There was no use lying, was there? He really didn’t want to. She wasn’t some dirty secret, wasn’t anything he was ashamed of. “Yeah. We’re living together.”
That earned a single, sharp jerk of Toly’s head. “She’s not in her dorm?”
“No. She didn’t wanna stay. Some shit went down with the roommate, but that’s her business to tell, not mine.”
Toly nodded, as if to say fair enough. “Does she know you’re in love with her?”
He hadn’t expected that. It shocked the breath out of him. “Yeah.”
“You told her you are?”
“Yes, goddamnit. Are we done?”
Toly held up a finger. One more thing. “What will you do if and when she decides she wants to move on to better things? To a better man?”
Punch you in the fucking face, he thought. But that wasn’t the real answer to that question. The real answer was, throat getting stuck halfway through, “Let her go with my blessing. And then eat a gun.”
Toly nodded again, and turned for the door.
“Wait. Are you gonna tell Raven?”
“No. You are. Not tonight, if you can’t stomach it. But I won’t do your dirty work.” He slipped inside and left Shep standing in the cold.
The quoted scene in this post occurs chronologically before yesterday's pick, and I won't include all of the text here because Shep curses too much. But I really loved the scene where Toly puts two and two together and walks Shep out onto the balcony for a "chat."
It's telling that Shep's more worried about telling Raven than Toly. Toly cares about Cass, he loves her as the sister he never had, but Shep knows that Toly is for sure living outside his means, and is happy to go with Raven's flow; if Toly's furious about Shep and Cass together, it's because he's worried that Raven will be furious. But Toly's not a hypocrite, and he's not going to be the first to throw stones given his past, and the relatively new non-glass state of his house. Though for all Shep's posturing in the rooftop scene, he acknowledges to himself that if Toly truly had a problem with their relationship, Shep would already be karate-kicked off the rooftop by now.
I really enjoyed all of their interactions in this book. They did not get along in Nothing More, but here we see that time, proximity, and a common cause have softened their relationship, even in the very beginning of the book. Though their personalities are very different, Shep actually has a lot in common with Michael when it comes to club relationships. He doesn't have friends within the club; doesn't hang out with any of his brothers for fun. He's an outsider within a community of outlaws, and that gets complicated and lonely.
By the end of the book, they're working their way toward something like friendship; echoes of Mercy and Michael in Price of Angels.
I’m hoping there is a future book for Maverick!
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