they’ve had control of Canada’s major cities for going on seventy years or more, Cross. They control the gangs through a pyramid of third party involvement, and that’s where a lot of their arms dealing comes from. This is something they’ve built for years. It was not an overnight thing.”
“Obviously,” Cross said. “The point is that it’s possible.”
“But not by one man, son. That’s many men. It’s a whole family of men. It’s generations and generations of men building that kind of control. It was not one man.”
Cross frowned. “Who would take over for you, if I didn’t when the time came?”
“That’s a long time away, yet.”
“I didn’t ask when. I asked who.”
Calisto scratched at the underside of his jaw; an action Cross knew was a nervous tic his step-father couldn’t get rid of. “Well, I haven’t ever really considered it, Cross.”
Because the answer was obvious.
There was no one.
Calisto always just assumed it would be Cross, like everyone else kept telling him. Principe, that’s who he was. The proper Donati principe.
“But I can do anything, right?” he asked, almost sarcastically.
“Cross, now—”
“How can I do anything when even you’ve always thought I was only going to do what you want for me?” Cross shook his head, and went back to the weapon. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. This is why I don’t talk about it. There’s no point.”
“Cross, hey.”
When he ignored his step-father, Calisto simply took the gun right from his hands, and pushed on his shoulder to spin him around. Face to face, the two stared hard at one another.
“This has always been your choice,” Calisto repeated firmly. “You can be a made man, a gunrunner, or none of the above. You can be or do anything, Cross. I will make sure of it. I will be just as proud of you if you’re sitting in my seat in twenty years, or playing in an orchestra. It’s that simple.”
“Can I? Will you?”
“I never got a choice. You will always have one.”
“What does that mean—you never got a choice?”
Calisto shrugged. “Another story for a different day.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Papa.”
“You don’t forget, I know.” Calisto leaned against the table. “How about this, Cross? You keep doing what you want to do now—mentoring under Wolf, dipping your feet into this kind of water, and learning how you’re learning. You like it, you always have, right?”
“Sure.”
“Then keep doing it. It’s not going to hurt. And, the more you’re involved in, the more families and people you meet in this business. It’s called opening doors, son. The more friends you make, the more doors get opened.”
“Okay.”
Calisto rapped his knuckles to the metal table. “And the very second you get a chance to do what you really want to do because you’ve opened the right door, I expect you to take it.”
Cross stilled. “Really?”
“You’ll never know, if you don’t try.”
“What if I have my button by then?”
His in to the family, he meant.
Just because he was a Donati, didn’t mean he was a made man. He had a button to earn, yet. An oath to take. A promise to make.
Once a made man, always a made man.
That was their life.
It was their rules.
“You get the chance, you need to take it,” Calisto said again. “The rest is details, Cross, and you’ve still got years before you have to worry about that.”
Except … he would be eighteen in just three months.
One year left of high school.
His time to choose or figure it out was quickly coming to a fast end.
“On another note, I’m glad to see you’re more settled than you were,” Calisto said, shoving his hands deep in his slacks pockets. “Your mother’s thankful for that, too.”
“You mean, when I took off for a month and you had me dragged back home when you found me?”
“Details, Cross. Those are details.”
“That’s not what you called it when you threatened to stuff me in the car’s trunk,” Cross pointed out.
Calisto smirked. “Yeah, well, I got your ass home.”
Truth.
“I am … better, I mean.”
It took a while.
He tried to be numb a lot of the time. Used just about anything that would get him to that blissed, numbed place.
It didn’t work.
It did distract him.
“Don’t forget to put the gun away,” Calisto said as he turned to head out the side door of the garage.
“I won’t.”
“And switch the license plates on your Rover tonight before you head out.”
Cross stiffened, and then let out a laugh. “Heard about the street races, huh?”
“Son, I hear everything. Even when you think I don’t.”
Parked down by the dock, look for flares.
