“It was a tight fit,” he murmured.

  The words should have been innocuous, but they weren’t.

  “Too easy,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What?” he asked innocently.

  I ignored him as I flipped on my light and looked at my fresh new blinds.

  “You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” I said.

  “No big deal.”

  “It must have cost you a whack,” I replied, still marveling. They looked gorgeous and I almost laughed at myself for caring so much. Our apartment had cheap mini blinds and they’d gotten the job done so I’d never really thought about them, but these were nice. They complimented the trim and they were so clean and new and pretty. “I’ll pay you back.”

  “Not happenin’,” he said quietly, coming up behind me. “I take care of my own, too.”

  I inhaled sharply, turning my head a little to look at him.

  “We don’t have to be together for you to be someone important,” he said, his voice still low. “Just say thank you.”

  “Thank you,” I murmured.

  “Feel better knowin’ no one is lookin’ through your windows at night, anyway.”

  “Ew,” I blurted, my eyes widening. “I’m on the second floor!”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Bishop replied, nonplussed. “You stand across the street and you’ve got a damn good view.”

  “You’ve been looking in my window?”

  Bishop huffed. “No, I haven’t. But I’ve seen inside plenty of second story windows in my lifetime.”

  “Well, now I’m creeped out,” I said in disgust.

  “I wasn’t a peepin’ tom,” he replied defensively.

  “I’m not creeped out by you.” I laughed and shuddered. “I’m creeped out that someone could’ve been watching through my damn window.”

  “Problem solved now, yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Welcome.” He paused. “Got a favor to ask.”

  “I knew I was going to pay for those blinds somehow,” I joked.

  “Come with me to the store to pick some bedding and shit?” he asked, looking embarrassed.

  “What?” It wasn’t even close to what I’d been expecting.

  “I don’t know what to get and that stuff Brenna gave me is so nice that I don’t want to make it look like shit,” he said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck.

  I was beginning to realize that was Bishop’s tell. When he was nervous or uncomfortable, his hand automatically went to the back of his neck every time. It made me want to find ways to make him do it.

  “Sure,” I replied. “Right now?”

  “Are you busy? We could do it a different day and I could just borrow a blanket for tonight—”

  “Not happening,” I said, cutting him off. “You’re sleeping on clean sheets and new pillows tonight, my friend. Let’s go.”

  “You sure?” he asked as he followed me out of my room.

  “I’m not a huge shopper—not really my thing. But I’m a magician at finding a good deal and making shit look nice. I mean, not at my sister Cecilia’s level, but still.”

  “Never seen your sister’s place,” he replied as we went down the stairs. “But I liked your apartment.”

  “We’ll find you something good.”

  “Honey, we’re home,” Kara called as she came in the front door with Draco trailing behind her. “We were at Poet and Amy’s and you would not believe this painting she did. Like, she said she was just screwing around, but it’s gorgeous. I made her promise she would let us hang it in our living room—what were you two doing upstairs?”

  I snorted at the gleeful look on her face.

  “Both of our bedrooms are upstairs, genius,” I replied.

  “Uh huh.”

  “We’re leaving.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked nosily.

  “Baby,” Draco said to her in amusement.

  “We’re going to get Bishop some super spectacular bedding for his new bedroom furniture,” I replied.

  “Ooh, I wanna go,” she said happily. She looked at Draco. “You want to?”

  Draco looked like he’d rather go to the dentist for a root canal.

  “Or you two could go?” Bishop said from the stair behind me.

  “Nice try,” I replied without even looking at him.

  “Yeah,” Draco said with a sigh. “Sure, I’ll go.”

  “Honeymoon’s over, pal,” I told him, practically skipping down the stairs to pat him consolingly on the shoulder.

  “I really want to get some canisters for the kitchen,” Kara said as I put on my shoes. “And maybe some towels or something.”

  “Ceecee said we should have a housewarming party,” I replied.

  “Oh, that would be fun!”

