F*ck Club: Riley

by Shiloh Walker

  It had been nearly a week since one Detective Halle Chance had approached him in the bar.

  One week since she’d tried to trick Shame into doing something that would fuck them all over.

  One week since Bree had moved into his apartment.

  One week since he’d had to put a moratorium on taking on new clients. Con had suggested that maybe they cut back to only the few they knew they could trust and both Shame and Riley had been fine with it.

  All three of them were on edge.

  He usually only had two or three a month as it was. That wasn’t normally an issue for him. Before he’d brought Shame and Con in, he’d sometimes had seven or eight a week, occasionally more, and while he’d considered himself a bit of a master when it came to sex, sometimes, he just got tired, and after a while he’d been ready to slow it down.

  Now that he had Bree in the apartment, though? Shit, he was constantly on red alert and he’d taken to jacking off in the shower before he went to bed in hopes that it would keep the dreams under control.

  Sometimes it worked.

  Sometimes—often—it didn’t.

  A client a day might keep the erection away.

  Or thinking about Detective Chance.

  Shame stared at him with hooded eyes, waiting.

  Turning away, Riley grabbed a new towel and started to dry a glass that didn’t need to be dried. “Any idea what they were talking about?”

  “Couldn’t say. Chance clammed up the second she saw me. Blushed, too. She really is a cute thing. Makes this whole mess suck even more.”

  “Yeah, the fact that you don’t fuck cops is the thing that’s problematic, not the fact that she was talking to my sister.”

  He’d always hoped that he’d never have to tell his little sister.

  She was…clean. Good. Right.

  That part of his life wasn’t supposed to touch her.

  “Yep.” Shame rested his elbows on the table, clearly waiting for something more, and finally Riley met his eyes.

  “What do you want me to say?” He jerked a shoulder in a shrug. “It sucks. I never wanted her to find out, but the cat is probably out of the bag now.”

  “Actually…” Shame blew out a slow breath and tipped his head back, staring upward, hard. His gaze was so focused on the ceiling that Riley looked up to see what held him so fascinated.

  But there was nothing.

  When he looked back at Shame, the other man was staring right at him.

  “She knows,” Shame said bluntly.

  Something hot and slick broke out across the back of his neck, while his belly went tight and cold. “What?”

  “You heard me.” Shame shrugged. “She knows. She’s known for a while.”

  Riley felt a pulsation set up at the base of his skull, right where it joined his neck and he knew he was about to experience a headache the likes of which he rarely experienced. “Shit,” he muttered. He took a deep breath and shoved the heels of his hands against his eye sockets while slowly letting the breath out. The pounding at the base of his skull got worse.

  “Okay. Explain this to me again, and it better not involve something that makes me want to kill you.”

  Shame was quiet for so long that the pounding began to resemble something akin to a freight train screaming and roaring in Riley’s head, and he took a step closer to his friend. “Shame.”

  “Shit, man.” Shame met his gaze, ice-blue eyes on hazel-brown. “That kid is smarter than either of you want to acknowledge. Probably blows all three of us out of the water. It’s a damn miracle you managed to keep her believing in Santa Claus up until she was eight.”

  “This is a far-fucking cry from Santa Claus, Shame!”

  “You think I wanted her knowing?” Shame snapped, his voice rising. “I sure as hell didn’t. But she found out.”

  “How do you know she found out?” Riley shouted back.

  “Because she tried to hire me!”

  The words hung there between them, taut and hot, like a heavy, heated iron fist just waiting to slam into one of them—or both.

  Riley was the first one to react. He sucked in a breath and stumbled back a pace.

  “The fuck, you say,” he mumbled, shaking his head. He hadn’t just heard that. Had he?

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Are you— Man, if you tell me you took the job…”

  “What the hell do you take me for?” Shame looked as though he’d been hit with something jagged and sharp. “You and Con are like brothers to me. You’re the only family I’ve got.”

