Page 109 of Enemies to Lovers

Inner peace begins with four words: not my fucking problem.

—Text from Copper to Baker

COPPER

We’d only thought the drama was over.

Reign was dead. Joey was in police custody being held on a five hundred K bond for attempted murder and failure to do a thousand different things—the cops on scene had found many inventive ways to drive his bond up higher so he wouldn’t get out to repeat his transgressions—and Apollo had been busy looking into Joey and his gamer girl.

Hence the meeting at the clubhouse.

I was currently sitting with Holt again asleep on my chest—we’d arrived home from the hospital to find Audric had borrowed someone else’s car to get Holt and himself back to Baker’s place—at the clubhouse twelve hours after the incident had started.

“It wasn’t Reign that Joey was talking to. It was Reign’s brother, Sonny. Sonny was the one that was playing with Joey. Sonny gave Reign the idea to get Joey’s help to get Baker away from Copper, and Reign used Joey to help her hide after her little fiasco with the armored truck downtown,” Apollo said.

“And where’s Sonny?” I asked.

“Still locked up where Reign was supposed to be,” Apollo answered. “Hey, are you going to eat all of that cake?”

I looked from my week-old wedding cake to Apollo, then back again. “This is the last piece.”

“I just stayed up all night so I could have answers for you,” Apollo threw out. “The least you can do is share cake with me.”

“I wouldn’t normally mind sharing cake with you since you’re doing me this big of a favor,” I admitted. “But this was my wedding cake, man.”

“I saved the topper,” he pointed out, as if he was doing me a favor. “That was very sweet of me, wasn’t it?”

“Sure.” I rolled my eyes, offering him a large bite of cake. “So, anything else on Joey? Just that he’s a gullible dumbass?”

“Other than the fact that he used what’s left of the money in his bank account to help fund Reign’s life, nope,” Apollo said. “Sonny is still detained and won’t be out any time soon. He voluntarily gave the medical professionals in South Dakota carte blanche in getting him better. He leaves when they say he can leave, and according to the files I was able to dig through, there’s a lot of shit going on with him. It’s sad, really. Do you want to know about his childhood?”

I shook my head.

As much of a dick that that made me, I really couldn’t care less about any of them anymore. I didn’t want to know when Reign’s funeral was. I didn’t want to know where her brother was, and how much longer he had there. I didn’t want to know anything about either sibling.

Nearly witnessing my wife murdered, death by burning, was enough to make any amount of sympathy I’d been feeling fly straight out the fucking window.

“I won’t tell you then.” Apollo chuckled. “Did you leave your wife at home?”

“Yeah, just Holt and me,” I said. “We’re gonna go car shopping. I offered to bring Baker and she adamantly refused. So I took Holt and left. I’m also going to stop and talk with the in-laws and ask them if they could get on building me a house, too.”

“On the lake?” Apollo asked.

“Where else would I want to be?” he asked. “City living isn’t for me. I want room to breathe and not have someone having their house so close to me knowing what I’m doing when I get up in the middle of the night to take a piss.”

Apollo snorted. “I don’t think that you ever had to worry about that at that fancy apartment of yours.”

“No,” I said, “but carting baby shit, groceries, and whatever the fuck else I need up ten flights is tedious and time consuming. Plus, I want room for Holt to spread his wings. The kid is getting into everything.”

Apollo’s eyes finally looked up from his computer, and the sadness in them almost stole my breath.

“Don’t ever let him go, Copper,” Apollo replied gruffly. “One day you blink, and you’re not getting those baby snuggles anymore. One day you’ll pick him up and never do that again. One day, you will watch him crawl for the last time, and you never even know it. One day he’s going to go from needing help in the bath to being able to do it all by himself.” He sounded horrible. “Don’t blink, bud. Don’t blink.”

I was choked up at his words, and I was currently holding Holt in my arms.

I thought about all the things that I loved about Holt. All the things that I had yet to experience.

And all the things that Apollo would never have again.

---