  “Look at you, out and doing shit.” I glanced at Bishop. “Before Draco got out, she was a hermit.”

  “I wasn’t a hermit,” Kara argued.

  “Shut-in, then.”

  “Ignore her,” Kara said to Bishop. “She just can’t understand why anyone would ever want to spend time by themselves.”

  “It’s boring,” I said defensively. “Why you’d want to just sit around by yourself is beyond me.”

  “Obviously,” Kara said as Draco waved us out the door. “Let’s take my Jeep. Your car is too small.”

  “Fine with me,” I said happily. “Shotgun!”

  “I’m drivin’,” Draco said dryly.

  “I don’t care. Shotgun!”

  “If you think I’m riding in the back, you’re out of your mind,” Kara said, racing me to the Jeep. As we reached the passenger door she used her hip to bump me out of the way.

  “This never stops, man,” Draco said to Bishop.

  “I’ve noticed,” Bishop replied calmly.

  “Fine,” I said with a huff, reaching for the back door handle. “I’ll sit in the back.”

  Bishop smiled at me as he climbed in the other side.

  “My legs are way longer than yours,” Kara said, continuing the argument. “You’re more comfortable back there.”

  “If we’re going by height then Bishop should be in the front seat,” I replied.

  “I’m cool back here,” Bishop interrupted.

  I shushed him. “Let the adults talk.”

  Draco laughed.

  “I’m sorry, Bishop,” Kara said, turning to look at him. “You can have the front on the way back.”

  “I have seniority,” I complained. “I should get the front.”

  “Stop bitchin’ and sit still for once,” Draco ordered as he drove the Jeep onto the road.

  I sat quietly for a few minutes, but just as Kara reached out to turn on the radio, I leaned forward in my seat.

  “Are we there yet?”

  Chapter 6

  Bishop

  “This place is discount paradise,” Charlie informed me, winding her arm through mine as we walked through the parking lot of a strip mall. “We’ll find you some boss ass sheets here. Maybe even a comforter.”

  “Sounds good,” I replied, letting her lead me into the store. “They don’t need to be anything fancy.”

  “Not fancy,” she confirmed. “But nice. High thread count.”

  “Alright.” I had no idea what she was fucking talking about.

  “High thread count makes them soft,” she said with a laugh. “And having nice sheets means you don’t have to replace them all the time. They last.”

  I had a feeling that my interpretation of nice stuff was different than Charlie’s. That’s why I’d asked her to help in the first place—well, one of the reasons. If things went well, I wanted her comfortable in my bed… I’d also just wanted to hang with her and having her help me set up my room seemed like a logical excuse.

  Both the women grabbed shopping carts while me and Draco naturally fell into place behind them.

  “I blame you for this,” Draco grumbled, his expression already slack with boredom.

  “I just asked her to help me find bedding,” I replied. “I didn’t realize she’d drag you two along.”

  “Uh huh,” he said knowingly.

  “Your grandparents hooked me up,” I said. “They just gave me an entire bedroom set.”

  “Wouldn’t take no for an answer?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “They like you,” he said simply. “If they weren’t usin’ it, they were probably glad it was goin’ to someone they knew.”

  “It’s nice shit,” I argued. “They coulda sold it.”

  “You offered to buy it, didn’t you?” Draco asked in amusement.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Sure that went over like a fart in church.”

  “That’s a pretty accurate analogy,” I replied dryly.

  “Little tip,” he said as we followed the women into the home section of the store. “Someone gives you somethin’ just say thank you.”

  “That’s what Charlie said.”

  “For once, she’s not wrong.”

  “You bite your tongue,” Charlie said, turning her head to glare at Draco. “I’m never wrong.”

  “Let’s start in the bedding,” Kara said, oblivious or ignoring the argument brewing.

  “What colors are you thinking?” Charlie asked me as we reached an entire aisle of nothing but sheets.

  I looked at her blankly.

