“No, it doesn’t change what she did. But now you know why I wanted to be with her so bad. She fell back into my life, and I wasn’t letting her go again no matter how hard she tried to fight her feelings for me. No matter how much I fucking hate what’s happening now, everything finally makes sense. Why she was cautious, why she tried to push me back, why she still wouldn’t let anyone actually define our relationship . . .” I trailed off and focused on my sister again. “Yeah, I was mad when I found out. I was mad she’d waited so long to tell me. But you? You have no room to sit there and judge her or be a bitch about what’s going on because all you know is that she was married. Think about everything she did when it came to my relationship with her in the five months from when she moved here until her ex showed up, Kristi, think about it. And now think about her ex. They were married when she was eighteen, and he left her and disappeared out of the blue one day only a few months in, and just showed up again four years later. I fucking hate what is happening, and I hate not knowing who she’s going to choose. But really, you can’t blame her for being confused when she found out that the reason he left her was because he had to go undercover for the police department.”
Kristi’s pissed-off expression disappeared when I finished, and was replaced with wide eyes that were filled with shock. But she never said anything. No one did.
“Yeah. So there’s the whole story. Have fun with that.” Without another word, I turned and walked out of my parents’ house. No one tried to stop me, not like they could have after everything that had just gone down in those few minutes. And now that I’d just told the entire story, I was right back where I’d been for the last month.
Hurting. Frustrated. And waiting. Always waiting.
November 30
Kennedy
“DID YOU NOTICE the way Kristi kept looking at you today?” Kira asked as we walked up to our condo.
“Yes! You noticed it too?”
Kira gave me a look and laughed. “Kind of hard not to. She looked like she couldn’t figure out what to say to you, so she just kept telling me everything.”
“Oh well. At least she doesn’t look like she wants to kill me anymore. I wonder what changed.” I was about to put the key in the door, but stopped and looked at Kira with wide eyes. “Do you think . . . do you think Liam is seeing someone?”
“No. No way. If he were, Kristi would be throwing it in your face after how she’s been acting the last month.” Kira didn’t look worried about the possibility that Liam had found someone, but when she saw my face, her expression softened. “Have you talked to him?”
I shrugged. “I’ve tried. Whenever I call him or text him, the first thing he asks is if I’ve decided yet. When I tell him I’m still trying to, he says, ‘I’ll be here,’ and then hangs up . . . or stops responding.”
Kira suddenly looked uncomfortable, but before I could question her expression, she asked, “And are you getting any closer to deciding?”
I thought about that for a minute, and finally said, “If I had to make a decision right now, I know who I would choose. But whenever I think about making the decision, I feel like I’m still not giving Rhys the chance he deserves—so I don’t.”
“It’s been more than a month,” she reminded me.
“I know,” I groaned. “I know it has. I really need to spend some time actually talking with Rhys . . . I’ve been ignoring him even when I’m near him.”
Kira didn’t respond; she just nodded her head as she turned to face straight ahead.
Unlocking the door, I pushed it open and followed Kira inside. A few steps in, she turned to look at me with wide eyes.
“Smells good in here,” I mumbled.
“It does,” she agreed, and turned toward the living room.
It wasn’t uncommon for the condo to smell alarmingly good. Rhys had nothing to do all day, and was still on paid leave for another month from the department to regroup from his time undercover, so we often came home to a clean house. Once he explained how he’d been living for four years, and how, now that he was away from that life, he felt like nothing was ever clean enough, I’d stopped asking him not to clean, and let him do what he wanted.
“Wow,” Kira said in amazement when she rounded the corner to look into the kitchen. “What is all this?”
“Oh, wow!” I echoed when I looked into the kitchen. There were plates and bowls filled with amazing-looking food, and Rhys was standing in front of the sink rinsing off what looked like the last of the dishes he’d been using. “Where did this come from?”
“I made it,” he answered with a nonchalant shrug. “I went to the store today and bought enough food to stock up the pantry and fridge.”
I glanced over at Kira, who was looking in the pantry, then looked back at Rhys in awe. “Really? You didn’t have to do that. It must have cost so much.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this so full,” Kira whispered from where she was now standing in front of the refrigerator.
“You didn’t let me help pay any of the bills from last month. I had to do something.”
“Because you sleep on the couch and clean all the time!”
Rhys smiled. “Kennedy, that does not come close to equaling out.”
“Wait,” I said, and held up a hand. “How did you get to the store to buy all of this?”
Kira turned to Rhys for his response, but quickly moved her eyes away and looked down at the food.
“Uh, I went and bought a truck today.”
“You bought a truck?” Kira asked, her voice and face showing her excitement.
“How?” I asked again.
Rhys’s smile turned sarcastic. “Well, I picked it out, signed the papers, and drove it back here. But if you’re asking how I could afford it, you have to remember I came back to four years of back pay with absolutely nothing that I needed to pay for except my ticket here.”
“Huh, well, that’s fun—wait! How did you get to the dealership?”
