Page 84 of Secondhand Smoke

“Shit.” He laughed and grabbed her around the waist, pulled her down so she lay on top of him. He smoothed her hair back off her face, rubbed her back as the steady rise and fall of his chest lifted her. His laughter died.

“I know you have to do what you have to do,” she said, “and I know you have to do right by the club. I’m just saying, baby.”

“I know.” He squeezed the back of her neck gently. “I’m listening.”

~*~

“Halloween party?” Ian asked with delight. “Will there be costumes?” He lay on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, his smile broad.

Tango groaned and ducked his head beneath the pillow, letting it muffle his words. “God no.”

“Shame. I do love costumes.”

With a sudden burst of panic, Tango lifted the pillow a fraction and peeked out from under it. “What?”

“Costumes. I love them.” Ian feigned bored and examined his perfectly trimmed and buffed nails. “You know that.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t be seeing it even if I had to wear one.”

The slow grin that came his way was all kinds of bad news.

Tango sat up, pillow clutched tight in his hands. “You know you can’t be there, right?” Things had settled into what one might call a routine lately, albeit one fraught with resentment and unanswerable questions. But it was still very much a dirty little secret, whatever it was they were doing.

Ian shrugged, hair rippling in the lamplight. “We’ll see.”

“Ian. I’m dead serious.”

“Of course, darling. Aren’t you always?”

Tango didn’t get to answer because his phone chimed with a text alert. Never a good sign this early in the morning.

Texas was on the way.

~*~

The light was still gray and thin when Aidan’s phone chimed with a text alert. It was from Walsh, a group text.Texas on the way.

“Your girlfriend?” Sam teased. She was sitting in the chair by the window, legs pulled up beneath her, writing by hand in a notebook she had angled toward the window to make use of the meager light.

“My VP.” He rolled onto his side and bunched the pillow up under his head so he could stare at her. He was in love with her bed, he decided. Unlike his own, there were no stray springs. It was soft, it smelled nice, and the sheets were still tucked in tight around his feet. Lying in her bed was like being hugged. “What are you doing?”

She lifted her pen, the pad, and then her eyebrows to sayduh.

“What are you writing about?” he amended.

Her gaze flicked down to the paper and she bit down on her lower lip slowly. Hesitation. Self-consciousness. After what had passed between them physically, he found it fascinating that she would hesitate to share something as mundane as a few written words on a page.

“It’s the rough draft of my thesis. In order to get your graduate degree, you have to write a final thesis paper,” she explained. “And since my master’s is in creative writing, with a focus on fiction, I have to write a novel.”

“You’re writing a book.”

She grinned and then thinned her lips to suppress it. “Yes.”

“What’s it about?”

She tapped the pen against the top of the pad, still debating, choosing her words. “It’s about a woman who never fit in as a child. She was just a little awkward, but she was treated more as a collection of skills than as a living, breathing girl. She grows up and realizes nothing changes with age, that she’s still just skills in a shell, and that no one will ever love her.”

“That sounds kinda depressing.”

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