  “Right,” she said, trying and failing to hold back a smile. “Stick with me, kid. We’ll figure it out.”

  “I’m older than you,” I said, following her as she started down the aisle.

  “Yet, you know so little about bed linen,” she countered happily.

  She crouched down in front of me to look at sheets on a low shelf, and the sight of the top of her head so close to my dick made me stumble back a step. Yeah, letting my mind wander that direction was not a good idea while we were in public and her nephew was standing two feet away.

  “I’m thinking white,” Charlie said, glancing up at me.

  She must have seen the panicked look in my eye, because she smiled evilly and glanced at my crotch.

  “White sheets are kind of a pain in the ass,” Kara said from down the aisle. “But you can bleach them, which is a plus.”

  “What do you think, Bishop?” Charlie asked.

  Was her voice breathier than it had been before?

  “White’s fine with me if that’s what you want.”

  “They’re for your bed,” she countered.

  “Just tell her you want white,” Draco said with a laugh.

  “White’s good,” I repeated automatically.

  “I’ll find you a gray set, too,” she mumbled to herself as she went searching through the shelf again.

  She pulled out at least ten sets of sheets and we all just kind of waited around while she compared them.

  “We’re going to the kitchen aisle,” Draco finally announced, ushering Kara away. “Or we’re gonna be here all night.”

  “Don’t rush us,” Kara warned as they left. “Or we’ll take even longer.”

  “I think these two,” Charlie said, putting a light gray set and a white set of sheets in the cart. She looked up and smiled at me. “They’re really nice. You scored. Sometimes they only have funky colors here and you’d end up with like orange or lime green sheets.”

  “I’m just sleepin’ on them,” I replied with a shrug.

  “But these will look nice,” she said, pointing to the cart.

  I followed her down the next aisle and almost ran her over when she stopped abruptly.

  “Well this is disappointing,” she said with a scowl.

  The entire comforter selection had been pretty much wiped out.

  “Come on,” she said, moving again. “Maybe we’ll be able to find a blanket or something.

  I watched as she grew more and more irritated when she didn’t find what she was looking for.

  “This is bullshit,” she muttered.

  “You wanna go someplace else?” I asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “No,” she replied stubbornly, turning to face me. “This is the place. Anywhere else we go we’re not going to find brand names.”

  “I don’t need brand names—”

  “This is the high-end stuff,” she said, cutting me off. “Not like the difference between store brand and name brand. This is where we should’ve been able to find the nice stuff.”

  “You’re overthinking it,” I said quietly, reaching out to rest my hands on her shoulders. I rubbed my thumbs down the sides of her throat. “I don’t need anything fancy.”

  “You asked for my help and I don’t want to hook you up with crappy stuff.”

  “What’s up?” I asked, searching her expression. She was too frustrated about something so inconsequential.

  “You deserve nice things,” she said, her chin jutting out a little. “Not some shitty comforter that’s going to be all lumpy after the first time you wash it.”

  “Honey, if it keeps me warm I don’t care. You should’ve seen some of the places I’ve slept.”

  “No,” she replied fiercely, her eyes meeting mine. “Not good enough.”

  “Then why don’t you just let me borrow the blanket I had last night,” I said, stepping closer. “We can come back and look for something later.”

  “Fine,” she said with a sigh. “But you still need pillows. Do you like the down ones that kind of flatten under your head or the really stuffed ones?”

  “No idea,” I said, dropping my arms.

  “We’ll get you one of each,” she said determinedly.

  Wrapping my arm around her shoulders I turned her toward the shopping cart. I kept my hand on the nape of her neck as we went searching for pillows. I still wasn’t sure why she’d been so frustrated about a stupid comforter, but I could tell just by looking at her that the moment hadn’t passed. She was practically vibrating with pent up energy with no outlet.

  “Look,” Kara said excitedly when we met them in the kitchen area. “Pink salt.”

