Chapter Twenty-Two

“You two know each other?” Sophie gestured from her brother to Ryan.

Ryan nodded as John said, “Yes.”

John went next, pointing to Ryan. “Why are you talking to my sister?” His voice was accusing. The tone was enough to send hackles up her spine.

Sophie held up both hands. “Wait,” she said firmly. “Someone tell me what is going on.”

Ryan pushed back his chair, the wooden legs scraping loudly against the floor. “We know each other because he’s working on a case that involves my family.” He took long strides to her. “My father’s murder.”

Sophie clasped her hand over her mouth. She shuddered, but then blinked when she realized something didn’t add up. “You said you were fourteen when he died?”

“I was,” Ryan said, standing a few feet from her. He pressed his fingers against his temple, speaking the next words as if they pained him. “He was shot in the driveway of our home one night. Both the gunman and my mother are in prison for the crime. The case was just reopened.”

Sophie’s mouth fell open, and the earth ceased rotating as the enormity of his statement rocked through her. Slowly, she let each word soak in. That was a hell of a hand of cards to be dealt. She couldn’t even imagine what he’d gone through, living with that kind of tragedy. To think, she’d once pictured Ryan’s mom missing her husband, not serving hard time for offing him. This was so much bigger, so much heavier.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said, reaching for him, stepping closer, her natural instinct to comfort surpassing all else.

He shook his head. “It’s okay,” Ryan mumbled, his body language telling her he didn’t want soothing.

“I had no idea,” she said softly.

“Of course you had no idea. I don’t really talk about it,” he said, crossing his arms.

“But even so, I feel terrible that this happened to you.”

“Don’t.”

In that one word, she heard a man who didn’t want sympathy. Who didn’t think he needed it. She also understood all his walls—and oh hell, did he have them.

“We reopened the investigation a few weeks ago due to new evidence,” John added, stepping closer to Sophie, flanking her, as if he needed to protect her from Ryan. Perhaps he did.

Because it seemed she hardly knew the man she’d just spent the evening with. But she knew her brother. Her mind galloped over the last several conversations she’d had with John. She spun to face her brother, adding up the clues. “This is the case you’ve been working on?”

He nodded. “One of them. One of the big ones.”

She turned her gaze back to Ryan, and for the first time ever he didn’t look in control. He didn’t appear cool, or confident, or passionate. He seemed rattled, as if he’d been knocked out of orbit.

He also looked like a stranger.

He felt like one, too.

Something clicked in her head. “Hawthorne,” she said under her breath. “Is that why you went to Hawthorne?”

John cut in before Ryan could answer. “He visited his mother on Wednesday at Stella McLaren. He actually passed on some info to me later that day that may wind up being useful,” John said, a bit grudgingly, but still with some gratitude in his tone.

“You don’t do security for the prison like you said?” she asked Ryan as she furrowed her brow. He’d lied. Maybe it was a small one, but it was still a lie.

He shook his head. “The prison’s not a client. I went there to see my mom. She’s been in since I was fourteen,” he said, his voice heavy, laced with shame and sadness.

Sophie felt neither of those emotions. She simply felt…fooled. Here were these men, talking to each other, knowing things, sharing intensely personal details, and she hadn’t a clue. She wanted to experience this moment honestly. She wanted to feel all the things one should feel when learning something like this. But information was coming at her in bizarre ways, rather than through her lover sharing directly, as she’d done with him.

“I have a question, and it’s pretty important, as far as I can tell,” John said, cocking his head and staring at Ryan. “How long have you been involved with my sister?”

“Over a week. I met her the day I went to—”

“That’s why you were at the municipal building?” Sophie asked, crossing her arms. “The day I met you? You were going to see my brother?”

“I didn’t know he was your brother then,” Ryan answered defensively. “I didn’t have a clue you two were connected. All I knew when I met you was that I wanted you.”

John cleared his throat. “I left my phone charger in the guest room. That’s why I stopped by. I’m going to get that right now,” he said then stopped to look at Sophie. “Unless you want me here in this room.”

She waved him down the hall. Once she heard the door to the guest room shut, she spoke. “When did you know the detective investigating your father’s case was my brother?”

He gulped. “When I looked you up before the gala,” he said, and her blood turned to ice. Now that she’d moved beyond the initial desire to comfort him she felt…used.

“Did you pursue me to get close to the investigation?” she whispered, dreading the answer.

He shook his head several times. “No. No. No.”

That was a few too many nos for her taste. “Maybe a little?”

He shoved a hand through his hair and sighed heavily. “Sophie, I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s that simple. It has nothing to do with your brother.”

She held out her hands in question. “Then I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me.”

He shot her a quizzical look. “Uh, maybe because it’s not that easy for me to say.”

She barely registered his words as the memory of her own admissions reared to the surface. She’d shared so much with him. He’d shared so little. He’d had so many opportunities to tell her. “Ryan, I just went on and on about John and his work so many times. And you knew who he was. And you even made remarks like I bet he has some stories about what he’s seen. You said that on the Ferris wheel,” she reminded him, her near-photographic memory coming in handy. “I just feel stupid.”

