I MISSED A CALL FROM MY father.
I’m leaving the studio, debating whether to return or ignore the call. The missed call alert on my phone mocks me, daring me to respond. We’ve had a few more counseling sessions since that initial one, and things have thawed some between my father and me. My mother . . . still frozen.
I may never be able to say the word “frozen” again without laughing. I was only half-joking when I suggested animation for Kai’s acting career. Yet another bridge we’ll have to cross when we come to it. That one—nudity, sex scenes, all that shit with some other guy, even if it is acting—that bridge I’ll burn. Got the match right here.
I don’t even register that I’ve dialed his number until it’s ringing. Only then do I realize it’s almost midnight. I’m about to hang up when he answers.
“Rhyson, hey.”
He sounds surprisingly alert and as strong as ever, even though I’m always shocked that he looks frailer than the man I grew up with. He and Grady are identical twins, but now he looks like Grady’s older brother. Em’s keeping Grady young, and my mother’s got to be aging my father. I feel weary after every session, and she and I barely look at each other in those.
“Dad, hey. Sorry to call so late. I didn’t realize it was . . . well, I’m just leaving the studio.” I barrel ahead with an apology before he asks for an explanation. “Sorry I missed yesterday’s session with Dr. Ramirez. I didn’t mean to blow it off.”
“It’s fine,” he says. “But I wanted to call and make sure you were okay.”
I hesitate, weighing how much deeper I want to allow him into my life. Kai’s about as deep as you can get with me, so sharing anything about her would crack open that door between my father and me just that much more.
“My girlfriend, Kai, collapsed during one of her concerts. Not sure if you heard. It was on the news a lot last week. She was in the hospital.”
“I did hear. I actually left you a voicemail checking to see if she was okay.”
His concern startles me. I can’t imagine him doing something like that years ago.
“Sorry. I didn’t check all my voicemails,” I say. “I kind of forgot about everything else. I went home with her to recuperate. I should be able to make next week’s session. We’ll have to see how she’s doing.”
“Maybe we could . . .” My father’s voice goes somewhere I’ve rarely heard it go. To uncertainty. “Maybe we could have coffee or something when you get back. You know, meet outside the session.”
Holy shit.
“Uh, we could do that.” I tap the steering wheel. “Coffee’s kind of public for me, though. Maybe you could . . . come to the house for dinner or something.”
Thank God it’s almost midnight, and there’s hardly any traffic because this conversation requires my complete focus.
“Dinner?” Surprise tinges his voice. “Sure. I’d . . . well, I’d like that.”
“Kai’s a great cook,” I continue before I think better of it. “Did I mention she’s from Georgia? Can you believe I ended up with a girl from Georgia?”
“A Southerner, huh?” His laugh makes him sound freer than I’ve heard in a long time. Maybe ever. “You sure know how to pick ‘em.”
“And to top it off, she’s a Baptist. As in church. Crazy, right? Anyway, they fry chicken in this big black pot, in like a foot of grease. It’s the best thing you’ll ever taste. I think I’m getting her a pot for our back yard.”
“That sounds nice,” he says, that smile still in his voice. “I’d love to come.”
It’s unspoken between us, but we both know I’m extending the invitation only to him. My mother . . . that’s still another issue entirely.
“How about I call you when I get back from taking care of her? Or . . . I guess you could call. Or whatever.”
“That’d be great.” He pauses. “Thanks for calling me back, Rhyson.”
“Sure. I mean, of course.” I roll my eyes at myself. “Yeah.”
Smooth. Real smooth. You’re such a baller, Gray.
“Talk to you later, son.”
I can’t remember the last time I didn’t flinch when he called me that. The fact that I don’t gives me hope I wasn’t sure I’d ever have.
I’m still processing our conversation when I walk into the house. It’s completely quiet. I’m replaying every word I said to my dad, wondering if I should have said more, less.
I need to talk to Kai. She always helps me sort my shit. I wouldn’t even be wrestling with this had it not been for her forcing me . . . er, encouraging me . . . to go to counseling. I’m dialing her number before I think twice about it, not even factoring in the lateness of the hour, the time difference, nothing. Just as I’m realizing it’s about three in the morning there, and am about to disconnect, I hear my song Lost ringing up the staircase. The closer I get, I think it’s coming from my bedroom.
