Chapter 38

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

JAKE

I'm afraid I'm going to open that envelope and find something inside that'll make it hard to forgive my brother. Whatever happens, he's still my brother, but I want to believe he's had a change of heart, like me. I want to believe he took those things because he wants to give at least some of them back. I need to believe it. Lainey wraps her arms around me from behind, her hands clasping over my stomach.

"That's very close to where I'd like your hands to go."

Lainey being Lainey, she reaches down to give me a squeeze before saying, "Quit messing around and open it."

So I do, my breath ragged in my ears, Lainey's arms bolstering me to help me get through this. I lift the paper up so she can read it at the same time I do.

Jake—

By now, you know that I managed to persuade Roark's guards to let me go and leave with me. It wasn't easy, but you're not the only master manipulator. I'll be honest, it didn't hurt that we agreed to split the loot from the museum. I took the pocket watch and a few other things it felt important to return; I let them keep most of the stuff we lifted from assholes.

You were right. There, I said it. It was wrong of me to take the watch, and I've felt like a real piece of shit right up until I tried to steal it back. For the last month, I've just had itchy feet. But when I came up with my plan to get out—and executed it—I felt something more than that. I felt good for the first time in a long while.

I know Roark told you to take that necklace, but I hope you can turn around and give it back. I also hope he doesn't give you a hard time for what I did. He's been a real dick lately, and I don't want you to get strung up in that. I tried to call your phone, but given that I just found your phone in your apartment, I'm guessing you only have a burner with a number I don't know.

I'm on my way to bring that watch back to Dale, and then there's something else I need to return.

Roark had me snatch a holiday relic last Christmas, and I've felt like the fucking Grinch ever since. It's time to bring it back and make amends.

I guess you could say this is my Dale.

After I do that, I hope you'll be able to forgive me. I'll find you brother, wherever you are. Because we'll always find our way back to each other.

—Ryan

I only realize there are tears in my eyes when Lainey reaches up to trace them, same as I've done with her.

"He brought it back," I say, only then realizing how fucking worried I was that he wouldn't. That he really would decide to become Roark 2.0.

"Of course he did," she says, shifting me so I'm facing her. She wraps her hands around my neck. "And when he comes back to us, there'll be a place for him. There'll always be a place for him."

The tears are still silently tracking down my face, and I lean into her neck and kiss her there, where she's soft and slightly sweaty and smelling of spicy jasmine. Then I trail my mouth around to kiss her soft, sweet lips. They open for me, and I bless whatever twist of fate led me to her. Because it was a twist of fate. Everything else fits together, but one thing relied solely on fate—Cleo, seeing that necklace on my dresser and deciding to fool someone else into stealing it just in case it was the real deal.

I pull back slightly. "We should name our first kid Cleo."

She laughs, her eyes widening. "We're having kids?"

"Well, maybe we'll start with another cat. We should definitely get another cat. Professor X wants to be a tyrant, and it's hard to be tyrant if you don't have any subjects to rule over. Maybe an orange cat. Everyone says they're pushovers."

She pushes my chest slightly. "It wasn't Cleo's doing. It was the Three of Hearts and the Seven of Wands. They put me in an emotional state."

"You think a couple of cards led you to me?" I ask, tracing her face. She told me about the Tarot cards Claire drew for her, and I made a vow to myself that I'd never be that third sword in her heart. "I'll draw a photo of the wand one and have it framed. I'll bow down before it."

She leans in close, a whisper between our lips. "I love you, you idiot."

"Thank God," I say, and lean in and kiss her again. And again. She tastes sweet, and I feel euphoria licking through me, threatening to engulf me. My brother's okay. Lainey's okay. She wants to be with me.

I taste more of her, wanting to remember this moment always, and then lift her up, her legs automatically cinching around my waist, and carry her into my bedroom. Even though I'm going away, and this won't be my place anymore, I'd like to make some final good memories here to chase away the bad ones. And I'd really be doing my neighbors a disservice if I didn't make some noise they could complain about.

"Can you be really loud about your appreciation?" I ask as I lay her down on my bed.

"I seem to remember you not wanting participation awards," she says, waggling her eyebrows.

"I didn't say I wasn't going to earn it," I tell her, then reach for the button of her jeans.

"I like the way you think," she says.

And I like the way she thinks, and smells, and tastes, and a few minutes later, when I have my face buried in her, her moans filling the air and probably aggravating the hell out of the bickerers next door, I feel like the luckiest man alive.

She tugs on my hair, hard, and pulls me up. "Your cock. Now."

So I bury myself in her, and it feels like a meeting of the world to have her here, in this place where I lived as Jake Langston. I kiss her as I thrust in deeper, her hand clutching my ass, because I want every part of me to be touching every part of her. Her soul has lit something within me, and I never want it to go out.

I kiss her more deeply, my eyes on hers as I take her slow and deep, bottoming out with each thrust, drinking up her little moans because they're for me, and I've earned them. When I feel her tightening around my dick—sweet torment—I thrust in one last time, slow and deep, my mouth still on hers, and the feeling of her clenching around me so tightly is enough to shove me off the cliff too, into a pleasure so encompassing and deep that I can't see the beginning or end of it.

This is love , I think. This is what love feels like.

"I love you," I whisper again, for probably the millionth time today. I'm still buried inside her because I don't want to leave. I never want to leave.

"I love you too," she says, her eyes on mine, her body under and around me, and I'm in that ocean beneath the cliff doing the backstroke.

Later, my body still wrapped around hers, I say, "What do you think about buying a rude welcome mat for Todd while we're in town?"

