Play It Safe(76)

“Fuck,” I repeated, that word breaking.

Lash’s arms got tight.

More tears came.

Lash had forgotten to take something to the gym and came back for it thus missed his Jacuzzi, sauna and salon appointment so he could deal with me.

Fuck.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Keycard

Lash Caldiwell

Eight hours later…

“Dude does somethin’ to piss me off, can I lay him out?” Freddie asked, him driving, Lash in the passenger seat watching the orchard trees pass by as they neared the quaint farmhouse.

“I’m thinkin’ you’re not gettin’ who this guy is to Ivey,” Lash replied quietly.

“Right,” Freddie said and Lash knew he saw him as Lash did. Sitting on his porch swing, arm stretched out resting along the wide back of the swing, beer bottle in his hand.

Grayson Cody.

Ivey didn’t have a picture of him but she’d gone into detail describing him.

Lash thought she was glorifying a memory.

But she had not come close.

The faded jeans, the tight, gray t-shirt stretched across the wall of his chest, those shoulders, that hair, that ass, those long legs, those f**king eyes.

Jesus.

He was not Lash’s thing, too butch (way too butch) but that didn’t mean Lash couldn’t appreciate all that was him.

Freddie parked behind a rusted out, old, light blue pickup truck that really needed to be put out of its misery.

As they drove up, parked and even now, Grayson Cody’s long body kept swaying in that swing but his eyes never left the car.

Lash turned to Freddie, pulled in a breath and stated softly, “Okay, my man, in a minute you are gonna hear a bunch of shit that’s gonna knock your socks off. So, two seconds to prepare, Ivey is my best friend, outside you my only real one, as you know. What you don’t know, she is not my lover. She’s my friend. And I’m g*y. You tell anyone, I’ll shoot you and you know I’m not f**king with you about that. Deal with it. We gotta move on, like, now.”

Freddie’s eyes were big but Lash didn’t have time for Freddie, he turned and folded out of the car.

Then he walked through the thick, green grass to stand at the side of the porch opposite Grayson Cody.

He’d scanned his surroundings while they drove up so he kept his gaze steady on Cody.

But he got it. He got it just with that man. With the way he looked and with the way he held her, touched her and spoke to her. He also got it with all that was around him. The peach trees, the faraway mountains, the fields that were waves of green and wheat brown, this house.

He got it.

He got why this man was the one and only man for the beautiful Ivey Larue.

Now Grayson Cody needed to get it.

He heard Freddie get out, his door slam and he knew Freddie was leaning against the car.

Cody’s eyes flicked to Freddie then back to Lash.

Then he asked the right question.

“How is she?”

“Not good,” Lash replied and watched Cody’s square jaw go hard even as his body remained relaxed, lounging and swaying in that porch swing.

Ivey would look cute, curled up against him in the crook of that arm thrown wide.

It was time to get this party started so Ivey could live a life, curled up against her man, in that swing, in the crook of that arm thrown wide.

“She’s Ivey so she told me what she told you about me,” Lash shared and Cody stared at him a second then jerked up his chin.

He gave him no more.

Lash crossed his arms on his chest and settled in.

Then he stated, “Now I’m here to tell her secrets.”

Lash watched with no small amount of fascination as his body went alert.

Very nice.

Lash went on.

“I do this for her and that means you get something out of it. She has no clue we’re here. She finds out I did this, it could swing either way for me. But what I know of her, how she feels about you, the opening you gave her, I’m hoping she’ll find it in her to forgive me. But you’re about to get a gift and if you don’t handle it with care, you answer to me and Freddie. Not now, but eventually, you have my promise that you will pay if you break her again. We will make you hurt worse than the hurt that has crushed down on her her entire life. Not just the seven years she’s been jacked up about you but all the twenty-nine she’s endured. And when I say you handle it with care, I say that the next twenty-nine and beyond better make up for every minute of the last and if you don’t break your back to do that for her, I’ll break it for you. Do you understand me?”

His gaze was laser sharp, he was listening, he was hearing, he was beyond interested but Grayson Cody didn’t say a word.

Lash decided to take that as an affirmative and kept going.

“You told her you’ll be waiting. My advice, Cody, is to start gettin’ impatient really f**kin’ fast. You don’t, she’ll slip through your fingers because my girl has no intention of coming to you. You know snippets of her past, you saw her strip, you said shit then and you said shit today and she’s spent the day convincing herself that she’s done her penance for not believing in you by bailing you out and now the best thing she could do for you is let you live your life. You need to disabuse her of the notion you think she’s a step up from a whore and you need to do that quick-like.”