Cross cursed as he parked his Rover, and looked over Zeke’s text. As it was, too many vehicles were blocking his path to get in further, and he was stuck walking to his friend. Probably a good block, maybe more.
He threw the hood of his hoodie over his head, and pocketed the keys of his Rover. He wouldn’t be participating in the street races this time, but he did enjoy the show. Zeke had gotten wind of the races two months ago, but it wasn’t an easy thing to get into. The organizers made it an invite-only situation, and that invite came as a random text. Locations, times, streets, and nothing more.
Sometimes, one text would come, and then half way through the day, a new one would come in with changed times and places. Cross suspected that was because someone got wind the cops might show up.
Almost always, the races started in places that were abandoned, or had little activity. Cars lined up on the streets, trunks and hoods opened wide, and music blaring while engines purred. Girls perched themselves on the roofs of cars, sipping whatever drinks were in their hands, and the air usually held the distinct smell of weed every few vehicles or so.
The thing about street racing was speed happened to be only one part of the equation when the race track was city streets, or sometimes, a whole damn state. Whoever was behind the wheel had to know where they were going, and where they needed to get to within a certain amount of time, and preferably, in first position. If they had the ability to use shortcuts, even better.
There weren’t a lot of rules.
Just a start and a finish.
Cross wasn’t big on the racing aspect where his enjoyment came into play—his Rover wasn’t made for that kind of thing. He did like to see the vehicles and make his bet, though.
And he had money.
“Donati!”
Cross nodded at the guy shouting his name, but kept making his way down the street. Dodging in and out through parked vehicles, he caught sight of the flares lighting up the docks. A few cars away, he found Zeke leaning back on the hood of his cherry red Camaro, with a joint dangling from his fingertips.
“You’re fucking late,” Zeke said.
“Yeah, I know.” Cross stepped up on the Camaro’s bumper and sat his ass down on the hood beside Zeke. “Cam got to me before I left.”
“She’s spoiled as hell.”
Cross shrugged. “Like your sister isn’t?”
“My sister is eighteen and pregnant, so the innocent act flew out the window not too long ago, thanks. Nobody’s spoiling her now.”
“Where’s your girl?”
Zeke pushed up into a sitting position, and took a heavy drag off the joint, letting a heady cloud of smoke lift to the sky. “Somewhere. She wanted to get something, I think.”
Jade—Zeke’s plaything for the month—was not Cross’s favorite person, but he dealt with the girl. He didn’t know how his friend handled girls like that to begin with; ones with expensive tastes, spoiled dispositions, and habits they couldn’t kick.
Cross wasn’t up for that shit.
Zeke had a habit, too. Girls like that.
“Something she’s going to snort up her nose?” Cross asked.
Zeke shot Cross a look. “Mind yours, man, and I’ll mind mine.”
Sure, sure.
“What’s the minimum tonight?”
“Twenty grand to enter, four and up for betting. Find one of their bookies and get on that, Cross.”
“Shit, they raised it?” Cross asked.
Zeke nodded. “Someone got picked up last race, so anyone who wants to be in a car on the street needs to make sure they want it bad enough to pay for it, I guess.”
“Who’s racing?”
“The usual bunch, minus that guy who came down from Vegas from the last time. Guess his car got totaled in a rollover a month back.”
“The Porsche?”
Zeke flicked his joint to the ground, and let out one last exhale of weed-scented smoke. “Yep. Fuck me, that was a nice car.”
Cross scowled up at the dark sky. “That’s who I wanted my money on tonight.”
“Too bad. Five to one on—”
“Don’t care. I wanted Vegas.”
“You’ve just got a hard-on for Porsches.”
That was also true, but it didn’t mean he would admit it.
“There you are, girl,” Zeke said as a familiar redhead came to stand in front of the car. In a too-tight, too-short dress and six-inch heels, Jade’s attention was on something down the road instead of her man. “Did you find what you needed, or what?”
