“For advice, not help. I offered help and you refused, putting the onus on me to come down to L.A. and watch over you.”

“You said you came to watch over Jeremy.”

He didn’t answer.

“Let me get this straight. You don’t want to help me. You don’t want to watch my back. But now you’re complaining because I never ask you to?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to help. I don’t want to want to.”

I brushed past him. “For a man whose best weapon is words, you’re either having a really bad day or you’re talking circles around me.”

I sat on the sofa and looked back to see him still by the bedroom door.

“When I was in Europe, you wouldn’t have called me, would you? Wouldn’t have called after I got home. If I didn’t take the first step, you would have just…left things.”

“You walked away, Karl. Was I supposed to chase after you? If a guy dumps me, I don’t try to change his mind. I have more self-respect than that.”

“I didn’t dump—”

“You told me to date other guys!”

“I was—” He shook his head and strode into the living room. “Whatever circumstances I leave under—good or bad—it’s always up to me to make contact again.”

“I give you space and you’re complaining? The guy who made it clear from the start that this relationship—if we can call it that and really, you’d rather we didn’t—”

“That’s—”

“Unfair? Maybe it is and, if so, I apologize. The point is that you made it clear you were in charge, that all contact would be under your conditions. It took almost a year for you to give me your phone number.”

“No one outside the Pack has my number, Hope, and they only have it because Jeremy insisted. You’re the only person I’ve ever willingly given it to.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and the fight cooled into awkward silence, me sitting on the couch, gaze down, Karl standing in front of me, looking more uncomfortable than I’d have imagined possible.

“I could use your help, Karl,” I said quietly. “Not with the break-in—I don’t know anything about the place, so I have to trust the gang on that. But there’s something…” I glanced up at him. “I really need some advice. Your advice.”

HOPE GONE

HOPE

GONE

When I finished, I said, “I know I’m probably making too big a deal out of it.”

“You’re not. Benicio put you in a difficult situation, with no guidelines for what to do should trouble arise, probably because he didn’t expect any.”