I smelled butter and turned back to the pancakes in the pan. Another ten seconds and they would have burned.
I turned to the island and a plate already piled high with pancakes.
Rafe eyed them with a scowl. “One thing I can say about our house guest, we’re eating a lot better.”
“We always eat well,” Jude said.
I slid the pancakes out of the pan and poured the last of the batter to make two more pancakes.
“We always eat healthy,” Rafe corrected. He glared at Jude. “Nolan’s chocolate chip pancakes and those late-night grilled cheeses you’ve been making Lilah aren’t usually on the menu.”
Jude flushed. Had he really thought we didn’t know about the grilled cheese?
“Just trying to make her feel at home,” Jude said.
“Don’t,” Rafe said, walking to the coffee machine. “This isn’t her home.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Lilah said, entering the kitchen.
I had to hand it to Rafe: he didn’t even look embarrassed to be caught talking shit behind Lilah’s back. And I had to hand it to Lilah too: she didn’t seem at all thrown by the fact that Rafe didn’t want her here.
“Good,” Rafe said, waiting for his coffee to finish.
“I can leave, you know,” she said, standing next to the island. I loved the way she looked in the morning, a little tousled and sleepy, her long hair loose around her shoulders. Her sweats couldn’t hide the curves of her body and I groaned inwardly as my dick hardened all over again. “I still have my apartment.”
I hated that she was still paying rent on her apartment. She couldn’t afford it with her shitty job at Burger Haven, and I wasstarting to doubt it would ever be safe for her to go back to her place. She couldn’t stay here forever — and she wouldn’t want to — but that meant finding a new place, building a new life somewhere Vic couldn’t fuck with her, and that wasn’t an easy option either.
“You can’t go back to your place,” Jude said. “Not yet.”
Rafe took his coffee back to the island and Lilah moved toward the machine, the two of them like dancers choreographed to move around each other without touching.
“Then when?” she asked, grabbing a mug from the cupboard over the machine.
I liked how easily she moved around the kitchen, the way she knew where everything was. She looked right in our house, like she belonged. Felt that way too, even though I knew that was weird after only a month.
“When it’s safe,” Rafe said, tapping on his computer.
I couldn’t have been more shocked when she marched across the kitchen and slammed Rafe’s laptop closed.
“What the fuck…?” Shock was written all over his face.
Mine too, probably.
“That’s not good enough,” she said. “In case you haven’t noticed, my life is on hold. I’m down two jobs and still paying rent. You won’t even let me go into town alone because of Vic fucking Lombardi. And I’m stuck here, an unwanted prisoner, with no ETA on when it’s safe to leave.”
“Not our fault you got involved with Vic’s shady shit,” Rafe said.
“Hey!” I barked at Rafe. “Not cool. This isn’t Lilah’s fault.”
“Yeah, man,” Jude agreed. “Lilah’s a victim in this.”
“Whatever.” Rafe glared up at Lilah. They looked like two bulls facing off, although Lilah was a whole lot prettier. “The point is, you were in a bind with no place to go. We gave you a place to go. You’re welcome.”
“You’re being a real dick,” she said.
“Agreed,” Jude and I said at the same time.
Our days of agreeing with everything Rafe said and did were behind us. We’d had concerns about Captain Sandoval from the beginning, but Rafe had been all in on him as a mentor. Jude and I had kept our thoughts to ourselves, had followed Rafe like usual, and that blind loyalty had fucked us all in the end.