Page 20 of Clubs

“You’ve pissed her off many times before, and I’m sure you’re gonna piss her off a thousand more times. She’s still looking.”

“Probably,” I said under my breath, pausing again. “Alright, I know I was a dick. But it was more my tone than what I said, right? Wanting to pay her back, that’s just basic decency. That’s not controlling, is it?”

“Fuck if I know,” Emory said. “Brooke is a puzzle I’m never gonna put together. If she weren’t your soulmate I would’ve told you to leave a long time ago. You love the hell out of her, and I don’t think she even likes you.”

It was me who snorted this time. “You and me both,” I murmured. “No, I know she loves me. She just got some fucking issues. She needs therapy. That’s the problem.”

“Are you sure about that?” Emory asked. “Because I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say ‘I love you.’ She says it every time she gets off the phone with Ria—every time Ria leaves the room—but I don’t think she has ever told you ‘I love you.’ Not in front of me, anyway.”

“Yeah, she has. Just yesterday, she said ‘I love you.’ I told her ‘I love you’ before I left to run over to the store. And she said ‘I love you, too.’”

“No, she said, ‘you too.’ That’s not really the same as ‘I love you.’”

Cocking my head to the side, I thought back on it. She had said “you too.” When I told her I loved her for the first time, she had said “I feel the same way.” She didn’t say I love you back. And now that I thought about it, I couldn’t think of one time when she had said the whole phrase.

“You’ve never heard her say ‘I love you’ to me?” I asked.

“Not once,” Emory said. “Ria and I had a bet going about when you’d realize. Another one for how long it would take her to say it.”

Slouching, I let out a dramatic sigh. “Not once.”

“Probably not the time to bring this up. Go get your shower, man. We’ll do some digging and see if we can figure out how Alicia is connected to the bar when you’re done.”

* * *

I tried to think about something else while I showered, but that was all I could think about. Not once in almost two years had Brooke told me that she loved me. Now that I thought about it, I remembered her saying “you too.” An occasional “mhmm,” an “I know,” but not a single “I love you.”

Why? Why say “you too,” and “mhmm,” and all the other combinations without the actual word? Was there a story there? Or was it simply her inability to open up?

The latter, I imagined. No matter how hard I tried, she just wouldn’t open up. She loved stability, normalcy, humanity—I knew that. I had learned it in one of our very few deep conversations.

Very drunk, we’d been talking about society. I mentioned that when I was a kid, I had wished there was a school for people like us. I had hated feeling like the outlier for being a part of the supernatural world. She said the opposite. When she was a child, she had wished she was human. Not because she hated having powers, but because maybe she would’ve had had parents who stuck around. Parents who were responsible, who loved her as much as she loved them.

That last bit, I had always inferred. It was too vulnerable for Brooke to admit aloud. That girl avoided vulnerability like the plague.

There was too much going on at the moment to address it directly with her, but I wanted to confirm my suspicions. She was already pissed at me, so I couldn’t expect much, but I would tell her I loved her when I saw her tonight, just to make sure that I wasn’t making this up. Or rather, that Emory wasn’t.

When I got out of the shower, Emory suggested I get some sleep. That wasn’t happening. Sleep felt impossible. Instead, we went over to Spades. I pulled out every club member book going back twenty years.

Emory was already seated in the booth with some paperwork strewn out before him. It was barely noon, so probably not the most responsible time to start drinking, but a bad day was a bad day. Whiskey in hand, spilling it along the way, I grunted a curse.

As I stood back up to grab the bottle, Emory lifted a fifth of Jack Daniels from the seat beside him. “One step ahead of you, unless you’re gonna be picky.”

“Not today.” I snatched the bottle. Twisting off the cap and lifting it to my lips, since apparently, I wasn’t capable of keeping a glass upright at the moment, I glared at the stack of paperwork on the old mahogany tabletop. “No Alicia, huh?”

“Not yet, no,” Emory said. “You don’t have a picture of the girl by chance, do you?”

“They showed me one at the police department, but no. I don’t have one on me. Why?”

“I can ask around about her.” Whooshing some auburn hair from his face, Emory eyed the documents. “I’ll know if anyone’s lying to me. Or rather, they won’t be able to.”

Ah, yes. One of Emory’s most prominent and important abilities. He could do lots of things—Angels could—but his most useful ability was one I didn’t have a name for. He made people tell the truth. Not through intimidation, not with violence, but simply by looking at them the right way.

I’d asked him how it worked once. He had used it on me a few times growing up, but when I had finally asked, he said he didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean, ‘how does it work?’ It just works.” According to him, all he had to do was look at someone and want them to tell the truth, and they had no choice but to.

It was a cool trick. Useful, I guess. I preferred getting to turn into a wolf.

“I’ll see if I can get a picture from the cops. If not, I’m sure Brooke can print one out at the library.” After taking another swig of whiskey, I stood and started to the safe below the bar. I didn’t keep money in there, that stayed in the back, but it was where I kept the rosters of the guests the members brought with them.

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