I cross the threshold, and sure enough, Kai is curled up asleep fully clothed on my bed, the phone ringing by her side. She sits up groggily, patting the bed to search for the phone. I’m there before she can even get to it, pulling her up, sitting on the edge of the bed and straddling her over me, knees on either side of my legs.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” I bury my head in her hair and her neck, inhaling cinnamon and pear. “I mean, you’re great to come home to, but I was on my way back to Glory Falls tomorrow night.”
She nods into my neck, her fingers clutching my elbows, her slight frame pressing into me.
“I know.” She lays her temple to my shoulder. “I needed to talk to you.”
“You okay?” I tug on the hair streaming down her back until she’s forced to look at me. I know what she looks like at peace. The tumult in those beautiful eyes fists my heart. “What’s wrong, Pep? Aunt Ruthie?”
“No.” She remains on my lap, but scoots back a little, legs folded under her thighs on the bed, arms crossed over her waist. “Aunt Ruthie’s fine. She’s good.”
Her eyes drop again, so I palm her chin, tilting her face back up to me.
“What’s going on?”
She closes her eyes and swallows, pressing her lips together.
“My dad came to see me.”
Of all the things I would have imagined she’d say, that never entered my mind.
“Your father? Your real dad?”
“Yeah. He, um, saw on the news that I collapsed at the concert and was in the hospital. He said he wanted to make sure I was okay. When he heard no one knew where I was, he took a chance and checked Glory Falls.”
“Wanted to make sure you were okay?” I squeeze her thighs, wishing I had five minutes alone with his no-show ass. “After all these years he just happens to get concerned when he sees you on television?”
She nods, her eyes unfocused over my shoulder.
“Exactly what I said.”
“Hey.” I tug her chin so she looks at me. “You okay? Talk to me. What did he have to say for himself?”
A tear slides down one cheek, and she swipes at it before it makes it very far. She tucks a chunk of dark hair behind her ear, a humorless smile on her lips.
“Not enough. He didn’t say enough to make up for any of it.” She sighs, folding a little to press her forehead to my chest. “Growing up, I used to think there was an explanation. Something we never could have thought of. Like, maybe he was secretly a spy, and for our sake, he had to go into witness protection. Only no one could know, not even us.”
Her laugh is a short, dry bark in the quiet bedroom.
“But he was just weak. He fell in love with someone else and chose her over his family.” She shrugs her slim shoulders. “A liar. A cheat. That’s all.”
I brush a hand over the dark hair tumbling around her shoulders and down her back. God, I hate that guy. The pain comes off her in waves, and if I could take it all, absorb it all into myself, I would.
“I’m sorry, Pep. I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling right now. That’s a lot to deal with.”
“He said he felt trapped in Glory Falls and never wanted to be a preacher. He felt trapped in their marriage, Rhyson.”
She shakes her head, another tear sneaking past her eyelids.
“It would have killed Mama to hear him say that. I’m glad he never came back if that’s all he had to say for himself.”
She pulls back to study me, her eyes holding more than pain. Holding something I can’t quite figure out yet.
“Maybe one good thing came out of his visit.” She drops her eyes before looking back to me, even though it feels like she’s forcing herself to. “My Aunt Ruthie used to say that I was more like my father than I wanted to admit. That I was just as much his daughter as I was my mother’s.”
I nod, not wanting to admit Aunt Ruthie basically told me the same thing.
“Maybe she was right.” Kai bites her lip before going on. “Maybe the only legacy he has for me is the lesson of his mistakes.”
“Okay.” I frown a little, running a thumb over the high curve of her cheekbone. “Baby, what does that mean?”
“He said he hoarded his secrets, hid all the darkest things. The people who loved him most never really knew him. Not in the ways that matter. He said he ran when he couldn’t face the consequences of his actions.” She doesn’t lift her gaze any higher than my chest. “He’s a runner and a hider.”
She closes her eyes, dropping her head to my chest.
“And so am I,” she whispers.
Those few words cause a ripple in my peace of mind. Why is she talking to me about running and hiding and secrets? We’re done with all of that. So why, when she raises her eyes to my face, does she look so damn guilty? So afraid?
A memory of San’s face at the hospital flashes through my mind, that feeling I got that there was something he knew. Something I should know, but didn’t.
“Kai, baby, what is it?” I nudge her face toward me, dropping a kiss on her lips. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”
“Yes, I know that now.”
Now? I go still and then slide my hand up her slim back, feeling the tension in the muscles there.
“Rhyson, there’s something I need to tell you. I should have told you before, but couldn’t.” She runs a hand through her hair, her expression agitated. “I just couldn’t, but I should have.”
