Part 5 (1/2)

”Leverage,” Lia repeated softly. ”You don't tell Briggs, and in exchange, your father-”

”He's very generous.”

Michael's words cut into me. The car he'd been driving, this hotel-that was the price Michael was exacting for the damage his father had inflicted?

You make him pay because you can. You make him pay because at least then you're worth something.

I swallowed down the ball of sorrow and anger rising in my throat and backed away from the door. I hadn't consciously thought of myself as eavesdropping until I'd heard something I had no right to hear.

”I'm sorry,” I heard Lia say.

”Don't be,” Michael told her. ”It doesn't suit you.”

The door clicked into place. I stood there, staring at it, until someone came up behind me. Without turning around, I knew it was Dean.

I always knew when it was Dean.

”Flashback?” he asked quietly. Dean knew the signs, the same way I could tell when he'd become absorbed in red-tinged memories of his own.

”A few minutes ago,” I admitted.

Dean didn't touch me, but I could feel the warmth of his body. I wanted to turn toward him, toward that warmth. Michael's secret wasn't mine to share. But I could tell Dean my own-if only I could make myself turn around. If only I could make my mouth form the words.

I had a flashback because I was thinking about my mother. I was thinking about my mother because the police found a body.

”You're good at being there for people,” Dean murmured behind me. ”But you don't have much practice at letting people be there for you.”

He was profiling me. I let him.

”When you were a kid,” he continued, his voice even and low, ”your mother taught you to observe people. She also taught you not to get attached.”

I hadn't told him that-not in words. Finally, I turned toward him. Brown eyes held mine.

”She was your whole world, your alpha and your omega, and then she was gone.” His thumb gently traced the line of my jaw. ”Letting your father and his family be there for you would have been the worst kind of betrayal. Letting anyone be there for you would have been a betrayal.”

I'd been thrust into a family of strangers-loud and affectionate and overbearing strangers. I hadn't been able to share my grief. Not with them. Not with anyone.

You're not doing it alone. This time, Judd's words didn't seem as much like an order. They were a reminder. I wasn't twelve years old anymore. I wasn't alone.

I leaned into Dean's touch. I closed my eyes, and the words finally came.

”They found a body.”

”If I could make this better for you, I would.” Dean's voice caught slightly on the last word. He had dark places and horrible memories of his own. He had scars-visible and invisible-of his own.

I brought my hand to the side of his neck, felt his pulse, slow and steady beneath my touch. ”I know.”

I knew that he would feel this for me if he could.

I knew that he knew ”better” wasn't even a blip on my radar.

Dean couldn't erase the marks my past had left on me, any more than I could do that for him. He couldn't take away my pain, but he saw it.

He saw me.

”Dinner?” Sloane popped into the room, oblivious to the depth of emotion on my face, on Dean's.

I dropped my hand to my side, held Dean's dark eyes for a moment longer, and nodded. ”Dinner.”

As the hostess led us to our table at the Majesty's five-star sus.h.i.+ restaurant, I tried to keep all hints of my conversation with Dean off my face.

Lia was the first to claim a chair at our table, her fingers drawing lazy rings around the base of an empty winegla.s.s. Michael helped himself to the seat next to her. They both had a natural aura of fearlessness and self-possession, like if someone dropped a cobra in the middle of the table, they'd both just sit there, Lia continuing to circle her winegla.s.s and Michael artfully slumped in his chair.

I took a seat across from them and hoped Michael's eyes wouldn't meet mine. Between overhearing his conversation with Lia and telling Dean about the update in my mother's case, I felt drained, empty, but for a dense ball of emotion, barely contained in the pit of my stomach, like a grenade.

Get it under control, Ca.s.sie. If you feel it, he'll see it. So don't feel it.

”Can I tell you about our specials?” A waitress appeared beside our table. The six of us managed to place both drink and food orders before Michael turned his attention to my side of the table. I could feel him working his way up and down my face. He glanced briefly at Dean, then back at me.

”Well, Colorado,” Michael mused out loud. ”Slight tension in your neck and jaw, eyes cast downward, brows pulled together ever so slightly.”

I felt naked under his gaze, laid bare.

I'm angry. I'm angry that the police found a body and angry that it took them five years to find it. I'm angry about what your father did to you.

”You're sad and you're angry and you feel sorry for me.” An edge worked its way into Michael's voice. He wasn't a person who let other people feel sorry for him.

Nothing hurts you unless you let it.

”And you,” Michael said, pointing a chopstick lazily at Dean, ”are having one of those oh-so-Dean moments: self-loathing and inadequacy, check. Longing and fear, check. Constant, seething anger, bubbling just under the surface-”

”When you lose the remote control to your television, four percent of the time it ends up in the freezer!” Sloane blurted out loudly.

Michael glanced at Sloane. Whatever he saw there must have convinced him that now wasn't a good time to be stirring things up with Dean and me. He turned back to Judd and said, ”I believe your line is 'This is why we can't have nice things.'”

Beside me, Dean snorted, and the tension that had settled over the table dissolved.

”Check out the company.” Lia nodded to the bar. I turned to look. Camille Holt. She was sitting at the bar, wearing black shorts and a backless top, sipping a red drink and talking with another woman.

”Person of interest number five,” Dean murmured, eyeing Camille's friend. ”Tory Howard.”

Next to Camille, Tory Howard-stage magician and rival of our second victim-drank beer from a bottle. Her dark hair was wavy and damp, like she'd come here straight from jumping out of the shower. No muss. No fuss. I tried to reconcile that with the fact that she was a performer, an illusionist, pulling off tricks that were larger-than-life.

”This,” Judd muttered, ”is why we can't have nice things.”

He'd tried to tear us away from our work-and there work was, sitting at the bar.

”Mr. Shaw.” The hostess's voice broke into my thoughts. I glanced toward the front of the restaurant, expecting to see Aaron. Instead, I saw a man who looked the way Aaron would in thirty years. His thick blond hair was tinged silver. His lips were set in a permanent half smile. He wore a three-piece suit as comfortably as other people wore a T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans.

Aaron's father. My stomach twisted, because if this was Aaron's father, he was Sloane's father, too.