Page 23 of Power Play

So I told her if she was going to pay me back, she needed to deliver the money to me every week. In person. I didn’t think about the logistics of it. Where she was currently living, how she would make that happen. Those were my demands.

The next Sunday she showed up with four hundred and eighty-two dollars in cash.

A ping of guilt ricocheted inside my head, which didn’t help my hangover. I texted her back.

Me: Save it until next week.

Kit: You’re ridiculous. Just let me send you the money.

Me: If I let you send me the money, I’ll never see you in that cat suit again.

Kit: …

Kit: …

Kit: You want the cat costume, it’s going to cost you.

Me: How much?

“What are you grinning at?” Wyatt asked, breaking me out of the spell texting Kit put me under.

“Nothing. No one.”

Wyatt laughed. “You have always been a shit liar, Liam.”

“What’s the plan with Nick?” I asked to distract him.

If Wyatt knew what I was doing with Kit, he would not be a fan. At all. Forget the fact he’d tell me it was her father who stole from me, so it should be her father paying me back, he’d hate the idea of me inflicting punishment on a woman.

Except it wasn’t that simple. My problem with the whole situation was that I didn’t have…what was that fancy therapist term?…closure. I didn’t go to that trial. I walked away when anyone started talking about it. I didn’t watch any of the coverage and I didn’t come forward when they looked for athletes Barrington had stolen from. I tried to erase the whole thing from my mind.

And then she showed up at my door.

Now, I needed closure with Kit, and until I got it, she could keep showing up at my house until she confessed what she did, or I no longer cared.

“I don’t know?” Wyatt said. “We talk to him. He talks to us.”

“Instant family?” I asked.

Wyatt grunted.

“What if he doesn’t show?” I asked. “Maybe we should have paid him.”

“That’s your fucking solution for everything.”

I shrugged. We had money. Lots of it. Should use it for something.

An hour later, Wyatt and I were sitting in a back booth in a dive bar on the south side of Boston where no one was going to notice us or care that we were there.

About ten minutes later a man walked in. Tall. Sandy brown hair. Mom’s eyes.

“Holy shit,” I breathed. He looked so much like Mom it took my breath away. He had that careful look about him. Wary. It made my protective brother instinct go full throttle.

“Be cool,” Wyatt muttered.

“You be cool,” I shot back. “Try not to scare him off.”

I stood up and lifted my hand in a wave. Trying to project as much, don’t worry we’re not going to hurt you, as I could.

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