“Pep, you’re freaking me out here.” I interlock our fingers. “What’s going on?”
She draws a breath so deep, I’m not sure it will ever end before she looks at me, her eyes uncertain. How can she still be uncertain of me? After everything, still?
“Someone’s been threatening me, Rhys.”
The word “threaten” pummels me. Someone threatened her? Everything in me shouts for answers immediately, but I force myself to remain calm. To fake being reasonable.
“Who threatened you, Pep?” I ask quietly, my fingers tightening just a bit around hers. “Threaten how?”
She knows me too well to believe the calm façade. She searches my eyes until she locates the rage I’m carefully concealing.
“Please don’t be angry with me,” she whispers.
“With you?” I lean back, sliding my hands to her hips, securing her in my lap. It’s bad enough I have to fake calm without having to solve riddles. “Pep, tell me everything now before I lose my shit.”
“Someone sent me a . . . a tape.” She drops her eyes and worries the corner of her mouth with her teeth. “A sex tape.”
My mind races to all the implications of someone seeing us together. Why would they go to her with it when I’m the one with all the money?
“They came to you with our sex tape? But why—”
“Not you,” she cuts in, eyes still averted. “You’re not on the tape.”
“But you just said . . .” My words die right alongside a chunk of my sanity. “Who? Who is on that damn tape, Pep?”
“It’s me.” She finally looks at me, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “It’s me and Drex. From that night. I swear I had no idea he was recording us.”
Her admission topples any semblance of calm and rationality I clung to. It all falls down. Rage rises. Finally, a legitimate reason to have Gep find a secret way to kill that piece of shit.
“So Drex is the one threatening you?”
Years of hatred and resentment wrap around the words, choking them like weeds in my throat. That viper has found ways to make life difficult for me since the day we met in high school. Him fucking Petra, that was one thing. Him sabotaging my first album release, that was another. And he’s found dozens of ways through the years to piss me off, but this? Him threatening Kai with some bullshit tape from that one fucking night is too much.
“I don’t know if it’s him actually making the threats. I assume he has something to do with it obviously.” Kai covers her eyes. “We’ve been looking for him, but he’s disappeared.”
“We?” Pieces of information begin clicking into slots, forming a clearer picture. “When did he threaten you? Yesterday when I left?”
She couldn’t have let even a day go by without telling me this. Right?
“Pep?” She shifts on my lap, head lowered again. “When?”
“It was at the beginning of the tour.” She directs the words down, unable to meet my eyes.
“Three months ago? He threatened you three months ago, and you’re just telling me? What the hell?”
“We weren’t together at first, and I . . . I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“You tell me. That’s what you fucking do. Three months? And what about when we were together again? For the last six weeks you knew this and didn’t even mention it?”
“I thought . . . I thought I could handle it.”
“And what’s he demanding? What are the terms? Money?”
“No, not money.” She gives me a cautious glance. “Whoever it is only demanded that I not be with you.”
Whatever I thought rage was, it was a pale imitation of the fury that pounds in my temples when she says that.
“Is that why you didn’t want to go public?” I demand. “I mean the real reason, not the lie you fed me about not wanting to detract attention from your tour.”
“I did what I thought was best, Rhyson, for both of us. To protect you.”
“Bullshit. You did it to protect yourself. At least be honest with yourself since being honest with me obviously isn’t important to you. And that sounds eerily like my rationale when I took matters into my own hands with Total Package.”
“I know. I made a mistake, too.”
“You said we hit reset. We promised we wouldn’t lie to each other, and that’s all you’ve done for the last six weeks. I went to counseling with my parents for you.”
“That was for you, Rhyson.” She shakes her head, eyes barely holding mine. “You know it was the right thing.”
“Not the point, Pep. I went into counseling with my parents, whom I haven’t spent more than twenty-four hours with in over a decade, for you. So that you would know I’m serious about figuring out my shit. So that you’d know I’m serious about us having a healthy relationship, and you do this? Behind my back you hide this?”
I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth a few times, truly struggling to bring my temper under control.
“I lied first. I know that. I deserved your anger, your silence.” I take a moment before looking at her. “But when you said you forgave me, I never planned to lie to you again. We hit reset, and it meant the world to me. So finding out you lied—well, that spits on everything.”
“Rhys, let me explain—”
“So this piece of shit contacted you three months ago.” I can’t deal with her right now. I need to focus on him. “What’s happened since?”
