Page 72 of Close Quarters

“Pissed at you giving her shit,” Reno shot back without hesitation.

“Don’t try it, Reno. She was frustrated that I’d chosen that moment, not with what I had to say. And you were specifically saying she’d have a reason to be mad at Max.”

Well, I guess with this recent bit of news, she probably wouldn’t have been too pissed…maybe. The fact that Max and Riley were…or had been an item for most of Riley’s time here was still new to me. Reno and I had only found out when Riley had his accident. We hadn’t had a chance to talk about it much, but as I’d thought at the time, only Reno and I had managed to figure out what happened.

Whether Mona was pissed about it was going to come down to how much everyone knew. If Max had known why Riley was really here, at least before they started their relationship, then he wasn’t technically doing anything wrong. I mean, he wasn’t part of the program anymore. He was a bona fide employee, so sleeping with someone he thought was in the program was fucked up. On the other hand, if he did know and their timing was good, then it would only look fucked up to people who didn’t know the truth about Riley.

So, it was pretty easy to see why it was being kept so quiet.

Well, he had us there, but I shrugged. “Max knows how to piss people off. I bet even Max could get on Mona’s bad side.”

“How is it that I know you’re both lying through your teeth to me while also knowing there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting either of you to break and tell me the truth?” Leon asked with a weary sigh. “You’ll just back each other up.”

“Yeah, well, full offense, wasn’t the whole point of putting Elliot and me together to create a bond so I start behaving myself?” Reno asked.

“Yes,” Leon said slowly, then shook his head. “But I didn’t expect it to come back and bite me in the ass.”

“Ha!” I barked suddenly, giving Leon a playful shove. “Take it from the expert. Anything and everything can come back and bite you in the ass.”

“He would know,” Reno said, supporting me in the worst way possible. “He’s the king of bad decisions.”

“Prince,” I said with a sniff. “I’m the king of questionable decisions. I can only hold one throne, or my empire would be too large.”

“The kingdom of introspection being a full continent away, clearly,” Reno said with a smirk.

Leon glanced between us, smiling a little. “I’m glad to see, backfiring or not, that it’s working out for the two of you.”

“You’re just now bringing it up?” Reno asked suspiciously.

“Well, there’s a couple of reasons. I didn’t say it before because you’ve been doing great without interference. This backing each other up is precisely why I didn’t push when everyone with a functioning brain knew the two of you had got into a fight months ago,” Leon said, raising a brow. “And don’t argue. I know full well neither of you are going to own up to it. It’s fine. I’m just letting you know I already knew, everyone did, but I let it happen.”

“If you knew,” Reno began, emphasizing the word too much to show he wasn’t agreeing with Leon, “then why didn’t Mona do anything? She obviously felt the same way you do.”

“Because I told her no,” Leon said, shrugging.

“You…told Mona, no?” I asked, unable to hide my shock.

Leon crossed his arms. “I was the one put in charge of how to handle the two of you.”

“Handle me,” Reno corrected and then shrugged when we both looked at him in surprise. “What? Like, I’m not aware I was the real problem? No one would have said a damn thing about Elliot getting on my shit if I hadn’t hit Riley like that. You know it, I know it. There’s no point in pretending it was some mutual punishment…though you did put Elliot on the spot.”

“Look, I’m not saying how I went about it was necessarily the best way. To you, Elliot, I’ll apologize.”

“Wait, why me and not him?”

“Because he’s right. He was the original big problem. You getting in his face wasn’t worth more than talking to you about it. But I was trying to keep him here. And you were…well, you were?—”

“Convenient?” I offered dryly.

He chuckled. “A little. But it was more than just convenience. You were someone I thought would have a good effect on Reno. Even if the two of you…definitely didn’t share my opinion on that.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Reno said, making me chuckle.

“The point is, how I went about it wasn’t right, but you two proved me right.”

Something popped up in my head, and I stared at him. “Mona wanted him out, didn’t she?”

Leon looked at me in surprise before sighing. “She did, I didn’t. We…exchanged words before we came to see the two of you.”

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