Page 61 of Grave Curse

“Well—”

“And didn’t you once tell me that Blue Horizons, LLC is also the company that owns your loft? That must mean he’s your landlord there too, right?”

I looked for a way to not answer and couldn’t find one. “Right.”

She stared at me. “Why didn’t you tell me? The man has you basically surrounded better than Fort Knox, so why wouldn’t you tell me anything about that? I had no clue!”

“Neither did I!”

“I find that hard to believe, Ginger. I mean, he’s literally everywhere in your life. And you honestly expect me to believe you didn’t know?”

Now I felt like an idiot. “I swear I didn’t know.”

“Then how did you find out?”

“He told me while…”

“Yes? I’m waiting.”

You know what, fuck it. “He told me while we were having sex for the first time the other night right there on my dining room table.” There. The cat was out of the bag, and there was nothing I could do about it. If Hades ever got his hands on Roxie, he’d crack her like a thin-shelled walnut to get to that secret, but the fact was she was already figuring it out all on her own.

I’m sorry, Roxie.

My best friend stared at me a shocked moment before she threw her arms around me. “Oh, Ginger, this is amazing!”

“Really?” I returned the hug, baffled, before backing away to search her face. “I don’t know if I’d call it that. It’s not like Tyr and I figured out how to bring about world peace. Hell, we can’t even figure out how to bring peace to our own backyard. All we did was just, y’know… have sex.”

“First off,younever have sex of any kind, which is a crime against all things good and wonderful,” she began, and when she started ticking points off her fingers I knew things were serious. “Secondly, I’ve never bought all that nonsense about the two of you hating each other. I know the stories,” she added when I opened my mouth. “I get how damaged your relationship is, Iswear. But that damage? Girl, it was never caused by either of you. You two never once tried to hurt each other, at least not in my presence, which means everything between you is both fixable and forgivable. Thirdly—”

“Wow, there’s a thirdly? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a thirdly.”

“Hush.Thirdly, the volatility between you and Tyr has always been so intense it could light up a small city, so I can only imagine what it’s like when you two are lighting up the sheets—or in this case, the dining room table. By the way, remind me to never eat on that surface again.”

“Very funny.”

“And lastly—”

“Finally, we got to a lastly?”

“Yes. Lastly, there’s that unbelievably sus ownership of Blue Horizons, LLC.”

“I’m actually glad you mentioned that,” I admitted, lowering my voice and leaning in confidentially, which was probably stupid because there was no one else around. “It’s weird, right, Tyr owning every place that means something to me? It’s not just me thinking that it’s weird?”

“Honey, it is off-the-charts weird. In fact, it leaves weird behind and dives headfirst into crazy, but you know something? I think it’s the best kind of crazy, considering where you both come from, and I can’t wait for you to have that kind of crazy in your life.”

I tried not to gape at her. “I hate to say it, Roxie, but you’ve lost me. What are you talking about?”

“Can’t you see it? No, I guess you can’t,” she lamented, answering her own question with a sad little sigh. “Okay, let me try to explain this to you. Tyr has been in your life as one thing for so long, you can’t see that he’s nothing like what you’ve been programmed to believe.”

That wasn’t completely true. “Rox—”

“Ginger, please listen to me, okay? Unless I miss my guess, Tyr Colgrave is in a forever kind of love with you that’ll outlast the stars in the sky,” she announced, and the words hit me so deeply it obliterated every thought I had in my head. “Think about it. When your mom died, Tyr sheltered you for over a year. In that time, not only was he getting ready to start his own Gravediggers chapter and buying up all the property inside that compound across the street, he was also starting up Blue Horizons, LLC. He did it as a front so neither you nor that hideous step-monster of yours would know Tyr was giving you a base of operations by making this place into Vixen’s Den. Tyr then did the same thing with the loft, knowing you needed a place far away from him. You needed to be on your own, out of his house and away from the biker world, so you could start the healing process. Once you healed, maybe then you could find the strength to sort through all the shit Hades tried to twist your life into.”

“I… don’t think all this is nearly as deep as you’re making it,” I managed faintly, while her words crowded into my head. “I mean, Tyr was barely twenty-one at the time when the idea of moving my online business into a brick-and-mortar store began to take shape.”

“Out of curiosity, whose idea was that? Yours?”

“No.” I had to smile, if wryly. “It was Tyr’s.”

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