The Complete Truth Duet

by Martinez, Aly

  I missed Cora something fierce. And with her out there, hurting, it was a wonder I could function at all.

  But I’d done all I could for her.

  I’d cashed out a substantial portion of my retirement account to leave her that million and change, but where I was going, money in the bank didn’t matter. Though, if I was being honest, it had never truly mattered.

  It hadn’t saved Lisa.

  It hadn’t kept me from falling into the darkness after she’d died.

  But I hoped like hell it could save Cora.

  There was a good chance Drew was never going to speak to me again. Giving her the cash was always supposed to be the backup plan if anything truly happened to me. But when I’d gotten to the building that night, I’d peered up at the railing on the third floor, imagining her smile as she stared down at me the way she so often did when I got home from a run.

  Leaving her was going to destroy me in ways from which I’d never recover.

  But I couldn’t walk away without knowing she had everything I could possibly give her.

  However, that meant taking some things from her as well.

  That building. That fucking building. It had been her home for over a decade.

  But it had to go.

  I couldn’t risk that they would ever try to take her back there. Manuel had at least another five years on his sentence, but his empire would not still be standing when he walked out of the chain link gates.

  The biggest part of that legacy was his family name.

  So, one after the other, I choked the life out of his sons as well.

  In the previous four years, I’d done a lot of things in the name of avenging Lisa’s death.

  But that.

  Killing Dante and Marcos.

  That was for Cora.

  And I would never feel the first regret over it.

  So yeah, while I hated knowing that Cora was hurting, I was able to climb out of bed, put one foot in front of the other, and breathe through the pain of losing her all because I knew she was free.

  Drew was going to stay with her until she got settled somewhere new.

  I’d like to think he was doing it as a favor to me.

  I knew Drew though. He liked to play the hard-ass, but he was a good guy who cared about Cora more than he’d ever admit. He’d make sure she was taken care of.

  Even if I couldn’t.

  Savannah and I climbed into my car, my door slamming while hers softly clicked.

  “Are we gonna follow him?” she asked.

  I ground my teeth, hating like hell that she was involved in this clusterfuck. But the moment I’d let her climb into my car that night, I’d made her a part of this. I shouldn’t have picked her up. I should have called Drew, told him where she was, and let him handle it.

  But I’d promised Cora I’d get her back. Hell, I’d driven seven hours to Cleveland using the little details I’d gathered about Savannah over my two months with Cora to track her down.

  And seeing her standing on that corner, with bruises on her arms, clearly up to no good, I couldn’t wait.

  She needed help.

  And I was there.

  Well…Shane Pennington was there. I didn’t know who the fuck I was anymore.

  When she’d asked questions about Cora, I’d been forced to tell her the truth.

  Or at least part of it.

  I’d glossed over Lisa. Then told her that Marcos and Dante were dead, but I didn’t explain the how, i.e. me being responsible. This led us to the fire at the building, then the money I left behind, and finally the body Drew had purposely identified as my own.

  For being sixteen, she’d taken all of it surprisingly well. Her first question had been a shrieked, “Holy shit. You left her a million dollars?” Followed by, “Holy shit. Where’d you get a million dollars?” Followed by, “Holy shit. Can I have a million dollars?” But after she’d calmed down, her face had paled as she’d whispered, “The whole building is gone?” Followed by, “Were any of the girls hurt?” Followed by, “Cora thinks you’re dead?”

  Her heartbreaking concern was nothing compared to the hurricane swirling inside me, but I had only one answer. “Yeah. And no matter what happens, you can’t tell her I’m alive. She’ll become a target, Savannah. I left so she could finally have a life of her own, not get bogged down in someone else’s shit. After everything she’s done, I think we can both agree she deserves that much.”

  She nodded, I nodded, and then we rode the first three hours back to Chicago in silence, both of us lost in our own thoughts.

  The fourth hour was spent not in silence after she had what I could only explain as a vocal seizure when I snatched her phone mid-text and threw it out the window south of Ann Arbor. I told her I’d replace it. She glanced around the car, no doubt remembering the money I’d left Cora, and then demanded the latest and greatest iPhone. I laughed and told her she was funny.

  She’d fumed for a solid hour, but then she’d fallen asleep and slept for the last two.

  Those were my favorite of the trip because, for those two hours, it had been easy to forget how bad everything had gotten.

  Cora and River were safe with Drew.

  Savannah was safe with me.

  And for one more night, as the headlights illuminated that seemingly endless highway, I pretended I was still drowning and not already at the bottom of the ocean.

  Now, watching Savannah out of the corner of my eye as she slurped her coffee, I felt that same sense of contentment slithering through me. If only Cora had been there too.

  Cora.

  Cora.

