Page 43 of Smith

“Jonas—”

He stepped closer, bringing himself damn near nose-to-nose with me. “One day it’ll be too late. One day you’ll be lying there thinking about your life and it’ll be too fucking late to go back and fix all your regrets. Too late to live the life you wanted to live. I don’t think for a second your heart’s broken, your mind is. Your problem is you believeher. You believe all the lies she shoved down your throat.”

He stopped, and when he did, I couldn’t suck in enough oxygen to tell him to fuck off. Unfortunately that gave him the opportunity for him to deliver his kill shot. “This might make me a total motherfucker but if that bitch wasn’t already dead, I’ll kill her for what she did to you. What she continues to do. And that’s onher,too. That was her choice to go back. She knew whatwould happen and she left you for him knowing however that went down would fuck you up. I’d slice her throat for that alone.”

After he aimed his arrows and pierced through the armor I’d spent years building, Jonas left me standing alone in the dining room with my chest burning and my head more screwed up than it’s ever been.

I did not love her now, but I once had. Yet I couldn’t find an ounce of affront my friend straight out said he’d kill my fiancée if she was still alive. That threat should’ve been a betrayal of our friendship, of the brotherhood.

But I couldn’t find the betrayal. All I could find was loyalty.

CHAPTER TEN

I didn’t know what was happening in the other room but the tension was so thick when I walked by it was coating the entire downstairs.

It was testosterone overload.

“If you turn off the boy band I’ll help you upstairs,” Jonas offered from the entryway to the kitchen.

“I’m offended and appalled you called theJonasBrothers a boy band, Jonas.”

“I’m offended you consider them music,” he volleyed.

I glanced up from my soapy hands, surprised to find him frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

Smith appeared behind Jonas.

“He’s trying to find a way to tell you we need to tear out the upstairs without pissing you off.”

“I’m sorry,what?”

Smith stepped around Jonas coming farther into the crappy kitchen that would be fabulous when I finished with it and leaned a hip to the faded Formica top.

“We need to see what’s behind the rest of the drywall.”

I heard dollar signs flying out the window.

“Why?”

“Because the night of the break-in the woman two doors down had a heart attack. If whoever broke in was still in the house the emergency vehicles could’ve scared them away before they got everything they came for. Which means they could be planning on coming back. Before that happens, we gotta check. And it’d be smart you video the demo and put it up. Just in case they’re watching they’ll know whatever they’re looking for is no longer an option to them.”

I was running calculations in my head—the cost of a sheet of drywall, tape, mud, screws, time cost for demo and installation. New insulation if it was damaged in the tear out. I was already screwed waiting for the inspector and the additional cost of fixing a perfectly good wall—well, itwasstructurally sound until some asshole had a sledge to it.

“The whole upstairs?” I asked for clarification.

“We’ll start with the room you’re working on first. That’s only three walls you were going to keep intact and one is already fucked.”

Three walls was better than the entire upstairs, but still that would add hundreds of dollars to the cost of the remodel.

“And if you don’t find anything?”

Smith at least had the decency to look sympathetic.

“Then we’ll regroup.”

That was not the answer I wanted.

---