Stepbrother Thief(15)
“I'm glad you're still you,” he says, handing back my coffee. Try as I might to keep our fingers from brushing, the inevitable happens and my fingertips graze his calloused palm. I watch as his entire body goes rock solid, the muscles in his arms standing out against the black and gray wash of his tattoos.
“And that means what?” I ask, pretending I don't notice Gill's reaction to me. What am I supposed to do with it anyway? Knowing he still … feels something for me—whether it's just lust or nostalgia I'm not sure—won't do me any good, won't do either of us any good.
“I mean,” Gill starts and then takes a step back, letting me climb out of the truck in my bare feet, flip-flops clutched in one hand and coffee in the other. He closes the passenger side door behind me. When I look around for Aveline, she's nowhere to be seen. “You're so …” Gill's mouth twitches. “Grown-up. Sophisticated.” He gestures at me, his blue eyes searching my face. “Fashionable.” I raise a brow and glance down at my wrinkled blouse. “It's nice to know there's still some Regi there in all that Regina.”
“Hah,” I say, moving over to a strip of green that lines the parking lot. My toes sink into the moist grass and suddenly, I feel a whole hell of a lot better about everything. “You're saying it's nice to know I'm still the clumsy young adult you left behind?” The words are supposed to be a joke, but as soon as they slip into the air, I can feel a change happen between us. Gill turns away, his dark hair fingered by the electric breeze in the air; another storm is coming.
“Regina,” he says, but I can't take the tone in his voice. I don't want an explanation. I don't want it because it doesn't matter, because it'll never change the raw truth of the situation: Gill left me. He abandoned me. He took my heart and ripped it in two. Truthfully, I don't care why he left. No reason is good enough, none.
“I'll walk barefoot. Tell me the plan,” I say, hoping to hell that's why he asked me to walk with him in the first place. I'm a tree with roots that stretch deep; no wind can topple me. I'm going to need loads and loads of positive self-talk to get through the rest of this unscathed.
Gill closes his eyes for a moment and I turn away, giving him time to get his emotions in check. Luckily, he's a master at it, and it only takes a second.
“I wanted to talk to you about the short-term.”
“Short-term?” I ask, looking up at the hotel. It's a local place this time, somewhere I've never heard of, but it looks nice. “You mean here?”
Gill takes a deep breath and walks along beside me, his boots squishing into the earth, leaving marks that my bare feet don't. He keeps his gaze straight ahead, but the muscles in his neck are tight, like it's an effort not to look over at me.
“I mean a safe house, some place you and Dad and Solène can stay while we wait for things to settle down. We talked about this before, remember?” I search my mind, but I come up with a dozen plus conversations about this and that and the other thing. Honestly, when Gilleon first showed back up, I was so stunned that I didn't know what to do. Our initial conversations are all blurred generalizations in my brain at this point.
“Uh, I guess?” I brush some hair back from my face, but the wind grabs it again and twists it into a mess of honey blonde strands. “Why can't we just stay at the hotel?”
“Because there are credit cards involved and no matter how good Aveline is at what she does, at some point, someone could find you here. I won't risk that.” He snarls that last bit out, passion lacing his words and drawing goose bumps up on my arms. Interesting. I raise my face to the sky, to the gray clouds and the small shafts of sunshine that manage to sneak past them.
“Okay, so can I go out and buy a place or something?” I look over at Gill and try to smile. “You promised me big money, brother.” His lips twitch, but he doesn't let the expression take over his mouth.
“I did, yes, but a house purchase is big, traceable, especially one that happens in cash.” Gill runs his tongue across his lower lip. Uh oh. I'm not going to like what he's going to say. Great. “For a few weeks, maybe a few months, I need you to stay in a safe house.”
“Gill,” I start, trying to keep my calm, trying not to let the freak-out that I can feel looming beneath my skin come loose. “I left my apartment in Paris. I left my job. I left my boyfriend.” Breathe, Regi, breathe. “Please tell me I'm not going to regret all of that.” I did it for you. I don't want to think like that, can't think like that. I won't hold Gill responsible for my decisions, not even if he had an influence on them. And I won't start pitying myself either. I can, however, let myself get pissed at deviations in the plan. “I thought this was all set in stone, Gilleon.”