  Immediately, Riley wanted to take it back. “I’m…shit, Shame. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. What the fuck ever.” Shame slid off the stool, grabbed his jacket, and started for the door.

  Riley braced his hands on the bar and leaped over it, grimacing as his body reminded him he wasn’t exactly still in the same shape as back when he’d been doing football and track and field. Actually, the football and track and field was part of the problem and his back was protesting the aggressive movement with a passion.

  But that was one of his best friends, a brother, really, and Riley was an asshole.

  He caught Shame’s arm just before the man would have slid outside.

  “Wait.”

  As expected, Shame tensed up at the touch. Riley let go immediately. “Just…just wait a minute, okay? I’m an asshole, and I’m sorry. Okay?”

  “Like I said—what the fuck ever.” Shame’s gaze slid over him and Riley knew that no matter what Shame said, he’d damaged something between them.

  He wanted to punch himself in the head.

  Hard.

  “I’m an asshole,” he said again. “Look, it’s just with Bree being here and this cop, and now you tell me that the one thing I never wanted to happen has happened…”

  “What?” Shame stared at him levelly. “Donald Trump won the presidential race?”

  For a second, Riley just stared at him. Then he laughed. “Fuck you. Fuck you sideways.”

  Then he jerked his head over to the bar. “Come on. Sit down. I’ll buy you a drink and you can tell me about this…mess with my sister.”

  “She offered to fuck me sideways. For a lot of money. I said no.”

  Riley shuddered. “I don’t want to know that. I just need to know exactly how…what…”

  “Don’t worry.” Shame fell into step next to him. “I said no, like a good little boy. No dirty son of a bitch like me is going to touch the doc.”

  Something about those words got under Riley’s skin and he slowed, studying Shame’s face as the man sat down. Did Shame…? Was he…? No. He brushed it off.

  Shame didn’t do emotion.

  He didn’t do commitment.

  And hell, even if he did, he wouldn’t do it with Charli. The two of them could hardly stand each other.

  * * * * *

  The whole damn place smelled like Bree.

  She wasn’t there, though.

  He hadn’t seen her in two days, but the smell of her lingered, haunting him like a ghost, and there were signs of her presence, and the boy’s, all over his apartment.

  He missed seeing her.

  Just seeing a pair of Toby’s shoes on the floor outside the room where the two slept was enough to make him wonder if the kid was still angry at him. And beside the sink, there was a bottle of the lotion she’d slick on her hands when she finished washing dishes.

  She worked days, he was gone half the night, and their schedules were colliding so that they bounced right off each other.

  She probably loved it.

  He was positive that Toby did.

  He hated it.

  Now, standing in the bedroom he’d turned over to her, he breathed in the scent of her and tried to figure out where all this was going. He’d emptied out half his closet, leaving only the nicer things, but he needed those nicer things now, or at least a shirt and some pants.

  But all he wanted to do was grab the blankets that she’d wrappe
d herself in and bring it to his nose, drink in the scent of her.

  Slowly, he sat down on the edge of the bed and looked around. It was still his room.

  But tucked into the frame of the mirror was a picture of Toby and Bree, drawn by hand—colorful little stick figures, complete with the cast on Toby’s arm. They stood in front of a house and the big, bright smiles on their crayon faces made him ache.

  They were living over a bar.

  A nice bar, yeah—it wasn’t some seedy dive. During the day, families came in.

  But the woman he loved was living over a pub with her son and he was getting ready to drive forty miles north to meet a client.

  When he got back here, he’d look at Bree and he’d smell her, while his skin smelled of another woman.

  He hated himself.

  If Bree appeared in that doorway right then and asked him to go to the park with her and Toby, or just out to lunch, or hell, they could sit around and stare at the walls, he’d have done it. He’d try to call Marnie, but if he didn’t have a chance?

  Fuck it.

  A few hours with Bree would be a dream.