Jade turned on Zeke and Cross. Her cocaine-blown eyes stared back at them.
Coke was a vicious, expensive bitch. It could make a person feel invincible, but without it, that same person suddenly became useless. Cross knew how dangerous a relationship with coke could be, and that’s why he stayed way the hell away from it. But it was Jade’s best friend. Two clean lines picked her up off the floor in the morning, and four shakily made lines kept her from sleeping at night.
Cross didn’t know how in the hell Zeke did it, considering the guy never used more than weed or liquor. Maybe it wasn’t the type of girls he dated that Zeke had a bad habit for, but his desire to fix those girls.
“Somebody was holding,” she said, “but it wasn’t who I thought would be tonight. Doesn’t matter; they’ve got better shit anyway.”
“Oh?” Zeke asked.
Jade sniffed. “Andino Marcello’s supplying about twenty cars down. His cousin, too.”
“John?” Cross asked, surprised at that.
John was a little old to be dealing drugs at something like this, considering he was working on his button for his in to the Marcello family. Well, that was what Cross overheard from conversations he wasn’t supposed to hear. Plus, John was a little crazy—he was more likely to be one of the bastards behind a car racing, if he was going to be here at all.
Jade’s paranoid-high gaze turned on Cross. “No, the girl. Everybody just calls her Catty when she’s out with him. Sometimes she deals, sometimes she doesn’t. This is the first time I’ve seen them at the races, though.”
Cross stiffened.
Zeke laughed beside him. “Shit, really?”
“You’re sure that’s what they called her?” Cross asked.
“Yep.”
“And she’s dealing?”
Jade rolled her eyes. “That’s what I said.”
“No, you didn’t specify who you bought from.”
“Well, Andino,” Jade said, like it should have been obvious.
“So then Catherine isn’t dealing,” Cross replied.
“No, she is. It’s just the guys like her, you know? Pretty like an angel, but smiles like a devil. She isn’t here for me to look at.”
Huh.
Cross wasn’t sure he believed that nonsense, or if he liked it. Not that he had any business liking anything Catherine chose to do or not do. That was all on her.
Zeke shot him a look. “When did that happen?”
“I don’t know,” Cross said honestly. “We split up a couple weeks before school ended. I’m more interested in why, I guess.”
“Her brother was heading to Detroit in the summer, right?”
“Yeah.”
“He was still supplying up until he left, and now he isn’t; there’s your reason why,” Zeke murmured, leaning back on the hood to get comfortable again.
“That’s not Catherine’s thing.”
“Wasn’t,” his friend corrected. “Anything can be anyone’s thing, Cross, as long as they find a good enough reason to do it.”
Right.
Curiosity killed the cat, idiot.
Nah, curiosity was going to kill Cross because he couldn’t mind his own business.
Music blared from the system set up in the trunk of a souped up, fifty-seven Mustang. Cross gave the car a look as he passed it by, but his gaze didn’t linger on it for long. It couldn’t, not when he caught the sight of Catherine Marcello in his peripheral vision just twenty feet away.
The skirt of the sky-blue sundress Catherine wore spun wide around her knees, showing off a quick flash of smooth thighs, as she turned to laugh at something her cousin said. Cross wasn’t paying any mind to Andino at all, only Catherine. Wedged heels made her look taller than she actually was, and gave him a great view of her legs. Delicate collarbones peeked out from the opened jean jacket covering her shoulders, and the long rope of pearls hanging low to rest on the top swells of her tits.
Cross wasn’t sure why, but he glanced at her hand.
He wanted to see, to know …
Sure enough, she wore those white-gold knuckles he had made for her sixteenth birthday.
And that made him smile.
Maybe it should have pissed him off, or at the very least, irked him. It didn’t. At all.
Cross moved in between another parked car, noting the opened cases of beer in the back, and ignoring the girl reaching for him as he passed. His gaze darted back to Catherine’s position only to find she was talking to someone new. A guy.
