Page 56 of Diamond In The Rough

“Everything’s fine, but I need to bail, and I don’t take comfort in leaving Lix alone while Wilkes is out here making a dick of himself.”

“Excuse me. Hi.” Leaning forward, Felix smirks. “What the fuck am I? A child in need of a babysitter?”

“Worse. You’re a child in need of a bodyguard.” I bring my focus back to Stovic. “You and Michaels can both ride with Lix. Leave the car for me. I’ll come back later.”

“Yes, sir.”

“ETA?”

“On our way out the door now. We’ll be there before six. Want us to bring Jasper so you have someone watching your back?”

“No, don’t worry about Jasper. But bring us food. Enough for two. Make it Italian and garlicky. Not too many mushrooms. She’ll like that.”

“Uh…” He clears his throat, as uncomfortable about this as I am. Felix is the guy to make a scene when women are around. Not me. Not ever. “Sure thing, boss. We’ll be with you within the hour. Watch your back till we arrive.”

“Yep.” I kill our call and look across to a leering Felix. “Shut up.”

“You like her!” He laughs, loud and obnoxious and suicidal, if only I didn’t care so much about keeping him alive. “You’re literally the only one making this awkward. Boy meets girl, boy smacks girl’s ass and sticks his dick in her. It’s really not that scary. If you need a step-by-step guide on how to fuck a woman, I can?—”

“You can shut your mouth before I lodge my fist in your throat and teach you just how deep you can take it.” I look across and meet his eyes. “You’re funny sometimes, Lix. You’re my fourth favorite brother. But right now, she,” I point toward the window, though we both know she’s not out there, “is off-limits. I don’t want to hear you talk about her. I don’t want you making lewd jokes about what I can do to her. And when this all blows up and turns to shit, I don’t want you anywhere near me. Because shit’s gonna get messy, and I’d really like for you not to be in the firing line.”

“You’re so fucking sure it’s all gonna go to shit.” He settles back and drops his legs wide, haughty, knowing his relationship is secure and his woman is… well, homicidal, sure. But, like me, she has a vested interest in keeping him alive.

Tragically, there would come a point when we’d miss him.

Eventually.

“It’s not as big a deal as you think it is,” he rumbles. “You like her. Let it happen. And for the love of fuckery, bring her around the house at least once. You make it weird, never having a girl in your bed.”

“Archer brought Jill around the house.” My heart thunders in my chest, too fast, too heavy to justify the situation. “She was destroyed, raped, and murdered. She wasn’t even eighteen years old. You brought Savvy around the house. Our old man got to her, too. He had five sons, to five women, and not one of those women survived to talk about it. So no…” I bounce my knee to work through some of my repressed energy. “I won’t bring her to the house. I’m smarter than that.”

“The old man is dead.” He pats his chest again. Jesus, smoking is purely a trauma response for him at this point. A habit to hide his nerves. A crutch to escape the past. “He’s gone, and no one else alive can hurt us. Arch has brought Minka around, and Christabelle has all but moved in. I can’t count the number of women Cato has brought to the house, but they have all survived. Even Tim is all tangled up in one woman. The curse has been lifted,” he claps my knee. “It’s okay to love now. I swear to you, once you decide she’s yours, she becomes all of ours. Which means we all go to war for her.”

“My options, as far as I see them,” I pick his hand up and push it away, “are that she’s a fucking plant that Wilkes has put in our lives. Which is a problem I’ll deal with. Or she’s completely innocent, in which case, she deserves better than to be dragged into all this. If you love a woman, Lix, you don’t pluck them out of obscurity and drop them onto a battlefield they never created. Tim might be circling and obsessing over that one chick, but he hasn’t crossed the line. And we both know why he isn’t claiming her.”

“Because he’s a pussy too.” Grinning, he looks out the window and avoids meeting my eyes.

If he did, he might be forced to do a little soul-searching, and realize that he, too, brought a woman to war.

The only difference is, she’s already seen a little of the front line. Before him, before their love, she had already been exposed.

That creates a loophole, I think, that allows him to continue forward with his relationship.

“So, you’re bringing her dinner?” Change of subject. “Garlicky Italian? She’s not gonna make out with you if she has smelly breath. Women are funny about that.”

“Are we fucking teenagers?” I drop my head back, thunking it against the headrest, and exhale. “I am not taking food to her in hopes of making out, Lix.”

“So you’re going there to interrogate her?” he counters. “Always the extremes for you. Did you bring your pliers and the tire wrench? She might talk if you get aggressive.”

“I wonder what I need to do to make you stop talking?” I close my eyes and simply breathe, as Smith brings us across the city, and from one borough to another. “If I thought falling in love and settling down would help mature a guy, you’re living proof I was wrong.”

“You act like I’m a bother,” he teases, “yet, you choose to keep me around. People lie, Micah.” He reaches across and smacks my chest with the side of his fist, inadvertently striking my recently broken ribs and drawing my eyes open with a violent snap.

Though, I keep my thoughts to myself, which means he remains oblivious to the pain that ricochets through my body.

“People say things, bro. Things they deem socially acceptable. Like, Christabelle, being New York’s darling, of course told me she hated my guts and to go nut myself. Because those were the words society would want her to speak.”

He snickers. “Well, maybe not the words, but the sentiment. Yet, beneath all that shit is a heart that beats for me. Same with Archer. He tells us to fuck off and get out of his life at least once per conversation. He left us more than a decade ago, and I haven’t done a lot to make him happy since showing up on his doorstep. But he crossed the country and stood with us to bring you home after Pastore tore you to pieces. And Minka? She is downright homicidal, I swear. But she calls you to make sure you’re healing alright, and she takes my calls at least seventy-five percent of the time.”

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