I rolled my eyes back just in time to see Ryan’s gaze shoot over my shoulder. He jolted in his chair before he froze, his eyes wild, his body strung tight.

This would lead me to believe Colt had joined our huddle.

However, I knew the feel of the man who had entered our space while I was too busy reading the riot act to Ryan to notice.

And that feel was not Colt.

Shit.

“Ryan’s surveilling a house two doors down from yours?”

Merry asked that question and he did it in a voice that was low and tense, an indication that he was about to go apeshit crazy.

Slowly, I straightened, and even more slowly, I turned to my man.

I looked into the blue shards of his glittering, pissed off eyes.

Yep.

This close to apeshit crazy.

Needless to say, Ryan doing stupid shit (repeatedly), not to mention being a friend of mine, he was well-known by the entirety of the BPD.

“Merry—” I started.

I didn’t finish because he moved and he did it fast.

Lunging toward Ryan’s table, he slammed a fist down on it so hard the table jumped. Ryan also jumped. But Ryan didn’t otherwise move because Merry was still moving, this time so he had Ryan’s sweater in his fist and his face in Ryan’s.

“You got a job two doors down from Cher?” he growled.

“D-d-dude—” Ryan stuttered.

“Answer me!” Merry barked.

“Y-yeah,” Ryan whispered.

“Who put you on that job?” Merry asked.

“Merry—” I tried again.

“Shut it, Cher,” he clipped, his eyes not leaving Ryan. “Who put you on that job, Ryan?”

“I…I…n-n-no disrespect, Merrick,” Ryan stuttered, “but the dude who has me on the job would lose his mind, I shared that with anyone.”

Merry stared into his eyes, then pushed him off and Ryan’s chair tipped up on two legs. Ryan threw his arms out, wheeling them as his feet kicked so he wouldn’t slam to his back. He seemed suspended until his chair tipped forward and he was safe.

But I was not.

Because Merry had turned his attention to me.

“You know who’s got Ryan on this job?” he asked.

“Merry—”

“My name is not an answer to my fuckin’ question, Cher,” he bit out. “You know who’s got Ryan on this job?”

I looked into his eyes, my heart taking that moment to kick in, beating too fast.

This was me fucking things up.

I should have told him.

Merry this pissed off was a good deterrent to open sharing about things such as these, though, and if he gave me the opportunity to defend myself when he was calmed down, I would tell him that.

But the fact remained, he was Garrett Merrick. He was a cop, but he was just that guy. That guy who would want to know if someone he cared about was close to something not good. And he was definitely that guy who would want to know if the woman he was seeing and her kid were close to something not good.

Shit.

“Cherie…” he prompted on a sinister whisper.

I drew in breath.

“Ryker,” I told him.

His face turned to stone.

I moved closer to him, though not too close (his face was stone, but he was breathing through his nose in a way that was scary as shit).

I put my hand light to his abs and started talking.

Fast.

“I don’t know anything, honey. I just know Ryker warned me to stay away from the guy. And since he did, when I saw Ryan outside his house tonight, I lost it and called him in to give him a safety lecture.”

“You think, Ryker warned you to stay away from this guy, maybe you should tell your man the likes of Ryker told you to stay away from this guy?” Merry asked.

Okay.

There it was.

Relationship-wise, even though I’d failed the relationship test spectacularly (twice), I still knew right then that where I was with Merry was not a good place to be.

“Well…uh…” I began, carefully starting to pull my hand away from his abs.

I got nothing more out and didn’t even get my hand back because Merry’s shot out. His fingers curled around my wrist, pressing in so my palm was flat against his hard abs.

Normally, I’d enjoy the feel of his hard abs.

His blue ice look, which was freezing me from the inside out, curtailed my enjoyment of his hard abs.

“You’re seeing Merrick?”

This came from Ryan, and we both looked his way to see him staring in shock at me.

I thought his crush was over, what with me leading him to a whackjob serial killer whose chosen weapon was an ax, the resulting blood, gore, horror, computer confiscations, and police interrogations (etc.).

The look on his face said that I’d thought wrong.

“Ryan—”

“Geez, Cher, you might wanna pick up a phone sometime,” he snapped. “It’s not just on Ethan’s birthday and when the Colts make the playoffs that I like to hear from you. You get a decent guy in your life, the least you could do is share so I could come over and we could toast it with a beer or somethin’.”

Whoa. Wrong again.

I blinked at Ryan.

He glared at me.

Okay. Right.

Was he seriously giving me shit about being a bad friend while Merry was about to lose his motherfucking mind?

“You mind if I have a go at her now?” Merry asked Ryan.

Shit.

“Sure,” Ryan magnanimously answered.

Shit!

“Good, then, to finish up with you, the job you’re on just ended,” Merry declared.

Ryan got pale again. “But—”

“The job…you are on…” Merry said slowly, enunciating each word clearly, “just…ended.”

“Right,” Ryan mumbled.

“Go get a beer,” Merry ordered.

“Right,” Ryan repeated on a mumble, shoved back, got up, and scuttled away.

Leaving me with Merry.

That was what I got for being a shit friend who didn’t call her geeky mastermind buddy to share that her love life had taken a turn for the better.

“Cher,” Merry called.

My eyes drifted from Ryan’s back to my guy.

When I caught his, I whispered, “Merry, don’t be pissed. It wasn’t—”

“You make me happy.”

I shut my mouth, my feeling of being freaked about how great things were going as well as being worried Merry was right then ticked at me and I was messing everything up instantly mingled with a feeling that was as giddy as it was warm and squishy.

“I gotta learn to live in the now so I can feel that happy and not think about shit that might or might not happen that’ll fuck with that happy,” he declared.

“Oh…kay,” I said softly, slowly, cautiously, thrilled he seemed to have made a breakthrough with crap that was screwing with his head but wondering why we were on that subject now.

He slid my hand from his hard abs up to rest against his beating heart.

I held my stance and my breath when he dipped his face close to mine.

“Do not do anything stupid that will take away our happy,” he said quietly.

Oh.

Now I got him.

“I worried it wasn’t right, but Ryker—”

“Ryker does not love you in his tee in his kitchen, bitchin’ about his skillet. He does not love to make you laugh. He does not love it when you make him laugh. He might think your kid is the shit but not as much as I do. He probably wouldn’t give a fuck that you’ve decorated your pad for the sole purpose of making Jefferson Airplane comfortable on the off chance they pop by, but I think it’s hilarious and it’s you and I love that too. I could go on. I won’t. What I’ll do is finish by sayin’ it’s best you don’t worry about Ryker when you should be talkin’ to me.”

“Point taken,” I said quietly, all he’d said making me feel giddier, warmer, and squishier.

Merry kept hold of my eyes a beat before he nodded.

“You don’t know anything about this guy?” he asked.

I shook my head but belatedly laid it out. “Just that he’s bad news. Ryker told me to steer clear. I heard him and his woman shouting, and she’d mentioned Carlito. And, well, uh…” I trailed off.