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“How’s your girl’s trip?” Locke asked instead of gun talk.
“Our girl?” Bishop countered. They were both working Ella’s protective detail.
“Not what I meant.” Locke let his response hang. “The few times that I’ve worked with her, seen you two together…” He shrugged. “I don’t miss much.”
“Didn’t think you did,” Bishop mumbled.
“You heard from her?”
“Not much. Other than a check-in that she landed safely. Maybe a couple other times. I don’t know.” But he did know. Texting Ella, using the job as an excuse—that had happened more than it should.
“That’s all we’re going to say on her?” Locke raised his brows but slowly let them drop as he pulled out a container.
Bishop ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth. “We used to know each other. Years ago.”
Lockehmmed.
“Dated in high school and college.”
No response from Locke again, but he stepped to the table, crossed his arms, and waited.
Bishop reached back for the catalog and aimlessly flipped a few pages. Locke didn’t budge. That was a good, and momentarily bad, thing about the guy; when Locke gave his attention, it was one hundred percent.
Bishop had to do the same. “We went different ways. Too young to know what to do with…” Love and devastation. Tragedy. “She wasn’t the same crazy person riling up fellow lunatics.”
Locke rubbed his chin. “She’s passionate. Love or hate what she says.”
“I don’t hate what she says.”
Locke nodded.
Bishop rubbed his sternum. “And hell, she was never that reserved to begin with.”
“I like her,” Locke said. “She keeps things interesting.”
“No kidding,” Bishop grumbled. “Hell.” He could use a beer for this conversation—or any conversation having to do with Ella and Brie. “Do you have a woman?”
“Not anymore.”
“Right…” The way Locke said that made Bishop hope he could trust him with more than the surface-level BS answers he’d given for years. “We made it complicated by doing nothing at all… Shit. I don’t know. History blows, man.”
Locke’s forehead creased. “You’ll have to believe me when I say that I get it.”
No onegotwhat they’d been through. Then again, he’d never given anyone a chance to prove him wrong. Maybe that was a pussy belief, but it was his. Even to this day, he could still hear the tires screech. He could never forget the crunch of glass and the dull thud Brie had made at that first impact. She couldn’t even scream after it had happened. Still alive and unable to shout how they were losing her.
“Ella and I were in an accident with my sister.” A grenade-size lump lodged in his throat. He’d said the word out loud.Accident. Admitting it was like pulling the pin, and now that it had been said out loud, the knot threatened to detonate years of unvoiced issues.
“They can be brutal.”
“My sister was also Ella’s best friend,” he said quietly, admitting that just as she had when she’d sobbed into his shirt days ago. Why had he needed to explain that? It wasn’t part of the damn story.
Locke waited him out, and Bishop drew in a painful breath.
“It was a blur. Ella and I’d had drinks. Ya know, but we were being responsible.We thought. Because Brie hadn’t, and she was behind the wheel.” They had tried to be good kids. They had taken turns suffering through nights as designated drivers. That was the rule, right? What would have kept them safe? “Brie and Ella were texting about me. I egged them on. We were just having fun. So stupid. Thought we were so funny and invincible.”
“One of those recipes for disaster, huh?”
“Back then, no one ever thought not to do that. It was all ‘don’t drink and drive. Don’t get stoned and get behind the wheel.’” Bishop shrugged, though he was anything but indifferent. “The text never made it out. The car flipped. She died.”