Page 35 of Stone Rules

When I got home, I put the gun on my coffee table and stared at the cold hard metal for what seemed like hours. I had a deadly weapon in my pocket. One I forgot was there when the door opened and the voices startled me. Had I remembered it was in my possession, would I have used it?CouldI have used it?

Maybe I should just leave town. Forget about this obsession with revenge. Throw away the diary and bury my past with my mother.

It would be easy enough to do now that the executor papers have come through. I could just put the apartment up for sale and live off credit cards until the insurance money and inheritance get sorted out.

Making my lap turn, I catch a glimpse of Ethan walking towards the pool. And all at once, my head, my heart and my body bombard me with reasons to stay. Reasons like his strong arms pressing me into the side of the pool. And his tongue, so soft yet demanding when it explores my mouth. And his fingers—holy hell what they can to do me with just the slightest touch.

But he doesn’t do relationships.

I could just become my old self. The one who couldn’t give a shit about things like hearts and flowers and stomach butterflies and voices that curl my toes. The one who could fuck for the simple sake of fucking. The one who could keep feeling out of it as I trained myself to do from such an early age.

I could be that person again.Couldn’t I?

I think of something Jan Mitchell told me and Piper when we were young. She said you can’t help who you fall in love with. That your heart makes decisions your head may not agree with, and sometimes you need to be smart enough to figure out which of them is right.

I spy three pairs of legs at my turnaround and look up to see Mason, Griffin and Gavin staring down at me.

For a split second, I fear they are here to kick me out unless I start paying to use the gym. Then I think better of it. After all, these are the guys who furnished my apartment when I had nothing. The guys who over the past month have accepted me as a third-wheel, a party crasher, and a meal poacher. The guys who would do anything for the women they love.

My eyes move from them over to Ethan, watching him as he swims through the water with the flawless form of an Olympic freestyle swimmer. And for the very first time, I’m jealous of the relationships my adoptive sisters have with these men. For a moment, I wonder why Ethan can’t be more like them. Why can’thebe the one who flies across an ocean for me? Who sings a song to me in front of friends and family? Who picks up his life and moves three thousand miles away from everything he knows just to be with me?

I quiet the voices in my head that want everything they can’t have. I tell myself stuff like that doesn’t happen to girls like me. I paste on a smile and pretend it doesn’t hurt to look up at them.

“What’s up guys?” I ask, holding onto the ledge by their feet.

“Who’s your friend?” Mason asks, raising his chin in Ethan’s direction.

I stare at him, wondering what this is all about. Then I think maybe one of the girls said something after our margarita night. “You’re the owners,” I say defensively. “Shouldn’t you know him already?”

The three of them give each other a look. It’s the same look I see on Baylor and Skylar’s faces when they big-sister me.

“Everything okay over here?” A wave of water laps at my back as Ethan’s protective words penetrate my ears.

He swims up next to me, eyeing the three men towering over us.

“You’re a private investigator, right?” Griffin asks him.

“That’s right,” he replies, holding out his hand in greeting. “Ethan Stone.”

“Griffin Pearce.” He leans down to shake Ethan’s wet hand. “And this is Gavin McBride and Mason Lawrence. We’re the owners of this establishment.”

Ethan shakes hands with the other two. “We met before,” he says to Gavin. “When I used to run on the track before my knees went bad. I didn’t know you were an owner.”

“I remember.” Gavin nods. “And I wasn’t an owner back then.”

“Oh, well nice to meet you again,” Ethan says. “Is there something we can do for you?”

The three men standing share that big-brother look again. Then they look down at me. And then at Ethan.

“As a P.I. surely you are aware we have cameras around the gym,” Griffin says, motioning to a black opaque dome in the ceiling in a corner of the pool room.

There is a moment of calm, quiet contemplation before Ethan and I fully comprehend what Griffin is telling us.

I quickly run through that night in my head, surmising they wouldn’t have seen more than the back of my head and maybe Ethan’s elated face when he came all over the water between us.

I smile at the thought of being caught. And then I remember one of Ethan’s silly rules about PDA. I turn to him. “There goes number seven.”

He raises his brows at me, questioning me with his eyes.

---