Page 65 of Brick

CHAPTER TWENTY

Liv

Liv stared out the window of Izzy’s apartment, painfully aware she’d made a colossal mistake the night before. Eduardo said her car had been intact, so she planned to go back to her own place tonight.

Izzy handed her a cup of coffee and joined her on the sofa. “How long until he gets here?”

“He said he’d be here for lunch around twelve-thirty.” She sipped at the dark roast, the flavor washing over her tongue. “I know he loves me, but the last thing I want to do is explain myself to Will right now.”

“I support you, Liv, but I won’t lie for you. If this Brick guy—”

“Jonathan.” More and more often, in the moments when she allowed herself to think of him, he stopped being Brick. He was more than the scary hunk of muscle other people could see. Calling him Jonathan—knowing she was the only one—made it feel as though a secret part of him was hers.

“If this Jonathan is who you have your heart set on, you can’t hide this from our brother. We’re family. We’ve got to have each other’s backs.”

Iz was right, as usual.

“You’ve got to tell him about what happened last night, Nugget. While you’re at it, you need to fill in some blanks for me, too. You barely told me anything, only something about your car getting stuck in a bad part of town and you needing to crash here. I didn’t push then, but I’m pushing now.”

She sighed. “I fucked up, but it had nothing to do with Jonathan. He actually saved me from my own stupidity.” She sipped her coffee, then set the mug on the table. “Remember I told you about my student, Devon, last year?”

Iz nodded.

“I went to his apartment last night.”

“Didn’t you tell me he lives in the Bluff—That’s why your car was there?”

“Yeah. Turns out his brother is a total psycho, and now I’m on his radar. How fucking naïve, right? If Jonathan hadn’t seen me walking out—if he didn’t know the kind of guy I was dealing with—I probably wouldn’t have made it home.”

“Motherfucker,” Iz muttered.

“The guy still knows where I work, and I’m not sure what I can do about it. I will tell Will…all of it.” She set her coffee on the table. “Let’s just start cooking.” Going through the motions would soothe her.

They washed their hands in silence. Iz had already told her she planned to stuff bell peppers for lunch, so she unwrapped the ground beef and gave it to her sister to brown it in the pan. She’d been cooking with her sister for years. The rhythm of it took her mind off her troubles.

“What was your guy even doing there?” Iz stopped stirring the meat. “You sure he’s not stalking you?”

She wanted to throw the onion she was peeling at her sister. Instead, she set it on the chopping board. “He’s not stalking me. I haven’t seen him in months. He works in Devon’s neighborhood sometimes.”

Her sister’s expression dripped with skepticism. Iz grabbed a knife from the big wooden block on the counter and started chopping. “Have you heard from him since last night?”

She shook her head.

Iz stopped chopping the onion and paused with the knife in the air. “Do you even know what he did when he left here? Exactly what kind of work is he doing?”

“No. He doesn’t like to talk about the stuff he does for his boss.” She didn’t look at her sister as she dipped stale bread into a bowl of beaten egg and milk.

Stern-faced, Izzy scraped her onions into the pan. “Let me guess. You don’t want to know.” Iz elbowed her in the arm. “You can’t keep the blinders on with this guy. I know you’re into him, but it sounds like he’s involved with some serious shit. If he’s what you want, I’ve got your back, but don’t lie to yourself. Accepting him in your life means accepting all the fucked-up shit he does when he’s not with you.”

Her mouth ran dry as she considered Izzy’s words. A million doubts crowded her mind while she questioned her perceptions of the man. Hell, she questioned her perceptions of every man. Everyone. She hadn’t even known her best friend had been lying to her for months. Some judge of character she was.

She stepped away from the stove to grab a bottled water from the fridge and watched her sister tear the bread pieces apart and add them in with the meat.

In her head, she knew Jonathan hurt people—killed people. He’d said so himself. It was one thing to know it. It was another to let herself feel it.

He had taken people’s lives.

Her throat closed on the water as she tried to swallow, but she forced it down. “He’s so gentle with me. It doesn’t make sense.” She tried to picture him hurting her, and she couldn’t do it. “It’s not who he is. There’s kindness in him. I’ve seen it. I know it’s what he does, but it’s not who he is. He’s protecting his grandmother, Iz.”

---