Page 27 of Bad Men

His answer was to dig into the front pocket of his jeans and unearth a bit of folded paper. It was dumped on the coffee table by my knee before he dropped into the armrest on my right.

“Her number,” he answered to my unasked question. “She gave it to me when I found her at work. She has ours, too.”

I studied the slip now lying alone and abandoned on a bare slab of wood, trying not to inhale too deeply. It was torture being that close to something as basic as someone’s scent and not physically have them there. I had a momentary lapse in judgment when my brain fantasized having her on the couch with me, long legs coiled around my waist as I drove into her. Dav could be there, or not. He could join in, or watch. It made no difference. It just mattered that her smell wasn’t there for no other reason than to drive me insane.

“How’d the job go?” Dav cut into my daydreaming.

I blinked and focused on the TV I’d muted when I’d heard him shove his key into the lock. It was some government conspiracy flick with guys I knew by face, but not by name. I had no idea what was actually going on.

“Fine,” I mumbled. “It got done.”

“Didn’t cooperate?” He nodded his chin in the direction of my hand.

I hazard lifting the bag and peering at my busted knuckles. Nothing was broken. I’d had enough broken knuckles to know for sure, but I definitely sprained or dislocated something. There was too much pain in my middle finger. Plus, the skin around the digit was a plum purple, unlike the jagged bits of skin that ran across the other three bumps.

I sighed and returned the bag. “Do they ever?”

“Do I need to take you to the hospital? That finger doesn’t look too good.”

I waved and grunted the offer aside. Hospitals asked too many questions, wanted too much information. We had people in our world who mended people like me in a pinch, doctors who took money on the side from the criminal sector of the city. I’d visited a few in the past, but I avoided them unless it was necessary. This wasn’t. I would be fine in a couple of days.

“How’s Mia?” I repeated, noting he hadn’t answered my question.

The chair creaked with the weight of his body falling back against the cushion. He dropped his arms on the rests and glowered at the screen.

“She’s fine,” he mumbled. “She’s home.”

“Something happen?” I pressed.

He started to shake his head but couldn’t seem to finish. His gaze remained fixed on the moving pictures as if they were responsible for all the pain in the world.

“Just a long day,” he grumbled at last.

I raised an eyebrow. “We lying to each other now?”

Dav closed his eyes and lowered his chin to his chest. “I’m not...” He trailed off with a sharp explosion of air. “Nothing’s wrong and nothing happened.” His fingers drummed on the armrests. “I was with her.” His chin lifted and he was locking gazes with me. “We didn’t fuck, but we messed around. It was fine. It was great, actually,” he corrected with another sigh, this one followed by the furious shoveling of his fingers back through his hair. “It was fucking unbelievable, okay? She’s … she’s fucking unreal.”

“Okay?” I pressed when he went silent, eyes glazed in whatever memory he’d found himself trapped in.

He swallowed audibly. “I got up to leave, like we do, and she asked me to stay.”

I waited for him to continue, but he’d gone silent again. His gaze stayed locked with mine with an insistence for me to understand what he was saying.

I didn’t.

I knew one of our rules was never to spend the night. It was a safety precaution to keep from getting attached, especially if we were sharing a girl because it complicated things when we had to walk away, which we always had to. Staying, cuddling, intimacy was dangerous, and we avoided them.

“She’s not the first girl to ask,” I pointed out. “You left.”

Dav hesitated. His attention went back to the TV while he rubbed absently at his jaw like it ached.

“I didn’t want to,” he murmured at last. Brown orbs rolled to the corners and fixed on me once more as if to gauge my reaction. “I didn’t want to leave.”

I knew what that meant and the thought twisted something in my chest. A cold sort of panic seeped into my gut. If I wasn’t already sore, I would have punched the wall.

“So, it’s over?”

Because that was also a rule.

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