Both Kira and Rhys laughed, and after a quick look back at Kira, Rhys’s eyes were on me. “They have these cars called taxis now. You call the number, they pick you up, you pay them to drive you somewhere. They’re pretty cool.”
“Shut up,” I said on a laugh, and rolled my eyes. “You could’ve just said you called a cab, jerk.”
“But then you might have asked, ‘How?’ ”
This time I was laughing with them, but my laugh died and I blurted, “Wait! How did you call a cab?”
“Rhys asked if he could use my phone today, I left it with him when we went to work.”
For a second, I wondered why he’d asked Kira instead of me, but figured he probably didn’t feel comfortable asking me seeing as I was always either at work or at the beach, and if I was home, I was locked in my bedroom. And he and Kira had become friends over the last month, so I just nodded. “Okay, I swear I’m done with the hows.”
“Good,” Rhys said with a wink. “You girls hungry? I just finished getting everything ready about a minute before you walked in.”
“Yes!” Kira and I said in unison, and helped him carry all the dishes over to the table.
“THAT WAS SO good.” I placed a hand on my too-full stomach, and groaned. “I can’t remember the last time I ate that much.”
“Or had a home-cooked meal,” Kira added, and I agreed.
“Very true.” I looked over at Rhys and nudged him. “Did you cook while you were undercover? Or were you just still good at it when you came back?”
He laughed and shook his head once. “Definitely didn’t cook while there. I’m glad I still know how to boil water after being gone for that long.”
“Poor guy,” Kira said with an apologetic look. “You only ate takeout for four years, and then you come here and we’re too lazy to cook anything, so we force you to have more of it. Good job, us.”
“No, nothing like that. There was an older woman at the house I was in. She did all the laundry and cooked every meal except breakfast.?
??
“Huh,” I huffed. “Well, that’s nice, I guess.”
“No!” Rhys disagreed with a laugh. “Definitely not nice either. The way she did laundry, everything still came out dirty. She never cleaned the house with anything more than a paper towel, and would yell at us if we tried to. And her cooking? It was okay. I mean, it wasn’t horrible, but she only made three different meals. There was always a soup, but only lentil, vegetable, or cabbage. Then there would be fried chicken, enchiladas, or pasta with this red sauce that you had to choke down. And then there would be mashed potatoes, rice, or garlic bread. Everything was seasoned beyond the point of being edible, and if you’d already eaten before you got to the house, she’d still make you eat everything she gave you. So after four years of that, takeout was the most amazing thing.”
Kira and I were laughing, and I asked, “Well, why didn’t they just get someone else to cook and clean?”
“She was the leader’s mom. He cherished that woman. If you said anything negative about her, the cooking, or the house . . . it was over for you.”
“Oh my God, are you serious?” Kira asked with wide eyes.
“Very.” Rhys sighed. “You didn’t mess with that guy’s mom.”
“Apparently not,” I murmured. “Can you tell us anything about your time undercover? We’ve heard stories from Dad and Uncle Mason. But we obviously heard the stories years after anything happened.”
“Uh,” Rhys began, and his dark eyes got a faraway look. “We dealt, mostly. That was the big thing. Well, we didn’t. We were the suppliers.”
“Did you have to use?” I asked.
“Did your dad?” he shot back.
Kira and I nodded, and Rhys raised his eyebrows in confirmation.
“Not often, thank God. Getting in . . .” He trailed off. “Getting in, there was a lot I had to do that I hated—including a lot of using. But once I was in, it was easy to just act like I’d been using, and my stash would always be gone since I was handing it over to the department. There would only be a handful of times a year when they’d wait and watch you use. But there was always other stuff there was no way out of, as I’m sure you can imagine from hearing your dad’s stories.”
“Yeah,” Kira breathed. “He said he and Mason were obsessive about getting tested because of what they had to do.”
Rhys agreed, “Yep. I was lucky; but none of the test results ever stopped me from being terrified. Just never knew what could happen before the next test.”
I studied Rhys’s distant eyes for a few moments and cleared my throat. “Sorry, it wasn’t really fair of me to ask you to tell us all this. That’s probably hard for you to talk about, especially so soon. You don’t have to tell us anything else. I guess we’re just so used to hearing about the horrors of working undercover that it never seems like it’s a big deal or shocking to us. But we didn’t have to go through it. So like I said, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he insisted, but I could tell that I’d brought up things he didn’t enjoy thinking about.
“New subject?” I offered.
Rhys shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Sure.”
“What are you going to make us for dinner tomorrow?”
He laughed, and just like that, the haunted look in his dark eyes disappeared behind his smile. Rhys started listing off everything he’d bought at the store that day and things he’d been craving and wanted to make, and every now and then he’d make suggestions just to see what we thought about different meals and types of food.
The conversation over the next half hour was much lighter, and I found myself smiling along with Rhys and Kira and enjoying having him there. But I couldn’t help but notice that even though it was nice having him around, I still no felt no connection to him romantically or physically. He was attractive, that was impossible to miss. Nearly Liam’s height, but with dark messy hair and equally dark eyes; and while he was nicely built, he was much leaner than Liam.
