Page 155 of Stealing Blinds

Ahh. It’s what I’ve been waiting for. That is a good turn of events.

Flora glances at it, too, the hint of a smile cresting her cheeks, though she wisely doesn’t comment. She and Sylvie have mended for the most part. It took a lot of tears and several hard conversations. It might never be quite what it once was. Maybe that’s due to Sylvie’s support system being so much larger than it was when they had their falling-out. But Flora has been incredible with her, so I can’t complain, and Sylvie is far more at peace without that pain.

For the time being, we’re still living in the penthouse. I left that firmly up to Sylvie, and she loved the idea of being so close to the girls, my brothers, and Remy. I think game nights and mandatory meals are nearly as important to her as they are to Axel, and seeing my girls loved daily by the people who mean the world to me is an unparalleled treasure.

We transformed Maddox’s old room into a picturesque nursery. It’s brown and pink and ten shades of adorable, but the best part is the Van Gogh on the wall—the very one Sylvie feared had blood splattered on it.

“Oh my goodness,” she shrieked, her amber eyes wide and her arms hugging the cutest baby bump there’d ever been, which I was utterly obsessed with. “You didn’t.”

“It’s not morbid. It’s romantic,” I insisted, and I knew she viewed it as such. “No thievery either. I made a compelling offer to Beatrice Shaeffer via an anonymous third party.”

Above our bed is Heath’s magnum opus—the one he went to prison for. She cried for that one. Happy and healing tears.

She looked between the painting of card players and my vintage card collection and said, “I was in New Orleans because I felt like my dad wanted me to get that mask. I know it sounds weird, but I think he knew we would find each other.”

For someone who hadn’t believed in fate, that was huge. She may have conceded to our serendipitous meeting when we were in France, confessing that she believed destiny had brought us together, but this was bigger. I agreed wholeheartedly and promised to surprise her with a new masterpiece for every occasion.

Her gift to me was just as sentimental, if not more. She framed the napkin notes I’d written her at the restaurant in San Francisco and the one from her birthday.

Yep, she’d saved them. Now there is no dispute about how obsessed she was with me.

Since I always keep my word, I also hired an artist to create a huge fleur-de-lis out of several pieces of clothing I’d torn off her body. It’s my personal favorite, and it amuses her.

Just as Maddox and Tessa are about to show us the breaking news, Jax plops down. He appears untethered yet serene. More dreamy-eyed than usual.

“How’d it go?” Axel asks, referring to a side project Jax volunteered to follow up on, as he motions to a wiggling Remy to give us another minute.

The guitarist starts with a brief solo before the rest of the band comes in to join them.

“We all know what a ride being part of the Noire family is,” the lead singer announces into the mic. “There’s nothing like it. How about ‘Life Is a Highway’ to keep this party going?”

Jax snags a piece of nearly too-old crawfish bread. “Got a little messy.”

Ryker cocks his head, concern immediately blanketing him. “Is that why you were late?”

“Nah,” he says between bites. “Cathartic messy. It was quick.”

Maddox senses the story simmering, rubbing his chin. “Then what was the holdup?”

Jax shrugs, peering up at the stage for a few beats. “I was driving … an Uber.”

Sylvie and the other girls can’t keep it together. Even Remy’s face twists in confusion.

Axel abandons his spinning watch, certain he misheard something. “You drove an Uber?”

“Backup career?” I tack on.

Jax laughs, but his brows bounce like his head is somewhere else. “Just something I tried. Only one customer.”

Sylvie reaches across me to gently touch his arm, waiting for him to look at her. “A special customer?”

He’s soft for my girl. I suppose he is for all our girls. But he told me a while after we got home from France that when they were in the sea, he was tormented but so grateful because I had truly found the kind of love that most people only dreamed about.

“She would’ve crawled back to you if I had let her. Bullets flying at her, and all she could think about was not leaving you.”

Jax values loyalty over nearly everything, so she secured a forever place in his favor. Which is why he flits his hazel eyes to her with a boyish smile. “She was blue.”

With that, he takes a stirring Pippa from me, smothering her with kisses and redirecting the conversation. “The story broke.”