"I say yes," she says, her eyes dancing, but then she reaches up and lightly taps my injured nose. "But we're still going to Connecticut."

I consider telling her no, but it's incredibly hard to say no to my woman, and there's a part of me that needs to see Dale again. I'd like to know him as myself. To let him know that he had a more profound impact on me than he ever had on my alter ego. If he's open to it, I'd like to be his friend.

"We'll do it." I weave my hand through her hair, looking into her eyes. "We're going to have lots of adventures together, Elaine Catlan."

"And you're going to write about all of them in your comics?"

" All of them?" I ask, running my hand over her perfect, round ass and giving it a squeeze.

"Of course," she says with a smirk. "But those will be just for us."

It's a month later, in early December, when Anthony Rosings Smith agrees to meet me at the peanut bar. I still haven't heard anything from my brother, but his note had made it sound like he might be gone through Christmas.

I'll keep hoping, and if he doesn't show up after the holidays, Nicole and Damien have offered to track him down. They both seem excited by the challenge it would offer.

I'm nervous about this meeting—almost as much as I was when Lainey and I arrived at Dale's place weeks ago, and I had to stop at a bar to knock back some liquid courage before I could find it in myself to ring his doorbell.

He was good to me, too good, and hearing what he'd done for me—how he'd convinced me to change my life—had made him cry.

So when he asked Lainey and me to stay a while, we did. For a whole damn week, and we've asked him to come visit us too. He feels like…family.

So does Mrs. Rosings, actually. We've fallen into the habit of having weekly teas with her—a tradition that started as soon as we returned from Connecticut. Claire usually comes, too, and occasionally we can twist Declan's arm and get him to join us. Joy supplies the tea, but Rosie has never accompanied her after the disastrous mushroom tea incident. She's embarrassed, I guess, even though everyone has forgiven her for her role in the mess with the necklace.

According to Mrs. Rosings, Anthony now knows who I am and why I came here. Her ability to keep secrets for thirty years is apparently selective, because she told him days after she returned from our trip to New York. I guess he wanted her to have me arrested initially, but he changed his mind.

When I arrive at the peanut bar, he's already there, two sweating beers waiting on his table.

His eyes are shuttered as I approach him, and two things hit me—he's grown a beard, which is surprising, and he's wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt and jeans.

I slide in across from him, shrugging off my coat, and he silently passes a beer to me.

"I'm hoping you didn't spit in it?" I ask.

He gives me a flat look. "Do I look like the kind of person who spits in drinks?"

Maybe. I'm not so sure that sort of personality has a look attached to it, but it would be the wrong thing to say, so I accept the beer with a nod and a thanks.

"My mother told me who you are," he says.

"I know, she mentioned that the other week." I let that linger for a moment and then add, "Mind telling me why you didn't try harder to get her to turn me in?"

"The police probably wouldn't have even arrested you," he says with a sigh, leaning back in his seat. "But that's not really why." He turns his beer around, his expression distant. "My mother told me about that guy…Roark. How he was like a father to you, and he screwed you over. I know what that kind of thing can do to a person. I guess I figured you deserve a chance at a do-over as much as anyone."

"I want more than a do-over," I tell him, leaning forward a little. "Lainey and me…we've been helping people, and we're scaling up." I tell him a bit about the Love Fixers. How we've started running ads and are going to have to bring on extra staff soon since Nicole and Damien are so often busy with their own agency.

"I sense you're going somewhere with this," Anthony says after a couple of minutes.

"You only have a few weeks left, man. Let me help you."

He's already shaking his head, and he looks like he's ready to leave without even taking a sip of his beer.

"I need this," I say, my voice shaking a little with the force of it. "I need to do this for you."

"I forgive you," he tells me. "I…" He swallows. "In a fucked up way, you helped me. So I forgive you. There's no need for all of this." He waves his hand around.

"There's always a need for peanuts," I joke. "Unless you're my brother, and then they'd kill you. Look, let me do this for you. If you make an ironclad prenup, there's no reason why this will blow up in your face. It's not really a marriage, it's a…workaround."

"And you're in the business of workarounds, I take it," Anthony says with a grunt that doesn't sound particularly impressed.

"You might say it's my specialty."

He sighs and sags back again, plucking at the hem of his shirt as if he too is puzzled by why he's wearing it. "I don't know if I have it in me anymore. I…it was a lot, with Nina leaving. She…I might not have loved her anymore, but she was a big part of my life. Now, that's just…gone."

I pause, wondering if I should say this next bit, or if it will push him over the edge of his early mid-life crisis. Fuck it, I've never been the careful sort.

"Your mother hasn't cancelled the arrangements for the wedding yet. It's all prepared for someone else to step in. You can still inherit the money."

His mouth drops open, then he swears liberally and takes a swig of beer. "But everyone knows. Fuck. Nina's dating Wilson openly now."

My mind automatically substitutes ‘blond dick' for Wilson, but I don't say so. I'm hanging by my fingernails here—if I push him in the wrong direction, I'm gone.

"So wouldn't it be funny to get married to someone else using the wedding that was planned for her? Hell, you should invite them . That'd be a trip."

"She'll know it's fake," he says, his mouth a flat line.

I shrug. "She'll suspect. But she'll still be jealous. Hell, she was jealous when Rosie touched your shoulder last month. There's no one more jealous than a cheater."

"Rosie," he repeats, a spark in his eyes. "The woman who took the necklace."

I nod. "But it was a misunderstanding."

He's quiet for a second, then he takes another gulp of his drink and nods. "Let's do it."