He understood what Jade meant in that moment.
Catherine looked every inch sweet and innocent and pretty. All she had to do was smile at the guy leaning in just a little too close for Cross’s liking, and the guy didn’t seem to notice anyone else was even around them.
Just Catherine.
She shrugged; the guy laughed.
He reached out to touch her on the arm, but she was already moving back with a teasing smile. The guy’s wide arms and guffaw only made Catherine wink, and wave her perfectly painted red nails high. Red, like the lipstick on her sly mouth. She never let the guy get close enough to touch, but she sure seemed to let him think he could.
Which was probably all the guy wanted.
Cross kind of saw it then.
A game.
She was playing a game with him. Another smile. Another step closer. Another move played by him. Another game probably won by her.
The guys like her …
Jade’s words echoed.
Then, Cross saw the exchange, although it was fast between hands held low, and when heads were turned. Palms sliding together, a flash of cash being hidden in a pocket, and then the guy was dropped from Catherine’s attention because she had got what she wanted. He had nothing more to give.
Cross wanted to be surprised at what he was seeing, but he really wasn’t at all. How could he be shocked, when Catherine was clearly good at whatever she was doing. She had always been a little too sly for her own good, and this was just another way for her to put that to use.
And men were dumb enough not to notice.
He still didn’t like it, though. She was putting herself in dangerous situations just by doing what she was doing—dealing always came with obvious and hidden dangers. No matter how much control she thought she had, there was always a possibility of something bad happening.
That was a shitty byproduct of the business.
Even knowing all of that, Cross still felt his jealousy burning hard like a fire inside his chest. He tried to quell it, to ignore it, but nothing helped.
Why was he so fucked when it came to her?
Why?
Cross came out of his thoughts as he got closer to Catherine and Andino. Both were sitting on the back of the Cadillac SUV’s bumper, and Andino saw him approach first.
“Cross,” Andino greeted, pushing off the bumper to stand tall. At six-foot-three, Andino stood eye-level with Cross. “Didn’t know you were around tonight.”
“I had a favorite to come for,” Cross said with a shrug, “but that didn’t work out.”
“Too bad.”
Cross’s gaze skipped to Catherine, who was watching him under lowered lashes, even if she was trying to act like her fingernails were more interesting. “Heard you were dealing, so I figured I should come say hi. Respect, and all.”
Andino nodded. “As long as you’re not buying.”
“Not my style, man.”
“Good, good.” Cross found Catherine was watching him again, and Andino didn’t miss it. “So hey, race is about to start. I want to see the jump of it, since I was too busy working to check out the cars. You good, Catty?”
Catherine’s green eyes moved between her cousin and Cross. “Yeah, Andi.”
Cross took the seat Andino vacated as soon as the guy was gone. “You’re going to break your neck in those heels, babe.”
She grinned. “Never.”
“How’ve you been?”
“Busy.”
“I can see that,” Cross said.
Catherine cocked a brow. “Is that why you came over?”
“Entirely. Curiosity got the better of me when someone mentioned you were dealing with your cousin.”
“Yeah, well.”
She offered nothing else.
Cross didn’t ask.
“Then I saw you doing your thing,” Cross said, drawing each word out slowly.
“And?”
“And, nothing, Catty. It’s your game to play, you know? I can see why someone else might fall into the trap, sure.”
Catherine scoffed. “But not you, right?”
Cross smirked at her. “I think that’s part of your pull with them, babe. I’ve already been there with you. Whatever fun you’re trying to dangle for me, I’ve already had. It loses its appeal once you give it out, that’s all.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, and he immediately heard his mistake echoing back to him.
“Ouch, Cross.”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that, Catherine,” he said quieter.
