Page 67 of Street of Dreams
She huffed and folded her arms across her chest. “No. Not Alex. You know damn well who I’m talking about.”
Mac slowly shook his head in protest, his mind pushing back against the memories. “No.”
“He really misses you.”
Flashbacks shot through Mac’s head, and he practically collapsed from the aching pain in his heart. He cradled his head in his hands and sighed. “I can’t, Sky. You have no idea how badly he broke my heart.”
“He did it to protect you.”
Mac shot to his feet. The unrelenting longing and pain from his shattered heart hurt so badly that it morphed into anger. “I was a thousand miles away! Nowhere near him or his family! I sent him a million text messages telling him how much I loved him! How much I missed him! That I just wanted to hear his voice! Or know he still loved me! I told him I could hang on and wait for him if he’d just text me back! I was willing to wait 10 years! Ten fucking years, Sky! All he had to do was send me a one-word fucking text message!” Tears sprung to Mac’s eyes as the misplaced anger dissipated and he suddenly felt weak, as if all the energy and fight had been drained from his body, and he fell into the Adirondack chair. “He didn’t. He blocked my fucking number. He made it perfectly clear that it was over. I can’t even bring myself to visit my parents because I can’t stand the idea of being in the same town as him. I can’t even say his fucking name. I just want to forget about him.”But I can’t.
Skylar cringed with each outburst, then her face fell with shared heartache, and she touched Mac’s shoulder. “I know it hurts to talk about him and that you’re trying to move forward, but something’s going on with him.”
Mac slowly lifted his face from his hands. The pain that shrouded his heart and crippled him a moment ago got kicked aside by worry. “What do you mean? Is he in trouble?”
She raised her brows. “I wouldn’t exactly say trouble, but he’s into something. He’s been flashing a lot of cash.”
“He always had a ton of cash. He’s a collector.”
“This money isn’t from collecting. The twins run Street of Dreams now. To be honest, I have no idea what Jake is into, but he’s living large. He has a brand-new Harley and a new truck. His brothers even have cars now.”
Images of Bruce and his ties to gun smugglers, and maybe even drugs, flashed in Mac’s head and filled him with fear. “Do you think Jake is running guns now? Or worse?”
She thought about the answer and then shook her head. “Bruce deals with a different crowd. Lowlifes. Thugs. Street criminals. Gangs. The people Jake are hanging around with are . . . different. They’re heavy hitters. People who haveconnections, if you know what I mean. And he bought a liquor store.”
It was bizarre and out of character, and Mac didn’t know what to make of it. “What does he know about owning a liquor store?”
Skyler placed her elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned toward Mac. “It’s obviously a front for something.”
This was too much information all at once, and Mac didn’t want to deal with any of it. “Why are you telling me all this? We’re not together anymore. It’s none of my business.”
“Mac.” She sighed. “You can tell me it’s over all you want. You can say you don’t care about him anymore and that you’ve moved on. But I know that’s not true, no matter how hard you try to make yourself believe it.”
His nostrils flared and his lips pressed into a thin straight line at her remarks. How dare she force his hand and push him to express feelings that he didn’t want to revisit? He’d spent the last six months plugging up the stabbing hole in his heart, and he wasn’t pulling the cork out anytime soon.