“Well, you and I haven’t been public, of course, so he hadn’t bothered me at all.” She closes her eyes, folding her lips in before continuing. “But then that Spotted piece came out the other day speculating about us, and he contacted me again. Texted me threatening to release the tape if I didn’t stay away from you.”
A threatening text?
“That unknown number in the shed?” I demand. “Was that him?”
She nods mutely, eyes afraid of the anger I know is building in my expression. It has to be because I can’t hold it in any longer.
“You told me that was San.” My voice has climbed to a yell. “You lied to my face. God, Pep, was any of that true that night? Has any of it been true? If you could—”
“How can you even ask me that?” Her voice shakes, then breaks over the words. “You know I meant every word about our future together.”
“Yeah, and how did you plan to spend your future with me indefinitely pretending we aren’t together?”
“I just needed some time to track down Drex so we could talk to him, rationalize with him, and now San has a lead so we—”
“San?” I interrupt. “He knew about this? Of course he did. Of course you’d tell him and not me. Trust him and not me.”
“It wasn’t a matter of trust.”
She’s too close. I can’t stand for her to be this close when I’m this angry, like a flame that might scorch her if she’s not careful.
“Get off me.” Rage mottles the words so I repeat them when she doesn’t budge from my lap. “Get the fuck off, Pep.”
“No,” she whispers into my neck, her fingers circling my wrist like she’s prepared to hold on.
“Fine, if you won’t move,” I say, grabbing her hips and lifting her up and off me, dropping her on the bed, “I’ll move you.”
As soon as I’m clear of her, I reach for the phone in my pocket and start dialing.
“Who are you calling?” I hate the fear in her voice. The thing I hate most is that she’s been living with fear for three months and didn’t share it with me. Didn’t let me protect her. Lied to me instead of trusting me.
“Dammit, Pep,” I say through gritted teeth while Bristol’s phone rings.
“That’s me on that tape, Rhyson, not you.” She stands on her knees in the middle of the bed. “I have a right to know who you’re calling.”
“No one says your name without thinking mine, Kai. So it may be you on that tape, but it affects me whether you like it or not, and if we—”
“What tape?” Bristol asks, voice gruff with sleep, from the other end. “This better be good, brother. What the hell?”
“Bris, how soon can you get to the house?” My eyes don’t leave Kai’s devastated face, shame burning a red spot in each of her cheeks.
It’s quiet on the other end, and I can almost hear the cogs of Bristol’s wheels turning as she brushes the sleep off.
“Twenty minutes.”
“Make it fifteen. Gep, too. I’ll explain when you get here.”
I hang up, striding for the door to wait for them downstairs. I can’t even look at Kai right now. I’m so furious with her. So . . . hurt by her. Is this how she felt when I pulled that stunt with Total Package? Betrayed? Split open? A raw wound salted with lies?
“I was just trying to handle things myself.” She trails me down the stairs. “Can’t you see I never wanted you to find out? To see me like that with him? God, even now just the thought of you seeing it makes me sick to my stomach.”
“I get that, Pep, but you lied.” I keep going, not turning to look at her. “For weeks you’ve lied.”
“I wanted to find Drex to get to the bottom of it.”
“And have you found him?”
“We’re about to. One of San’s contacts spotted him in Topanga a few days ago. We lost him, but we’re close.”
“Three months and that’s all you have to show for it?” I turn to face her in the foyer. “Did it ever occur to you and your Scooby crew that Gep is a former CIA operative? That he might just have some connections that go beyond some trash rag television show’s research department?”
She shakes her head, tears standing in her eyes.
“I didn’t want you to see, Rhys. Didn’t want you to ever know. You said you could never know details.”
“That was before . . .” I let the words fall off. I know I said that, but to keep this from me? For this long? “How could you think it was okay to lie to me about this? Did you just think it would go away? What was your plan here?”
“Once San found Drex, I was going to talk to him and—”
“Talk to him?” I’m seeing red. “On your own? This scumbag who recorded you having sex with him and is now blackmailing you, a criminal act by the way. You were just gonna track him down and say please don’t? Please stop? I wish you wouldn’t do that? That was your fucking plan?”
“I was scared, Rhys. I messed up. I hate that one night with that idiot is ruining everything.”
“That night and what happened between you and Drex isn’t what’s ruining everything. I don’t blame you for that.” I wave a hand in the abyss between our bodies. “Us. The lies and the deception. That’s your fault.”
“I know that, and I’m sorry.”