Her gaze avoided his entirely. “I don’t know you to say things you don’t mean, so—”
“I meant what I said, but it didn’t mean what you thought. There’s a difference, babe. You’re a terribly pretty face, and when you use it to your advantage, guys go stupid. That’s the deal, though, see. They’re enjoying what they’re not getting because when they come to you for what they do want, they get to play a little game, too, even if they lose. Here’s the thing, Catty, they know they don’t have a chance with you, but they still play.”
Cross leaned back into the vehicle, stretching out his legs and crossing his boots one over the other. “I don’t need to play any games where you’re concerned, and I never have. I never will. I’m only going to tell you what I want, and you’ll either agree, or you won’t. That’s me, that’s you—that’s us. You can’t fuck with me like you fuck with them; it’s not even close to the same.”
“You’re so arrogant,” she huffed.
“I’m also right, though, deny it.”
She didn’t.
Cross smiled.
“I like the control,” Catherine admitted.
“I bet.”
“I don’t have any with you.”
Wrong.
She had too much.
He didn’t tell her that.
“But there’s always rules, and this, and that,” Catherine said, sighing. “It’s always something with Andino and John. So this is fun, and then I go home, and I’m bored again.”
Cross frowned. “Rules like what?”
Catherine kicked her wedge heels against the pavement. “Like I can’t be out of their sight, for one thing.”
He waved around them. “Where’s Andino now?”
“You’re here, Cross. That’s why.”
“Mmhmm. Because he knew I didn’t make my way down here to talk to him, Catty. Not really.”
She stared at him from the side under long lashes and a demure smile. Her expression said she was considering something, and then her next words made his dick hard in an instant. “Do you want to have some fun with me, Cross?”
“That depends on the type of fun.”
“I don’t want to be bored when I go home tonight. I want to be tired for once, not wide awake. I’m way up high like this, and then I can’t come down, and that’s not fun at all. So maybe I just want to do something different this time because we’re always fun like that, aren’t we?”
“Someone,” Cross said. “Do someone, you mean.”
“You,” she replied, “if you want to.”
He still didn’t know how to tell this damn girl no.
“This is not a good place for that, Catherine.”
“The Cadillac has dark tint and a big back seat.”
“The last time we fucked in a car, it all went to shit.”
Understatement, asshole.
Her gaze flashed with something he couldn’t understand, but it was gone just as fast. Then she kissed him hard enough to make him forget he even saw it to begin with. Her teeth bit into his bottom lip, and her fingernails scratched against the skin of his throat as she grabbed a handful of his hoodie.
He was thinking with his cock again.
It had really good ideas.
“Backseat, right now,” Cross mumbled into Catherine’s grinning mouth. He fisted her dress and pulled her into his embrace at the same time he got up off the bumper, bringing her with him the whole time. “Fuck, right now, girl.”
Catherine stumbled in her haste; he caught her easily. The back door opened fast under Cross’s grasp, and Catherine didn’t waste time climbing inside, nor did he when he jumped in behind her. All he saw was a flash of black thong and her sexy, tight ass and he couldn’t get that damn door closed fast enough.
Cross was already shoving his jeans and boxer-briefs down around his hips, but he wasn’t wasting time taking the things off. He did shrug his leather jacket off, but not before he pulled the only condom he had out of the inner pocket.
“I like you on your knees like that,” he said, coming up behind Catherine to shove her dress up around her back. That black thong snapped gently under a pull of his finger, and Catherine sighed. “It makes a nice view.”
She laughed. “I’ll stay on them for you.”
“You better.”
Cross kissed the spot on her lower back, right above the swell of her ass, as he ripped open the condom packet and rolled latex down his hard length. “I’m not playing—I just wanna fuck.”
“Then stop talking, and start doing that, Cross.”
All right.
He slid her thong aside with his fingers, and then he was sliding in. All the way into heaven. A hot, wet heaven.
Catherine’s top half fell into the seat with a shiver. Cross grabbed her hips and pulled her body in for more. Because she could fucking take it, all of it, and he knew she liked it, too.
