Me. I’d still be me. Tricking and laughing my way through life as always. Nothing was going to change that. I’d said that the past ten years. I could keep telling myself the same thing as long as I had to.

When I made it home, the closed sign was still on the door. I grumbled as I unlocked the door. Maybe Leo in his god days could make gold coins fly out his ass, but I knew the value of a hard-earned or stolen buck. It was two in the afternoon now and he hadn’t opened the place when I’d left? What was he thinking? I was surprised we didn’t have a few of our regulars going into DTs right there on the sidewalk.

Opening the door loudly, I made sure to close it more so behind me. There’s no point in being pissed off if there’s no way to share it. But before I had the chance, besides the door slamming, someone said, “You look like you were kicked out of a wet T-shirt contest.” There was a pause. “I didn’t know you could get kicked out of those.”

Zeke. Straightforward tell-me-the-truth-and-I’ll-tell-you-no-lies Zeke. Because lying was too much of a bother for him and if you lied to him, well, he’d probably just shoot you. He was sitting at one of the tables eating a pizza. Double cheese, pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, peppers, olives, and a cardiologist on call. Eating it in front of me. And there were bags . . . bags and bags in front of the table, full of garlic bread and cheese sticks from the smell of it. The exquisite smell that put the plumeria-soaked breezes of Hawaii to shame. That was worse than the wet T-shirt remark. I narrowed my eyes at him and dripped on the floor as he chewed and swallowed a bite. “You’re . . . puddle-y.” He looked at his Eden House partner across the table from him. “Is puddle-y a word?”

Griffin quirked his lips. “I think fewer moisture-related comments and more eating might be a good idea.”

Red eyebrows pulled into a scowl. “You are not the boss of me.” Slightly lighter red hair was pulled into a short ponytail . . . dry, not cascading buckets like mine. Zeke’s shirt was a plain gray long-sleeve T-shirt and his jeans were faded. What he wore didn’t make much difference to him. As long as he had a jacket to cover his gun, he was good to go. Fashion didn’t appear on his top-ten list of priorities.