And then I realized that not only did I not have any feelings toward Rhys, but all I could think about when I looked at him was how he wasn’t Liam.
“Who the fuck . . . stay here!” Rhys demanded suddenly, and jumped out of his chair to take off running toward the back sliding glass door.
I’d jumped at his loud words, but even if I hadn’t registered what he’d said, I don’t think I would have been able to get up just because of the shock of his sudden outburst. I turned around in time to see him slide the door open and take off running out into the grassy area behind our condo and disappear off to the side.
“What on earth?” I mumbled when his shouts reached us through the open door.
Kira and I stood at the same time and walked over to the open door, and although we could still hear him, we didn’t see him.
“Did you see someone?”
“No,” Kira answered softly, like she was still trying to grasp what had happened as well.
When another moment passed, I asked, “Do you think he has problems from being undercover that maybe the tests the department did didn’t catch?”
Kira snorted, causing my lips to curve up at the corners. “I think we would have noticed something like this before tonight if he did have a—who is that?” she quickly asked when Rhys finally rounded the corner of the building with a gangly guy stumbling behind him.
“I told you to stay at the table,” he said harshly when he got close, and my eyebrows rose at the anger in his tone.
Kira looked down at the ground, and I scoffed, “You can’t just pull that shit and expect us not to wonder what’s happening.”
Rhys’s eyes narrowed, but it was clear now that he was closer that his anger wasn’t directed at either of us—he definitely looked annoyed that we’d chosen not to listen to him, though.
“Who is this?” I asked when he got close enough with the guy in tow that Kira and I had to step away from the door.
“We’re about to find out,” he answered. “I’m guessing you won’t give me time alone with him?”
“If you want,” Kira offered while she shut and locked the door, and I shot her a look.
I folded my arms over my chest and returned Rhys’s stare. “I know we were only married for three months, but you should know that there’s no way you could expect me not to stick around for whatever’s about to happen.”
Rhys smiled in amusement, and his dark eyes brightened with memories of us from four years ago. “Never hurts to try, Kennedy.” He continued dragging the boy behind him until he got to the couch and yanked him closer. “Sit. Don’t even try to move.”
Kira stepped back slowly until she got to the table where we’d been sitting, and silently sat down, her wide eyes on the three of us in the living room.
“Who are you?” I asked the guy when he looked up at us.
“I’m asking the questions,” Rhys grumbled, and gave me a dark look that I reciprocated. The action had his expression lightening again before he could control it to look back at the guy on my couch.
“Who are you?” Rhys repeated my question.
“Wait, I don’t even know what he was doing to make you chase after him and drag him back in here,” I said when the boy refused to respond.
Rhys didn’t look at me this time; he kept his stare on the boy. “He was looking through the sliding glass door. I thought I saw him when I was cooking, but he was gone when I checked out back. When I got back from the grocery store this afternoon, he was leaving a paper on the front door.”
“Was it a love letter?” I asked sarcastically, and the boy’s blank expression morphed into a mocking smile.
Rhys just sighed. “No, will you let me—”
“Well, then where’s the paper? I want to see it.”
“I threw it away, it didn’t have anything on it but a symbol.”
I was already confused that this guy—who didn’t look like he was a legal adult yet—would be scoping out our condo, but as soon as I heard the word symbol, I gasped and glanced at Rhys,
then looked at Kira’s worried face. “Get the paper,” I ordered, then eyed the boy as I asked Rhys, “It’s in the kitchen trash, right?”
“Yeah,” he said hesitantly, drawing out the word to sound like a question. “Why?”
I didn’t respond, I just kept my gaze on the mocking face of the boy in front of me. “Name. Now.”
“Juarez,” he replied immediately, and my lip curled.
“I fucking doubt that. Name.”
“Kennedy,” Kira called from the kitchen, and held up the crinkled paper.
I pointed to the paper and asked the boy, “What does the symbol mean?”
“Juarez,” he answered again.
“What the hell is happening?” Rhys asked on a harsh whisper, and grabbed my arm to pull me back a few steps. His eyes widened when we heard Kira calling 911 from the kitchen. “Kennedy, what the fuck?”
“No, no. Don’t do that!” the boy said quickly, and suddenly his mocking expression was replaced with worry as he started to stand. “It’s just a joke! I swear, I mean . . . they just sent me here to see if you’re here.”
“Shut the fuck up, and sit down,” Rhys demanded, then looked at Kira and me again. “What’s happening?”
I gave him the quickest explanation I could of what had been going on back home, and every few seconds Rhys would have to look over at the boy to stop him from trying to stand up again.
“No one thought this was important to tell me?” Rhys bit out when I was finished. “Including your dad?”
“I swear they just pay me!” the boy said frantically, and stood again. “Don’t call the cops, I’ll—”
Rhys shoved him down and caged him against the couch, then leaned close so his face was inches from the boy’s. “Tampa PD; if you don’t sit here and shut up, I will personally fly you back to Florida and arrest you there.”
“Man, I don’t know anything,” the boy cried as his eyes welled up. “They just pay me, man, I swear!”