Stay with Me (Wait for You, #3)(60)

Luckily, the doorbell rang, saving me from saying more stupid stuff. He reached out, swiping his thumb under my lower lip, absolutely stunning me. Then he turned and headed to the door.

I sucked a huge gulp of my apple juice and had barely recovered by the time Reece stepped inside the house and Jax closed the door.

Reece was in his uniform, and I was so used to seeing him in jeans, I gaped at him with the straw from my juice box resting against my lower lip. Somehow his shoulders looked broader in the dark blue uniform that had been tailored to the extreme, displaying the flat stomach, narrow hips, and strong legs.

“Hey, Calla,” Reece said with a grin.

I snapped my mouth shut. “Hi,” I murmured, taking another slurp.

Reece’s grin went up a notch as he looked to Jax. “Sorry it took so long. I switched out the cruiser and drove my personal car here just in case there were eyes on the road.”

I shuddered at the idea that there could be people watching the bar, the roads, and even Jax’s house.

“Good plan,” Jax said, sitting down beside me on the couch. And he really sat beside me. His entire thigh was pressed against mine. “But what I want to know is how come one of Isaiah’s f*cking minions is out running around threatening Calla when you were supposed to warn the f*ckers off.”

Oh. Wow.

Reece narrowed his eyes on Jax, and he was no longer some random hot guy who hung out at the bar or just some hot cop dude. His whole stance changed. Shoulders squared, eyes sharpening, and legs spreading as he stood in front of the recliner. “We haven’t been able to track the * down. It’s not like he’s easy to reach, but we will get to him.”

“Make it easy,” Jax said in a low voice.

“Jax,” Reece warned.

Oh. Crap.

“Your job is to serve and protect, right?” Jax fired back, jaw hardening. “So f*cking serve and protect.”

For a tense moment, I thought they were going to throw down in the living room, but then Reece took a deep breath. “You’re lucky you saved my ass in the desert or I’d be knocking you on yours.”

Jax had saved his ass? I wanted to know more about that.

He smirked at his friend. “You’d try. Key word being try.”

That comment was ignored as Reece sat on the arm of the recliner, his attention on me, and I knew I wasn’t going to find out about saving asses. “I need you tell me everything, Calla.”

I glanced at Jax for some unknown dumb reason, and when he nodded, I sucked up more apple juice, found the box empty, and sighed. So I told Reece everything—starting with the money Mom had stolen from me, the real reason I was here, and why I was working at the bar. While I’d told him that, Reece had sent Jax an odd look I couldn’t figure out, but his attention centered on me when I told him about Greasy Guy, the heroin, and then what Mack had said to me outside the bar.

“Shit,” Reece grunted when I was finished, and I figured that summed everything up quite nicely. “This is definitely some shit you’ve waded right into. It doesn’t take a leap of logic to figure out that that heroin at the house wasn’t your mom’s. There’s a good chance she was holding it for someone, and when you look at that kind of amount, then it was probably Isaiah’s. And God only knows what kind of shit he has on your mom that she’d willingly hold that kind of dope. That’s a huge f*cking liability to be responsible for.”

By the way my heart was beating, I didn’t like how any of this sounded. “Who is this Isaiah?”

“He runs drugs, lots of drugs, among other illegal activity. The thing is, when you see Isaiah, which will be next to never, he doesn’t look like a damn dealer. He comes across as a businessman.” Jax’s lip was curled in disgust. “I think the last time I saw him, he was wearing f*cking Armani.”

“He has legit business dealings and he’s pretty damn powerful,” Reece added, and I really didn’t like what I was hearing. “He’s got eyes and ears everywhere, and a shit ton of people in his pocket, even cops. He’s the real deal when it comes to people you don’t want to f*ck with. Your mom and the shitheads she runs with aren’t people he typically deals with. How she’s involved with him is beyond me.”

“Not like that matters now,” Jax said. “Mona is messed up with Isaiah and owes him money or, knowing our luck, a ton of heroin.” Jax leaned against the cushion, dropping his arm along the back of the couch. His hand landed on my opposite shoulder, causing me to jump. “And that has spread to Calla.”

“Got it,” Reece clipped.

As I sat there and listened to the boys, I thought about the last night I’d hung out with my friends back at Shepherd—Cam and Avery, Jase and Teresa, Brit and Ollie, and even Brandon and what’s her name. We’d talked about school, going to the beach, and traveling the world. Not heroin and a drug lord who probably had a lot of experience giving people a cement swim.

“If you know he runs drugs, how is he not in jail?” I asked.

Both guys stared at me, and then Jax murmured, “Cute. She’s cute.”

I shot him a look that said go jump off a bridge.

“When I said Isaiah is powerful, I wasn’t kidding around. The cops that aren’t in his pocket have tried to take his ass down. Even the feds are on his ass, but evidence . . . well, it just doesn’t seem to stick,” Reece explained carefully, and I had this feeling there was a lot that he wasn’t saying. “There’s a world out there that doesn’t operate by right and wrong and all we can do is try to minimalize collateral damage.”