“Yeah, it’s been way too long,” he groaned.
“Still so good.”
Her voice was all air and sex.
He liked the way she smelled like sin and cherries when he sucked it in.
“So good,” he agreed.
The frantic beat of Cross’s heart matched the pace of his thrusts. Even holding onto her hips did little because Catherine just kept pushing back into him anyway. She gave as good as she got, and it drove him nuts.
Because he always wanted more.
With her, that want came easy.
It was bad for him.
She was bad for him.
But he could make this just sex, and it didn’t have to matter at all.
That’s what she wanted.
He could do that.
He felt high as hell between her thighs, wanting deeper with every thrust, and finding she was so damn tight around him it was ridiculous. Crazy. Stupid. Delirious. His fingers pressed deeper into her hips, leaving beautiful pink prints behind and making her sigh when she backed into him again.
Catherine was always sweeter and prettier with a dress shoved up so she could be fucked, her ass high, panties pushed aside, and him inside her. His cock, fingers, or his tongue. He didn’t care, she just looked perfect like that.
“I wanna come,” she whined against the seat, “I wanna come.”
He kind of loved that, too. How her words slurred, and her inhibitions left. How she didn’t care what she sounded like, or how she looked, as long as she felt good.
And damn, she felt good.
“Give it to me, then,” he demanded.
Cross let go of her hips to pull her up, one of his hands sliding around her throat to grab a handful of her sweet neck and the necklace she wore. His other hand drifted into her hair, pushing the messy waves out of her face so he could kiss her cheek, and bite the corner of her mouth.
Wild eyes blinked back at him.
Trembling lips parted when he kissed them.
“Aren’t you going to give it to me, Catty?”
God, she did.
Hard, shaking, crying out, and scoring lines over his hand on her throat all at the same time. Sweet sixteen, and oh, so pretty like this, he thought.
Catherine hadn’t even finished panting her way through her orgasm before he came, too, emptying into latex while her muscles sucked him dry. “Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah,” Catherine mumbled, her cheek still pressed to his lips.
Cross needed to breathe.
He pulled out and away from her, if only because the longer he stayed like that, the better it felt. He wasn’t dealing with those feelings and that bullshit tonight. Catherine rolled from her knees to her backside, and leaned into the seat.
“I need a fucking napkin or something,” Cross said.
Catherine tossed her bag at him that had been lying on the floor. “In there.”
Cross found a pack of tissues in the Prada bag, and got rid of the damned condom by stuffing it into his pocket after it was wrapped up. He’d toss it later. Once he was tucked back in, and zipped up, he looked to her.
“You good?” Cross asked.
Catherine stretched her arms high, and then fixed her thong and dress. “A little wetter than I should be, but hey.”
He laughed. “That’s not a bad thing.”
“I’m aware.” She side-eyed him. “This is a one-time thing, though. I’m not the hookup kind of girl, Cross.”
That was on her.
He wasn’t offering anything else.
He wasn’t ready.
She did that, too.
“Call me if that changes,” he said, reaching for the backdoor.
“For you, it might,” she murmured. “Still friends?”
Cross swallowed hard, and pushed the door open. “Yeah, definitely friends.”
Now.
He stepped out of the back of the SUV just as he shrugged his leather jacket back on overtop his hoodie. He ignored the way the ground felt weak under his Doc Martens—fucking Catherine always left him a little stupid in the head.
Two cars down, Andino’s gaze caught Cross’s, though he was in conversation with someone else. Cross figured he should probably apologize, given the Cadillac was Andino’s to begin with. Whatever conversation Andino was having couldn’t be too important because he dropped it without warning and came Cross’s way.
“Sorry,” Cross said.
He didn’t sound very apologetic.
Andino smirked. “Didn’t see a thing, man.”
Well, then …
“I owe you one.”
“I will cash it in someday, Cross.”
Yeah.
Marcellos always did.