  Life without her was a nightmare and he’d spent too much time trying to fuck his way into believing somebody else might get to him, might get him.

  And he was lying to himself. He had been all along.

  Even when he’d been still pissed off and hurting a few months after he’d found out that Bree was seeing somebody else, when he’d taken that first job, he hadn’t done it to hurt her.

  Part of him had done it to punish himself, and he was still doing it.

  He’d left her behind and she’d moved on.

  She’d told him that she’d wait for him but she hadn’t.

  Had he been that stupid?

  Had she lied?

  “Fuck.” Pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, he sat there a few more moments and then shoved upright.

  If he let himself, he could have pretended she was in the room with him. Her presence was that strong. So he needed to get the hell out of there before he did something really sick, like pick up the pair of panties she’d left lying on the bed and wrap them around his cock as he stroked off.

  He was on his way out of the bedroom when a hard fist pounded on the door, followed immediately by, “Yo, sunshine! Wake your ass up.”

  That was all the warning he got before Con unlocked the door and came in. Clothes for the date with Marnie draped over his forearm, he eyed Con, his brother’s grim face adding to the headache that was becoming a constant companion.

  “Did Shame tell you?”

  Con frowned. “Tell me what? I haven’t talked to him since last night.”

  “Never mind.” Arms crossed over his chest, Con glared at him. “We gotta do something about this cop. She came over to my place last night, Ry. I had a girl there!”

  “You didn’t have a client last night.”

  “No! I had a fucking date! See, I still do that—I date.” Con shoved his hands through his hair and spun away. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

  “Ignore her. Leave her alone and, sooner or later, she’ll figure out that we don’t have anything interesting for her to pick at and she’ll go away.”

  “And in the meantime, I have to explain to women why I have a cop pestering me?” Con looked insulted. “Is that the best you can do?”

  “What do you want me to do? Take out a hit on her?” He rolled his eyes and moved into the kitchen. “She’s focused on me because of Candi, but sooner or later, she’ll figure out there’s nothing here for her.”

  “One of the clients might talk.” Con moved around and caught Riley’s eye again. “We should warn them.”

  “And make them more jumpy?”

  “She could—” He stopped and blew out a breath. “Hell, we already cut things off with the ones we thought would be most likely to freak. But maybe…” Con ended on a shrug, leaving his brother to stare at him.

  “You’re talking about stopping. Completely.” Riley blew out a breath, carrying the clothes he had picked out over to the bathroom door. He hung them on the hook just inside and then turned to his brother. “That’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Yeah.”

  They studied each other for a long moment and Riley thought about it in those few seconds, hard. He wouldn’t miss it. The money was good, but he had enough set aside that he could pay off almost all of what was owed on the loans he had taken out for Charli’s education and still have some in the bank. B&B was steady, and business was getting better.

  “Well, think about it,” Con said quietly. “Talk to Shame.”

  Shame wouldn’t care about the money, one way or the other. And he’d always have another woman pressing herself against him, ready to be the one he used in the middle of the night when his demons screamed too loudly.

  “What were you talking about—did Shame tell me? Tell me what? The cop hassling him again?” Con asked.

  Shit. Rolling his eyes, Riley turned away and went to look in the fridge. “The cop was talking to Charli.”

  “Damn it!”

  “Yeah. Tell me. I freaked out.” Riley shared a look with his brother over the door of the fridge, then resumed his study of the food, but it wasn’t magically morphing into something else. Sadly. “Apparently, she tried to hire him.”

  There was a beat of silence, followed by a long, drawn out, “Okay.”

  Riley straightened once more, slowly. “Okay.” He blinked, then shook his head. “Did you just say…okay?”

  Con snorted. “She’s had a thing for him since she was a kid, Ry. I’m surprised she hadn’t done anything before now, if you want the truth. And the fact that she knows? Well, that makes it more mind-boggling that she’d just sit by the side. Our sister doesn’t sit and wait for things to happen, she goes after them.”