Her voice is so small. She is so small, and the thought of her putting herself in that kind of possible danger because she wanted to keep it from me when I’m the one who would literally lay down my life for her without a second thought . . . it infuriates me. Before I can tell her all of that, the front door opens, and Bristol walks in, punching in the alarm code from her phone. She lives close by, but she must have sprouted wings to get here this fast. She glances at the watch on her wrist.
“Seven minutes and several traffic violations later, here I am.” She glances past me to Kai. “Gep’s on his way. May take him a little longer, but he’ll be here soon. What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a situation.” I glance at Kai, whose eyes are fixed on the marble foyer floor. “I’ll explain when he gets here. I don’t want to go through it twice.”
I don’t want to go through it even once, but we have to. It’s probably good that Bristol got here so quickly. I don’t know what I would have said if my fight with Kai continued. I still can barely make myself look at her, and it’s not because of what we’ll see on that tape. It’s because she lied to me when I thought we had gotten past it. Because I fooled myself into thinking we had given ourselves completely to each other, and all this time she was holding back. All this time, she didn’t trust me. And that makes me question every moment we’ve shared since Grady’s wedding. And I hate that because those were the best moments of my whole life. And her lies cast a shadow over every one of them.
The three of us are brewing in a tight silence in the kitchen drinking coffee when Gep arrives. He looks fresh, alert and ready, like it’s the start of a new day, not just past midnight.
“What’s up?” Gep’s calm tone soothes me just a little bit. Kai tried to handle this alone, but couldn’t. I can. We can. We will, and I’ll deal with her lies after I’ve destroyed Drex once and for all. I’m determined that on that dude’s deathbed he’ll still be thinking about what I take from him because of this.
“Someone’s been blackmailing Kai.” The words land with a thud into the kitchen quiet. Gep glances at Kai surreptitiously, but Bristol out and out stares at her, and the questions begin.
“With what? Blackmailing how?” Bristol demands of Kai, her eyes narrow. “And what the hell does this have to do with Rhys? How are you involved?”
Even though she’s looking at Kai, I will answer her because as angry as I am with Kai right now, no one’s gonna bully my girl. Not even my twin sister.
“I’m involved because she is.” My voice is quiet, but so firm there is no doubting I’ll lay into her if I have to. “And you’re here to fix it. You’re here to work on this problem as if it’s my problem because it is.”
Bristol presses her lips together and sits on one of the high stools at the counter.
“All right.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “So let’s hear it.”
I make myself look at Kai, even though for the first time since we’ve met I don’t want to. I’ve barely been able to take my eyes off this girl since that day in Grady’s rehearsal room, and now when I look at her, she’s covered in lies.
“Tell us, Kai.”
She leans her elbows to the island in the middle of the kitchen, her eyes down, hair covering her face, and begins.
“About three months ago I got a text message from an unknown number.” She pulls the hair behind her ear, showing me only her profile. “There was a link to a write up on the fight Rhys and I had, and a warning that we should stay apart or they would release this tape.”
She glances up at me only briefly, but the connection between our eyes still runs through me like a volt. I want to turn it off, but even pissed off with her, I can’t.
“It was a clip of me . . .” Her words die, and she gulps with eyes closed, before resurrecting the sentence. “A clip of me having sex with Drex.”
“Shit,” Bristol says under her breath, but loud enough for us all to hear. She drills a look into me until I finally have to look at her. Fury and frustration pool in the eyes just like mine, reflecting some of what I’m feeling.
“You fucked that douchebag?” she asks Kai.
Kai nods, biting her bottom lip, the breath trembling over her lips before she answers.
“It was before Rhys and I met. I was a dancer in one of Drex’s videos, and after the shoot wrapped we . . . well, went back to his place.” Her eyes squeeze shut like she can’t bear us looking at her. “I had no idea he was recording it, and I never . . . God, I’m so sorry.”
Tears leak over her cheeks, and she doesn’t even try to wipe them away they come so fast. I’m surprised when Bristol grabs a box of Kleenex Sarita keeps on the counter and walks it over to Kai. Everything in me strains to comfort her, but I just can’t. I’m not past the lie, the deliberate deceptions and blocking me out of this when I gave her everything. And if I soften toward her at all, I’ll lose focus. And right now my focus is a search and destroy mission.
“So he’s disappeared.” I take up where Kai left off as she wipes her cheeks and sniffs. “San’s been looking for him, and they spotted him yesterday in Topanga. Obviously he’s connected to this, but maybe not working alone. We don’t know.”
