Better When He's Brave (Welcome to the Point #3)(41)
It was Friday night and I had sent yet another unanswered text to Titus asking him if he was okay and if he needed anything. I wasn’t surprised when silence was what greeted me but I was hurt. I still hadn’t figured out how to turn that off yet. I was making grilled cheese to feed Booker and Karsen since we were all apparently going to be stuck together for another night when I decided enough time had passed that I could ask the darkly handsome man for the favor I had been working up to since he had gotten saddled with keeping an eye on me. I glanced over at Karsen, who was watching some silly reality show on the flat screen and facing away from us. The last thing I needed was for her to overhear me and rat me out to Race. Not that the golden Adonis would stop me, but I didn’t need him to have something else over my head. He already had too many cards in this tricky game that was playing out between me and Conner.
“Can I ask you to do something for me, Noah?”
His dark eyebrows shot up and the scar that cut down the side of his face pulled tight, making him look menacing and frightening. Race had done well to make Booker his right-hand man. He could stop a person in their tracks with that look alone.
“You can ask.”
I sighed and turned around to flip the sandwiches. I kept my voice low because Karsen was far more observant than I think he realized. “I need a gun. Conner has shown us that he’s ready to make things bloody and I’m not sure how much longer Titus can keep going with this act we’re trying to put on. He’s barely holding it together as it is, and now with what happened to Bax”—I shook my head and looked at him over my shoulder—“I need to be able to protect myself.”
His gunmetal-colored eyes shifted between gray and blue as he considered me silently. The sides of his mouth pulled down in a frown as he leaned on the counter. “You know how to use a piece?”
I snorted and moved the pan off the heat. I tossed my long hair over my shoulder and turned around to meet his steady gaze. “I grew up in the Point. Titus can’t know about it and neither can Race.” I shrugged. “They wouldn’t be on board with you arming the enemy.”
He snorted and took a seat as I pulled out plates to shovel the sandwiches and a handful of chips onto.
“You might be their enemy, but you’ve never done me wrong and I get where you’re coming from. I bet the cop has a clearer idea of how powerful a motivator revenge can be after seeing his brother lie unmoving in that hospital bed for the last week. No man can know the trail of revenge and retaliation until he’s had to walk it himself.”
I bit my lip and set the plate down in front of him. “So can you help me out?” He was my safest option. I had to be ready for Conner, and if Booker told me no, I was going to have to risk hitting the streets to try to find a dealer on my own. That was the last resort but I would do what I had to in order to put an end to this.
“Why do you call me Noah? Everyone has always called me Booker, everyone except for you. It’s also weird and you call Bax Shane, which no one else does.”
He changed the subject so fast I blinked in a startled reaction as I called out, “Karsen, one of these sandwiches is for you if you want it.” The girl turned on the couch and I saw her chocolate-colored gaze skim over Booker as he bent toward me so we could keep the conversation quiet. She scowled and turned back to the TV. “Maybe later. I’m not really hungry right now.”
I sighed and looked back at the massive man across from me. “I call you Noah because you’ve been nice to me. You’ve kept me company, and even though you’re supposed to be protecting all of them from me, you’ve been protecting me from them as well. You’re more than a thug. More than an ex-con, and I see that. I have to see that because I’m more than they think I am too. So you’re more than just Booker to me and to her.” I pointed over his broad shoulder to where the teenager was obviously sulking and doing it far more elegantly and glamorously than I would ever be able to. “You do know that girl is in the throes of a life-altering crush on you, right? Her heart is in her eyes when she looks at you.”
He glanced over his shoulder and then looked back at me with a lifted eyebrow. The way he did it with that scar made him look like a villain out of a comic book. He snorted and picked up his sandwich and took a hefty bite out of it. “She’s just a baby. Her heart isn’t grown up enough to know anything yet.”
I gave a sharp laugh and turned to the fridge to take out a soda. “My sister fell in love with a man around that age. She loved him so much it killed her. Karsen might be young but those feelings feel ancient and very grown up. You need to be careful with that.”
He grunted. “I’ve told Race to put a chain on it. I’ve told him she’s going to get in trouble looking at men that way. She’s too pretty and too soft to have that in her if she’s going to be part of the Point. She might as well learn that now.”
I reached out, snagged a chip off of his plate, and took a swig of my drink. “She’s not looking at men that way, Killer. She’s looking at you that way. The same way Brysen looks at Race and the same way Dovie looks at Shane.”
He grinned at me and it changed his whole face. Booker was a good-looking man once you got past all the intimidation and the shock of that imperfection that covered half his face. When he smiled, when his chilly eyes warmed up, it turned him into a heartbreaker, no doubt about it.