Page 13 of Played

“Have you broken your nose before?”

“Aye. Once.” He answers but doesn’t elaborate. “If I knew it would cause trouble, Laney, I swear to you, I would have told Caleb.”

“Told Caleb what?”

He sighs. “Freya Stewart. The banker that Caleb called to trick the kidnappers. She and I had a thing. Only, she didn’t tell me that she and Caleb had a thing, too, before me.”

I nod. “Ah. That explains a lot.” A pause. “So, Caleb didn’t know about the two of you, and he called a broken-hearted woman for help. At your cost.”

“Aye.”

I pause and look at him contemplatively. “What happened? Why did it end?”

He shrugs. “I felt I’d been deceived. When she didn’t tell me about sleeping with my brother. Felt like I couldn’t trust her anymore.”

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe she was defending your brother’s honor, Ethan? Maybe she’s not the type to kiss and tell.”

He considers that for a moment, and then he licks his lips and continues. “It felt gross, too, like she’d dipped her pen in the company ink, so to speak. Making her rounds in the Harris clan, you know.”

“I can see that.”

“Thought maybe she was getting over Caleb by fucking me.” He looks at Peg and covers his mouth sheepishly. “Pardon the language.”

“How do you know it wasn’t just a casual thing? He did say that he’d had a business type of relationship with her. Maybe that’s all it was. I can’t speak for him, of course, but maybe this means more to you than it does to him.”

“It’s long over.” He shrugs finally.

“Is it?”

“I guess it’s not since it’s come back to bite me in the ass.”

“Is it more than that, though, Ethan?”

He scratches his lip with his thumbnail. “I think so. She hates me. I said some things that should never have been said. I was awful to her. Called her a whore. Called her so many things. She threw things at me.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Months. Nearly a year.”

“And yet it’s still fresh, Ethan.”

“Caleb made me feel responsible.”

“Well, he was angry, frustrated. It probably said more about her than you, Ethan. It might have been a shock to him. Her refusing to help with something so delicate, so important, over something so trivial, high-school-like.”

“Aye.”

“How’s your nose?”

He takes the ice pack off. “It’ll be better tomorrow. I’ll have shiners for a couple of days, maybe a week. Maverick will have to take my appointments, unless da wants me to lie and say I fought off the kidnappers or something.”

“Are you going to talk to Caleb?”

“What for? It’s over.”

“It seems to me like there’s been water under the bridge between you two for a while, Ethan. Maybe it’s time to bury the hatchet.”

“We’ve always been like that, lass. Caleb and I have never been close. We’ve always been brawling about something. This is typical.”

---