“Why’s she asking you?” Maddox inquired and D looked to him, beginning to get ticked himself.
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“When’d you become her partner?” Maddox pushed.
“I’m not her partner,” he answered shortly. “Her usual backup is busy so she called me.”
“I don’t get it,” Mad stated.
“You don’t have to get it,” Diesel returned angrily. “Clearly she trusts me. Thinks I have my shit tight. She’s in a bind, needs to do what she’s gotta do and needs someone with her, so she asked me. It was a cool thing to do considering she definitely has her shit tight so it’s kinda nice to know she thinks the same about me.”
“I wasn’t sayin’ that, D,” Maddox said slowly.
“So what were you saying?” Diesel demanded heatedly.
“Please don’t fight,” Molly whispered and got both her men’s immediate attention.
It was law. Straight up. No breaking it. Unspoken but they all knew.
If any of them were into it with another, the one not in it did not wade in.
Ever.
Just like they didn’t fight when the other one was around, when a fight started when the other one was around, that one did not get involved in the discussion.
D watched Molly’s cheeks get even pinker before she turned in a way that was openly deliberate. She lifted both hands and rested them on Mad’s bearded cheeks, again going up on her toes but also pulling him down to her.
There, she kissed him, mouths open. D could see her glistening pink tongue and Maddox’s.
She broke the connection abruptly and didn’t let a beat slide by before she had her hands on D’s face, yanking him to her, again rolling up on her toes, pulling his mouth down on her.
She slid her tongue inside and he tasted her usual sweet but he also tasted hints of man and beer.
Maddox.
Maddox in his mouth.
She broke the kiss and looked him right in the eye before she took a step away from both of them.
“I’m grabbing a beer. I’ll be out on the patio,” she mumbled.
Then she did just that.
Escaping their fight.
Giving them space.
But most definitely making her point before she went.
Both men stared at the French doors long after she closed them behind her.
It was D that broke the uncomfortable silence and cut through the tension.
He looked at Mad and explained, “It’s five hundred dollars cash, this job with Sixx. We need it. I’m not involved in anything she’s doing. She needs eyes so she can enter some guy’s place and do what she’s gotta do. I’ll be gone two hours tops. But we need that money for Molly’s ring. I need that money for Molly’s ring. So I’m gonna tell Sixx, if she’s got other gigs, I’m in. Especially for that kind of cake.”
Maddox’s brows had risen at one particular part of his speech.
“You need that money for Molly’s ring?”
“Equal, brother. And right now what we got in our savings to put toward that buy isn’t equal.”
Maddox stared at him, that muscle in his cheek flexing.
He was a man. A man with a huge dick. So he got him.
He affirmed this verbally.
“I hear that, D.”
“Right,” Diesel replied.
“And I wasn’t sayin’ what you thought I was sayin’,” Maddox went on. “I know you can handle yourself. But Sixx is a badass and if that job at the Bolt is anything to go by, she gets involved with some serious players. Drug dealers. Pimps. She doesn’t blink at that shit. But that’s her job. That’s what she does. You don’t have that experience and it isn’t that you aren’t sharp and fit and aware. It’s just that you have to clue into the fact that, if anything happened to you, me and Molly would feel that. You gotta do what you gotta do, I get that. But whatever you do, even if you’re doing it somewhere else, me and Mol are always along for that ride.”
Me and Molly would feel that.
Diesel looked away from his man and took a swig of beer.
“You know that, right?” Maddox pushed.
Diesel looked back at him and answered quietly, “Yeah, man. I know that.”
“So don’t get pissed, tomorrow, I check in before we hit the sack,” Maddox finished.
They all started their days early. Both Mad and D with jobs where they worked outside in the Phoenix heat, in order to work during the time when it baked, but not as bad as it did in the late afternoon, their days could start at six or seven.
The good part about that was they were usually done around two thirty or three.
The bad part about that was, with the physicality of their jobs on top of early start times, they couldn’t get around going to bed early.
Molly had arranged her schedule at work so it was as close to theirs as it could be, that being seven to four.
This meant at least two of them were in bed at nine every night, mostly because at least two of them fucked before they went to sleep.
He’d probably come home either to both of them out, or both of them in bed, but awake, waiting for him to come home.
Considering Maddox seemed to be able to man up, Diesel had to try to kick in to do the same.
“I’ve needed some space lately. Shit in my head,” he said low. “It didn’t occur to me you’d feel that as me pullin’ away because honest to God, I didn’t realize I was. When I’m at a place I can actually wrap my brain around what that shit is, we’ll talk it out. In the meantime, totally lame, but totally true, one hundred percent true, buddy, I promise. It’s me. Not you.”
The relief that Maddox allowed openly to wash through his face made Diesel’s mouth fill with saliva.
“Okay, bud,” he said softly. “I can give space.”
Diesel jerked up his chin.
“And I’m there when you’re ready,” Mad continued.
Diesel looked him in the eyes and for that, gave him a full nod.
Mad’s full lips embedded in his thickening beard twitched. “And good call, not pointing out to Molly we have three bottles of ranch dressing in the house.”
Diesel burst out laughing.
Maddox chuckled along with then.
Right.
There they were.
They were good.
Good.
For now.
More than Everything
Diesel
“ONLINE,” DIESEL SAID into the transmitter in his hand, his eyes on the laptop on the seat beside him in his truck as a picture filled a quarter of the screen, replacing static.
“Right. Thanks,” he heard Sixx say in the earbud in his ear.
Yup.
Earbud in his ear. Little transmitter that looked like a miniature microphone in his hand which was bluetoothed to a new app that Sixx had downloaded on his phone. A laptop on his passenger seat that had a split screen on it, four views, all of them now showing pictures since Sixx had successfully installed the last camera in the hallway that led to her target’s apartment door. A cord plugged into the laptop reaching out through a crack in his window in order to get the camera signals.
Another view was inside the elevator. And another was in the lobby. The last was at the door to the elevator bay from the underground garage.
Sixx was tricked out in kit on this sleuth shit.
It was fucking fantastic.
He also had a slim-line pair of binoculars and a file holding an eight by ten glossy of a guy’s face and a piece of paper with the make, model, color and license plate number of a car, both he’d already memorized.