Page 122 of The Love Bandits

“What my woman wants, my woman gets.”

“Have you tried to text your brother yet?”

His mouth lifts at the corner. “Only about a hundred times. And I called, not that he ever answers his phone. He wouldn’t recognize this number. My regular cell phone’s at the apartment. For all I know he’s using a different number anyway.”

“He’ll get in touch with you,” I say, wanting to believe it for him. Wanting to believe, too, that Ryan brought that watch back to Dale. If he didn’t, I know it will hurt Jake, maybe even crack his heart a little—and I’m absolutely not okay with that.

A few hours later, after a forty-five minute struggle to find street parking, he leads me up to his third-floor walk-up with a railroad style layout, one room transitioning into the next in a row. His apartment is much bigger and nicer than the one Claire and I briefly shared in Brooklyn. The furniture looks like an assemblage of thrift store finds, with a mustard yellow table in the kitchen, and a black leather sofa and chair set with antique brass buttons in the living room. The walls are covered in art, but I don’t get a chance to thoroughly snoop yet, because a note with Jake’s name on it is sitting on the kitchen table.

I glance at Jake as we approach the table.

“It’s in his handwriting,” he says, his voice rough.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

JAKE

I’m afraid I’m going to open that envelope and find something inside that’ll make it hard to forgive my brother. Whatever happens, he’s still my brother, but I want to believe he’s had a change of heart, like me. I want to believe he took those things because he wants to give at least some of them back. I need to believe it. Lainey wraps her arms around me from behind, her hands clasping over my stomach.

“That’s very close to where I’d like your hands to go.”

Lainey being Lainey, she reaches down to give me a squeeze before saying, “Quit messing around and open it.”

So I do, my breath ragged in my ears, Lainey’s arms bolstering me to help me get through this. I lift the paper up so she can read it at the same time I do.

Jake—

By now, you know that I managed to persuade Roark’s guards to let me go and leave with me. It wasn’t easy, but you’re not the only master manipulator. I’ll be honest, it didn’t hurt that we agreed to split the loot from themuseum. I took the pocket watch and a few other things it felt important to return; I let them keep most of the stuff we lifted from assholes.

You were right. There, I said it. It was wrong of me to take the watch, and I’ve felt like a real piece of shit right up until I tried to steal it back. For the last month, I’ve just had itchy feet. But when I came up with my plan to get out—and executed it—I felt something more than that. I felt good for the first time in a long while.

I know Roark told you to take that necklace, but I hope you can turn around and give it back. I also hope he doesn’t give you a hard time for what I did. He’s been a real dick lately, and I don’t want you to get strung up in that. I tried to call your phone, but given that I just found your phone in your apartment, I’m guessing you only have a burner with a number I don’t know.

I’m on my way to bring that watch back to Dale, and then there’s something else I need to return.

Roark had me snatch a holiday relic last Christmas, and I’ve felt like the fucking Grinch ever since. It’s time to bring it back and make amends.

I guess you could say this is my Dale.

After I do that, I hope you’ll be able to forgive me. I’ll find you brother, wherever you are. Because we’ll always find our way back to each other.

—Ryan

I only realize there are tears in my eyes when Lainey reaches up to trace them, same as I’ve done with her.

“He brought it back,” I say, only then realizing how fucking worried I was that he wouldn’t. That he really would decide to become Roark 2.0.

“Of course he did,” she says, shifting me so I’m facing her. She wraps her hands around my neck. “And when he comes back to us, there’ll be a place for him. There’ll always be a place for him.”

The tears are still silently tracking down my face, and I lean into her neck and kiss her there, where she’s soft and slightly sweaty and smelling of spicy jasmine. Then I trail my mouth around to kiss her soft, sweet lips. They open for me, and I bless whatever twist of fate led me to her. Because itwasa twist of fate. Everything else fits together, but one thing relied solely on fate—Cleo, seeing that necklace on my dresser and deciding to fool someone else into stealing it just in case it was the real deal.

I pull back slightly. “We should name our first kid Cleo.”

She laughs, her eyes widening. “We’re having kids?”

“Well, maybe we’ll start with another cat. We should definitely get another cat. Professor X wants to be a tyrant, and it’s hard to be tyrant if you don’t have any subjects to rule over. Maybe an orange cat. Everyone says they’re pushovers.”

She pushes my chest slightly. “It wasn’t Cleo’s doing. It was the Three of Hearts and the Seven of Wands. They put me in an emotional state.”

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