“What do you want to happen, Rhyson?” Gep asks quietly. “Blackmail is a crime, potentially a felony. We could contact the police.”
“No,” Bristol and I say in unison. I’m not even surprised. We may not be your typical twins, but in cases like these, we synch.
“This needs to stay as far off the books as we can keep it.” I shake my head. “I don’t trust the LAPD, not even a little bit. There have been too many leaks to tabloids. I can’t chance this getting out.”
“Yes,” Bristol chimes in. “Even though Rhyson isn’t on that tape, he’s been linked to them both, and this would drag his name through as much mud as it would theirs.”
“I want to make something perfectly clear,” I say. “This isn’t about protecting me. This is about protecting Kai, about making sure that damn tape never sees the light of day. Anything short of us finding the tape and destroying any and every copy in existence, short of finding out who is behind it, and destroying them, is failure to me.”
“But Rhyson,” Gep says. “If we do this off the books, we—”
“I said we keep this off the books.” I back up my words to Gep with a cold look. “There isn’t another option. No police. Less exposure. This motherfucker is fighting dirty with my girl, and as soon as we bring the police into it, we can’t fight dirty back.”
My words drop like a bomb, and for a moment it’s complete silence. I glance at Kai, and she’s looking right at me. I’m no less angry with her. I feel no less deceived, but she’s still my girl. And protecting her is still the most important thing.
“I need to see your phone, Kai,” Gep says, his eyes softer than I’ve ever seen them, his voice gentler. Gep is a hard ass recruited to the CIA before he even left college. I don’t know half of what he’s done, but the little I know would give me nightmares if I were him.
“My phone?” Kai’s panicked eyes toggle between Gep and me. “Why?”
“I know it’s tough, but I need to see the number the text and the video came from,” Gep explains, firming his lips before speaking the next words. “And I’ll need to watch the tape.”
“No!” Kai’s protest explodes into the quiet kitchen, and tears fill her eyes again. “I can’t . . . no, Gep. Please no. Don’t watch the tape. I’ll answer any questions you have. I’ll—”
“Kai, there may be something retrievable there,” Gep interrupts softly. “And I need to see if there are any clues embedded in that video, if the link has anything traceable, IP codes, anything. Who knows what information we can get from that. It’s the only smoking gun we have, and we need it to get to the bottom of this.”
He glances at me, twisting his mouth.
“Especially if we aren’t bringing the police into this.”
“And we’re not.” I extend my hand to Kai. “Give me your phone.”
One elbow on the island, she shields her face with her hand for a moment before lifting her head and walking over to me. She offers the phone to me, but when I try to take it, she doesn’t release it right way, looking up at me, her eyes pleading.
“Please don’t watch it.” Her voice breaks on a sob she tries to clamp her lips over. “I know Gep has to watch it, but you can’t. I can’t . . . promise me.”
I know what it costs her to ask that of me in front of Bristol and Gep. I can’t explain why, but I have to see that tape. I will see that tape. If only to prove to myself and to her that I was a fool to think seeing it could ever affect how I feel about her. I can’t promise her that I won’t, because I know I will.
“Did you take your meds?” I pull the phone all the way from her fingers.
“Rhyson, please. I—”
“I can’t have you relapsing, Pep. You had pneumonia and were in the hospital last week. You look exhausted.” It’s a habit to touch her, and I force myself not to push her hair back. Not to wrap my hands around her small waist. Not to dip and kiss her lips, as richly red as her mother’s strawberry preserves. “Go upstairs, take your meds, and go to sleep.”
“To sleep?” Her eyes stretch, mouth falling open. “I can’t sleep with this hanging over my head.”
“You have to.” I allow myself one touch, a hand at the small of her back to turn her toward the back stairs, just above the curve of her ass, one of my favorite spots on her body. “I’ll let you know if we need anything else.”
There’s more she wants to say. Protests she wants to make. Apologies in her eyes when she looks up at me over her shoulder. I see it all, and as usual, everything about her tugs me centripetally.
“We’ll talk later,” I tell her, looking away from the plea all over her face.
“Promise me,” she whispers, eyes fixed on me and blocking out Bristol and Gep.
I don’t know if she means promise we’ll talk later, or promise I won’t watch that tape. Her deceit builds up between us like a wall, each lie a stone to block the intimacy I’ve never wanted to resist until today. But today, I’m resisting it, and I’m not making her any promises, so I just turn away from her and hand Gep the phone.