  “What do you mean, she has a thing for him?”

  “Man, for such a smart guy, you’re an idiot.” Connor nudged him out of the way and grabbed a carton of eggs and a block of cheese. “You also suck at buying groceries. Man, you got a kid staying here now. Kids need food on hand.”

  Riley frowned at the mostly empty fridge. “What are you doing with my eggs?”

  “Making you an omelet so your brain will wake up.”

  Riley replied, “Coffee is what makes my brain wake up.” And he proceeded to make some. If he was feeling nice, he might share it.

  As he went about rinsing out the coffeepot, he thought about what Con had said. Con noticed things. Riley was good at the big picture, but Con paid attention to details. And apparently, Con had seen some details that added up to something pretty important. “So you’re telling me that Charli has a thing for Shame?”

  “Charli has always had a thing for Shame.” Con shrugged. “I thought maybe she’d grow out of it, but…”

  When Con didn’t finish the sentence, Riley looked up at him, but Con was busy cracking eggs. As another fat yellow yolk plopped into the bowl, he finally looked up. “He knows, too. He just won’t…” Con hesitated, clearly thinking through his words. “He doesn’t think he’s good for her.”

  “Wait a minute. Now…are you telling me that Shame…” No. Oh, no.

  Con gave him a weird little smile. “Can you think of anybody who’d be better for him? She’s not scared of him. He adores her. Me and her are the only ones who can get through to him when he falls back into that pit of his. It will happen, sooner or later.”

  “This is our little sister,” Riley said.

  “And he’s my best friend.” Con shrugged. “Unlike you, I ain’t freaked out about the fact that my baby sister might eventually have sex. Actually, she’s probably already had sex. She went and grew up, Riley. Sorry to tell you that.”

  Riley lapsed into silence while Con put a skillet on the stove to preheat.

  A few moments later, the sound of eggs sizzling on hot iron filled the kitchen.

  But Riley was too busy brooding—for now at least—to noti
ce.

  * * * * *

  “Oh…hi. Wow. You look…” Bree blinked slowly and shook her head as if coming out of a fog. “You look amazing.”

  Damn. Shit. Fuck. Fuck. Damn. Shit. Riley had been three minutes shy of making it out the door.

  He didn’t need this.

  He was already going through his exit speech with Marnie in his mind and he thought if he rushed it, he could get to the store and buy her something pretty—a good-bye gift. Not that she needed any presents. The woman was loaded. He also had to stop and buy condoms. He’d removed every one from his apartment when Bree and Toby moved in. He didn’t want to risk her finding his stash and wondering why he needed so many. Now he just picked up whatever he needed before meeting his “date”.

  But she deserved…something.

  He’d almost gotten out the door, damn it.

  And there was Bree, standing in the middle of the living room, holding onto Toby’s hand and looking as if she’d been hit with a bat.

  He glanced down at himself and shrugged. He cleaned up well. That was something he’d figured out pretty fast, though it wasn’t as if he was an ugly bastard to begin with.

  Still, he wouldn’t have thought she’d been thrown by the sight of him in a nice shirt and tie, or a pair of slacks instead of jeans.

  “Yeah, I’ve got something to do this afternoon,” he said, adjusting the cufflink on his left wrist. His voice sound nice and normal. Wasn’t that…nice and normal?

  “A date?” Bree’s eyes widened as the words slipped out. “Never mind, that’s none of my business.”

  “I—”

  “If you like kissing my mom, why are you going on a date? Do you like kissing other girls, too?” Toby eyed him suspiciously.

  “Toby!” she hissed.

  But he saw the look, the speculation in her eyes.

  Three damn minutes. Why couldn’t she have waited three damn minutes?

  “I’m seeing an old friend of mine, Toby,” he said, focusing on the boy until he knew he could look at Bree without blushing.

  He could still blush. It was almost laughable.

  “I don’t put on a tie to see my friends.”