But furthermore, I was just so weird, no one wanted to hang with me anyway.
And I essentially had to pay Gert to spend time with me (though she would do it even if I didn’t grab the check).
It wasn’t only my apartment that was in ruins.
My life was.
And it was me who’d led it to that.
“Hey.”
I’d gone to a storage unit in the middle of the night even if a man who probably was in the position to know just how lunatic that was advised me against it.
“Hey.”
And I helped my brother out, my mom, dad, sister, whoever, all the time.
Whenever they needed it, I was there.
But I didn’t let them lean on me.
I let them shit all over me.
“Hey.”
It was Mag’s tone but also the fact he took hold of my chin and turned my head from staring unseeing at my puddle of melting custard to his amazing face.
“Baby,” he murmured when he got one look at me.
My next thoughts came unexpected and tore through me like a bullet.
I want you to be mine. I want that to be my world. That a guy like you would turn out as awesome as you seem and I’d earn your attention, then your heart, and then we’d teach our kids to be smart and protective and funny like you and not anything like me.
“Evie, honey,” he whispered. “Come back to me, yeah?”
I made myself nod.
He took his fingers from my chin but did it gliding one along my jaw a little in a light, sweet, reassuring touch.
“You’re gonna have moments like that,” he shared. “When I’m not here, you still got people around. Let them help you pull yourself out of ’em. Okay?”
I made myself nod again.
“This is gonna get sorted, Evie. It seems a lot and it seems scary, but,” he grinned a grin I could tell he didn’t fully mean, glanced toward the store then back to me and joked, “we haven’t lost one yet.”
I made myself smile.
He knew I didn’t fully mean it either when he vowed, “I promise, it’s gonna be okay. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I pushed out.
His face got soft.
Oh God.
That look.
That look on Daniel Magnusson aimed at me.
I WANNA MAKE YOU MINE! I screamed in my head.
“Forget the custard,” he ordered. “I’ll take you for more when you can eat it without it being melted. Eat your curds and your burger.”
“Roger that, sergeant.”
“I only made corporal.”
“What?”
“Nothin’,” he said then took a massive bite of his burger.
Why did dudes do that?
It wasn’t going to fly out of his hands and make its escape before he shoved the whole thing in his mouth.
He watched me watching him chewing.
And with his mouth still full, he asked, “What?”
“You eat like a frat boy.” I said it like a tease so he wouldn’t take offense.
He didn’t.
He swallowed, smiled (again! gah!) and then leaned close to me. “This is normally fifteenth- or maybe sixteenth-date stuff. You know, when I really got my hooks in you after dazzling you with fried cheese curds and impressing you with my masculinity that I didn’t cry when they killed John Wick’s dog. But just sayin’, that’s only ’cause I’ve seen it so often, the tears for that little fella are done and gone. But heads up, I am a frat boy, Evie. I’ll prove it to you tonight when we shotgun some beers.”
I started giggling.
Mag stopped looking so worried.
I fought crying.
“Eat,” he whispered.
I nodded and turned my attention to the burger and curds.
“How long you stayin’?” Mag asked, and I cast my gaze in the direction of his question.
It was to Tex.
“As long as you need me to stay.”
These people.
These crazy, kindhearted people.
And then there was…
Me.
“I don’t want her leaving you, Duke and Nightingale’s cameras,” Mag went on. “And I won’t be done until around five thirty, six.”
“We don’t close until seven so you’re good,” Tex replied. “You get tied up, I’ll take her to Nightingale’s offices. They always got someone workin’ in the control room. She can hang with whoever that is.”
Mag nodded.
“We gotta get stuck into sorting out Evie’s place,” Lottie said to Mag then looked to me. “Ava and me are gonna head out in a bit. You cool with hanging here and reading?”
I nodded.
I’d had other things to do with my day, which was an unusual day off, this being when I did those other things. Like pay bills. Laundry. Go to the grocery store. Clean the house. Check in on my sister to make sure she hadn’t done something outlandish to garner attention from the online community. Like film herself allowing strangers to do shots off her body (not something I made up in my head, something she passed by me as an “idea that held merit,” but it wasn’t me who talked her out of it, apparently someone else did that as their shtick).