“Did you want me to drop this on you on the Ferris wheel?” he asked, his tone turning heated. She could practically feel the frustration burning off him. “That your brother is investigating a fucking murder in my family? Just weave it in as we gabbed about our siblings. Oh, that’s so great that you’re so close with him. By the way, he asked me the other day if my mom happened to associate with anyone new at the time of the murder. Is that what I should have said?” But he didn’t give her time to answer. “We don’t even use the last names we had when we were growing up, Sophie. Everyone heard of us in this town. It was all over the news. Everyone fucking knew us. Our family story was dramatized on prime-time news magazines. Our mom was the cold-blooded husband-killer. And we were the kids left behind—Mom in prison, Dad in the ground, Royal Sinners gang gunman behind bars. We were the poor Paige-Prince kids from the shitty section of town, who everyone felt sorry for,” he said harshly, and she let out a surprised squeak.

She’d heard the story when she was finishing junior high. It was one of the biggest news stories in town at the time. It was pure prime-time scandal. It had even been covered by Dateline-type shows, reenacting it. “That’s you?”

He nodded. “Yes. That’s us.”

He’d lost so much. So incredibly much. A father. A mother. A normal childhood. Everything. Her need for self-protection took a backseat to compassion, and she tried once more. She wrapped her arms around him, and hugged him. “I am so sorry for what happened to your family, Ryan. I’m sorry for what happened to your dad, and to your mom, and to you and your brothers and your sister,” she said softly. He said nothing, but he let her hold him, even leaning into her. He sighed softly, and that sound, that vulnerable sound from this strong, sometimes standoffish man infiltrated her heart and soul. Somehow, in that brief exhalation, she felt him inching toward her.

Not physically. But emotionally. She wanted to be the one for him. She ran her hands through his hair, wishing she could erase the tragedy.

John’s footsteps echoed across the hardwood, breaking the moment. He cleared his throat. “Sophie,” he said, and she separated from Ryan. “Is everything okay?”

She nodded. “It’s fine.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

She shrugged. She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Everything that had felt so certain before John knocked on her door had been uprooted in seconds. “No. Yes. I don’t know,” she said helplessly.

He pointed his thumb at the door. “I’m going to go wait in the hall. Give you some privacy, but I’ll be nearby if you need me.”

After he left, Sophie looked at the man she’d been falling for. He had the same brown hair, the same blue eyes, the same strong build as an hour ago, but he wasn’t the same because she didn’t know how to see him the same way. “I feel like I barely know you. I don’t even know where you live.”

In a monotone, he said his address.

But it didn’t change anything. Knowing the numbers and the street name didn’t give her any greater insight.

Confusion reigned this Friday night. Maybe she was overreacting to this news. Or maybe she was under-reacting. She didn’t know what to make of this revelation. Was she supposed to be hurt? Or outraged? Feel sympathetic? Care for him?

She had no notion of what to do next.

This new wrinkle was so strange, and her chest was knotted up, her head fuzzy. “I like you, Ryan. I like you so much, and I am falling for you. And I understand it’s not easy to say what happened to your family. I get that, and I wish I could take away the horrors of what you’ve gone though. But aside from that, when I analyze what’s happening with you and me, the reality is this—I’ve been completely open. I told you at the diner about my marriage. I didn’t wait for you to uncover it. I put it all on the table. I told you about my parents, and my brother, and myself. I can’t help but wonder what else you didn’t share, or didn’t say, or didn’t want to deal with when I’ve tried to be forthright with you.”

“Look, Sophie. I don’t tell anyone. I don’t get close enough to tell anyone. But I knew I needed to tell you, and it’s not the kind of thing I wanted to tell you on the phone, so I was planning to tell you tonight. I was starting to at the table.” He waved his hand in the direction of the dining room.

Maybe he had been planning on opening up. But she had no way of knowing if he was being truthful now. She tried a new tactic. “Why was the case reopened?”

“I don’t know. He won’t tell me. I think he thinks there were others involved.”

His words sent her back to the night she left for the gala, and her conversation with John beforehand.

“Talked to some guy today who I’m sure knows something, but he won’t let on what it is.”

“What do you think he knows?”

“Something that would help me find the other guys I think were involved.”

John was her brother, her flesh and blood. He was the man who’d supported her and helped her build her business, who would take a bullet for her. He had a reason to suspect Ryan was hiding something, and she’d be a foolish woman to wave this off and carry on as if nothing had changed.

“I need you to believe me. I wanted to tell you,” he added, and she desperately wanted to trust in his words.

But she’d relied on her instincts before, in her marriage with Holden, and those instincts had been wrong.

Maybe she needed to use her head more. Not her heart. Not her body. “I don’t really know what to think. I want to believe you, but I need to sort this out. I’ve been letting my heart lead instead of my head, and my heart feels pretty foolish and stupid right now.” She walked over to the dining room table, picked up the peach pie, returned to her kitchen, and covered it in tinfoil. Then she handed it to him.

He shook his head. “I can’t take the pie.”

“I need you to. I made it for you. I need some space to think, and I can’t do it if I’m surrounded by this fruit I wanted to give you.”

She showed him to the door.