  “Fancy,” Charlie replied. She seemed to shrug off her mood as she and Kara started browsing the shelves, but there was a lot of low voiced conversation going on between the two of them that I couldn’t hear.

  “Everything good?” Draco asked me as we headed to check out.

  “She’s pissed she couldn’t find me a comforter?” I replied, hoping he’d understand more than I did.

  “Huh,” he mused.

  “They didn’t have much,” I said with a shrug. “But she was really worked up about it.”

  Draco nodded in understanding. “Thing you gotta understand about Charlie,” he said, watching the women as they walked side by side ahead of us. “She’s crazy protective of the people she considers hers.”

  “I’ve noticed,” I said, watching as she put one foot on the bottom of the cart and used the other to push off so she could coast down the aisle.

  “You ask her for help,” he said, looking at me. “And she’ll move heaven and earth to do it.”

  “And I asked her to help me choose some bedding,” I said in understanding.

  “She takes that shit seriously,” he said, nodding. “Too serious sometimes, but hey. There are worse things. She probably just wanted to make sure you got the best, since you went to the trouble of asking for help.”

  “Hell,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “It was mostly just an excuse to spend time with her.”

  Draco laughed. “Clearly.”

  We caught up to the women as they reached the check stands and pulled out our wallets to pay for the odds and ends they’d found throughout the store.

  “You don’t need to pay for my stuff,” Charlie said, hopping a little to look over my shoulder as I moved to keep myself between her and the cashier. “Seriously. I can get it.”

  “Consider it payment for your help.”

  “Ew,” she replied, trying to duck under my arm as I paid the cashier. “I don’t want you to pay me.”

  “Fine, I’m not payin’ you,” I said, handing her the little glass bowl and tank top she’d picked out. “Just take the gift and say thank you.”

  Charlie glared at me, the items held against her chest. “Oh, how the tables have turned.”

  I smiled, grabbing my sheets and pillows from the counter.

  The ride home was loud as fuck, with Charlie and Kara arguing in the back seat about where we should grab dinner and Draco turning up the radio to drown them out. I had a feeling it was a common occurrence because the thumping speakers didn’t even slow them down. At least I had a little more room in the front seat and I could stretch out my legs a little. They decided on fast food and I ignored my disappointment. I’d planned on taking Charlie to dinner after shopping, but since the moment Draco and Kara had walked in the front door shit had definitely gone sideways. Making a decision, I relaxed into my seat and let it go. There would be plenty of time to hang with Charlie without them there, and if I was being honest, it was pretty fucking fun hanging out with the entire group.

  “I’m going to throw your sheets in the washing machine,” Charlie said as soon as we got home. “You don’t want to sleep on them before you wash them. Ick.”

  “Oh, let me know when they’re done, Charles,” Kara said as she kicked off her shoes. “And throw down any towels from your bathroom. I’m going to wash a load of them.”

  “Cool,” Charlie replied. “I will.”

  “I can do it,” I said as Charlie pulled the sheets out of my hands.

  “I’m not making a habit of doing your laundry,” she replied dryly. She handed me her things from the store. “Will you put these on my bed real quick? I’ll just throw these sheets in. You can put them in the dryer when it’s time, okay?”

  Draco and Kara went off to their room and I stood for a moment in the entryway after Charlie walked off to wash my new sheets. I’d lived in a lot of houses, but the vibe in this one was different than anywhere I’d ever been. The three of them just kind of meshed together and I figured Curtis fit right in with that when he was home. I knew already that there wouldn’t be any weird shit like individual shelves for each person in the fridge or bitching that someone had used someone else’s stuff.

  Jogging up the stairs with my pillows and Charlie’s stuff in my hands, I smiled as I heard Kara laughing somewhere downstairs. I could live anywhere, I’d made it work in everything from shitty studio apartments to trailers to prison, but I still couldn’t help the little jolt of contentment that hit when I realized that I’d landed somewhere good this time. Talk about luck, landing in the same cell as Draco Harrison.