CHAPTER 24
Shane’s brain was skilled at compartmentalizing, but when you had someone like Cecily on your mind, it was hard not to let your thoughts drift.
Yesterday was like the kind of dream he’d never dared to dream. It wasn’t just the moments where he simply held her in his arms, and it wasn’t just the moments where their bodies joined, on fire, taking them both to higher ground. Nope. Not just the physical stuff. Because the way his body ignited when he fucked her, made love to her, even just fooled around with her—that was all due to something more. How he felt, how she made him feel. How, because of her, he could believe in something better for himself, for his life.
Shane took a deep breath and brought his focus back to the job at hand. Anya Gorchakov. If you had to be on somebody’s tail, Anya’s was not exactly a hardship. Thing was, Anya’s ass didn’t have the same kind of appeal it might have had before Cecily had rocked both his body and his entire belief system.
It was Wednesday, and, so far, this Wednesday was exactly like last Wednesday. Anya’s Mondays were always like her Mondays, her Tuesdays like her Tuesdays, and so on. She was either lacking in imagination, completely OCD, living under James’s thumb in the worst possible way, trying to look very predictable to camouflage something very unpredictable, or some combination. She’d perfected resting bitch face. She spent a god-awful amount of time making herself look nice, which was helpful in terms of Shane’s surveillance, because it meant fewer hours outside of her posh bathroom at home. For a so-called model—and one who was sure tall enough and beautiful enough—she’d not been called on any go-sees, and she’d not participated in any shoots. As far as Shane and the guys surveying her house and her boyfriend’s world were concerned, she had exactly two equally aimless friends who also appeared to spend a god-awful amount of time focusing on being beautiful.
Maybe that wasn’t resting bitch face. Maybe that was quiet misery.
Shane ran his fingers over his lips as he watched Anya receive the same Waldorf salad at the same table from the same server in the same restaurant as last Wednesday.
He’d been wearing resting bitch face for a long time, only nobody called it that when a guy was wearing it. And now that he had Cecily, he realized it wasn’t even RBF. His was just quiet misery. He watched Anya cut the first chunk of apple with her knife. No fucking salad could make a woman that sad.
Maybe being a Russian agent wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He wondered what she’d been promised in exchange for her services. He wondered if James delivered.
Anya would spend forty minutes eating that salad. Shane kept the restaurant window in his peripheral vision even as he walked a distance to the flower kiosk he’d been eyeing the last couple of times he’d been on watch.
He’d pulled out his wallet as they came into view: a bouquet of mixed pinks that made him think of so many things. So many things he wasn’t used to having rattling around the inside of his brain. The glittery heart on Cecily’s shirt as she lay on the bed in the hotel, her lips against his tan skin, the freakin’ underwear she was wearing last night.
He checked the time, confirming again Anya was still eating. Jaysus, this was fucking serious. It’s serious when buying a girl flowers felt more intense than a gun pointed in your face.
“Help ya?” the florist asked, trimming the stems off a pile of yellow roses dripping down the corner of a piece of newsprint by the cash register.
Shane ignored the question, his gaze just stuck on the pinks. What if there was more? What if a beautiful life wasn’t just an idea a kid once had a long time ago?
I can try. I can try out this thing we started. For some reason, even though we shouldn’t make any sense at all, she brings peace to my crazy.
Shane bought the pinks, told himself to remember they were peonies if she asked, and headed back to the car, checking his cell phones for good measure. Which should have been a warning, right there and then. He didn’t need to check his cell phones. They would have rung if they were gonna ring. But he was out of his element, off his game, in another world.
And in the world he just toyed around with in his brain, Cecily’s world, you missed things you weren’t supposed to miss. You lost your certainty about things that should have been 100 percent clear.
In that real world Cecily lived in, your car gets hit, and you don’t even fucking notice because you’re busy memorizing the word “peonies.”
Shane just stood there on the sidewalk, the water leaking from the bottom of the bouquet down his fingers to the street wasn’t half as cold as the trail icing down his spine.
This had never happened. This had never, ever fucking happened. Sure, he’d been bashed, but not without ever seeing a thing. Not ever.
The right front bumper of his BMW was scraped up, red paint and white streaks where another vehicle had grazed it. Had someone done it on purpose to send a message? Shane knelt down and ran his finger over the damage; the red peeled off under his touch. Not the white, though, seared into the chassis like claw marks through his own flesh.
Worse, it was fresh. Hot fury replaced the ice. He stood up and looked around. He’d been sight distant and sound distant—this close—to his car the entire time and hadn’t seen it happen. He’d missed it buying Cecily flowers. He’d missed it. He wasn’t there.
Was this what it meant to work in a dangerous business and have that business touch everyday life, so you couldn’t take a minute to get flowers for your woman for fear you’d miss something, or worse, that something wouldn’t miss you? Oh, man. This is not going to work. Maybe it stood a chance with someone like Missy or Allison. Someone who was part of the life, like it or not. Cecily was not part of the life, and he wasn’t going to force a square peg into a round hole and then worry about her for their entire relationship. That sick feeling, that bone-chilling fear he’d felt watching her walk toward James on those steps that day . . . she wasn’t meant for this kind of life. And he couldn’t handle watching her walk up to danger time and again just because of her association with the Hudson Kings. It couldn’t possibly be worth it. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t do it.
Nothing this sweet ever lasts.
“What the fuck am I doing?” he muttered. “What the fuck am I doing?”
Shane dumped Cecily’s flowers facedown in a nearby trash can and blocked it all out, everything. If he wasn’t the best at what he did, he had no idea who he was. He had nothing if he didn’t have his place at the Armory. That place was only as strong as the men who were part of it, and Shane wasn’t looking to make it or him weaker.
He turned off the phone he’d reserved for Cecily. Anya walked out of the restaurant. He turned on the engine and followed her with his fucked-up car to the exact same places she’d gone last Wednesday. When his shift was up, and he turned her over to Nick, he dialed the Four Seasons and checked into the hotel twenty minutes later. In his room, he scrolled to Keegan, ignored Cecily’s name, and dialed Dex.
Dex barely got his name out when Shane started to lose it. “I did not get it, man. I did not get it. Thought you were full of shit. Thought you figured I wasn’t good enough for your sister.”
“Wait a—” Dex tried.
“You had it pegged, and I didn’t see it.”
“See what, Shane?”
Shane hated the tone of Dex’s voice. Dex was supposed to be pissed. Dex was supposed to have essentially unfriended Shane. But Dex just sounded worried and concerned, and it made Shane want to throw the fucking phone through the hotel window.
“In my head I assumed I’d be right there when she needed me. I’d be close enough. But I forgot. It’s too easy, isn’t it?”
“Where are you, man?”
Shane stalked the room, his chest heaving. “I wasn’t there when my folks died. I wasn’t there. I can talk the talk and walk the walk, but sometimes, you’re just not there. I was at home. Didn’t want to go in the car to get the pizza because I was playing video games. Grand Theft Auto. Thought it was fun. Guns and cars. Having the time of my life.”
“Where. Are. You?”
“I’m fine. I’m gonna be fine. And Cecily’s gonna be fine. I’m stepping out of frame, okay? Tell her to go hang with Ally. Tell her to find her normal. I’m not going to bring her close to danger and then not be there when they come for her.”
“Shane?” Dex said something else then, but his voice went tinny as he talked to one of the brothers in the background.
“Do not trace my call. I don’t need anything. Just wanted to tell you it’s done. That’s all I gotta say. I’m done with Cecily. She is not going to come to harm because of me. We cool?”
“Shane—”
Shane hung up, a flood of memories crashing through his brain. Then he grabbed his card key and headed for the bar.