  Cora.

  My mind’s favorite distraction.

  And torture.

  I sucked in a deep breath, holding it until my lungs ached. On an exhale, I answered, “No. We’re not following him.”

  “Why not? He’s so close.”

  I turned into traffic the opposite direction than Thomas had wandered off. “Because you’re with me. I don’t want you involved in this. I shouldn’t have brought you down here to get coffee today. Speaking of…” I snapped my finger and put my hand out palm up. “Change. I gave you a fifty.”

  “Oh, come on! It’s, like, thirty bucks. What if I need something? I don’t even have money to catch a cab back to your apartment.”

  “A cab?” I flashed her a glare. “I’m not sure if you realize this, but the thing you’re sitting in right now, it’s more than just a beautiful piece of German machinery. It’s actually a car too.”

  My gaze was aimed at the road, but I didn’t have to see her to know she was rolling her eyes.

  “I mean, if we’re not together, Penn. You still haven’t replaced my phone.” She pouted her bottom lip and batted her painted-black lashes at me. “I’d be all alone out there with no way to get back to you, Papa.”

  “You call me Papa again and I’m gonna ground you for the rest of your life.”

  She laughed, throwing her head back against the seat. “Daddy? Is that any better?”

  “God. No.”

  “Okay, cool. You’re right. We’ll keep it simple and stick with dad.”

  I slowed at a stoplight and angled to look at her. Her wild, red hair was up in one of those messy piles on the top of her head that River so often sported. But do not be mistaken; it had taken her at least twenty minutes in front of the mirror to get that thing messy without being too messy.

  I’d forgotten what it was like to live with a woman. Cora was as low maintenance as it got. If her blond curls weren’t cascading down her back, they were pulled back in a rubber band she permanently wore around her wrist. This styling action was usually performed while she was walking, talking, or, on occasion, riding my…

  Shit. I had to stop thinking about her.

  Savannah. That’s what I needed to focus on.

  The day after we’d gotten home from Cleveland, I’d taken her shopping. What this really meant is I’d taken her to the mall where we’d argued over clothes, she’d e
nded up storming out, and I’d ultimately thrown a pile of what I’d deemed to be age-appropriate attire—even though she’d deemed it all “hideous”—beside the cash register along with my credit card. She’d only started speaking to me again when I’d handed her my card and agreed to stand outside as she hit Victoria’s Secret. I didn’t give a fuck what she wore under her clothes as long as they weren’t visible.

  “How about we stick with you calling me Penn, and then you actually give me back my change? We agreed no money, no phone, no nothing until we get you into some kind of drug program.”

  “No. You agreed to that.” She dug into the pocket of her entirely-too-short cut-off jeans—the severed legs more than likely sitting on the floor in my guest bedroom—and slapped a wadded ball of cash and coins onto my hand. “I told you I don’t need a program. I’ve been clean for months.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Truth?”

  Her lips thinned before she turned away from me to peer out the window, muttering, “Not including the shit Dante gave me.”

  “I’m not talking about that. Once you got out of the hospital, you haven’t touched anything. No weed. No coke. No nothing. Truth, Savannah?” The light turned green and I dumped the cash into a cup holder before easing on the gas.

  “You don’t know what it’s like out there,” she whispered.

  I forced my hands to stay on the steering wheel. It didn’t feel right to touch her, not when she was trusting me enough to drop her guard. It was rare she showed any kind of vulnerability, and I personally hadn’t seen any since the day she’d flipped out on Cora for not sleeping with me yet.

  Annnnd we were back to Cora.

  Shit. I had to focus.

  “No,” I replied. “I don’t know what it’s like. And I’m not claiming I do. But I do know how incredible you are when you’re clean. You’re smart, Savannah. And funny. And bright. And beautiful in ways that have nothing to do with your clothes or makeup. But none of that matters if you’re letting drugs ruin the kind of perfect you already are. You’ve dealt with some shit, kid. I do not fault you one bit for anything you’ve done in the past. But, now, it’s time to change. And I told you I’d help with that, and I don’t particularly care if you agreed or not. Because I see something in you, whether you see it in yourself or not.”

  Her face got tight, but as I divided my attention between her and the road, I saw the tears sliding down her cheeks.

  She hurried to dry them—just like someone else I knew. And couldn’t stop thinking about.

  “Jeez. What is this, an after school special?”

  I smiled. “What do you know about after school specials? Isn’t that, like, thirty years before your time?”

  “Public school education, Penn. Kids twenty years from now will still be watching those things in health class.”

  I chuckled, and then we both fell quiet again. I’d spent so much of the last four years praying for the silence and hoping people would leave me alone. But right then, with no clue as to what was going through her head, it bothered me.

  “You know I’m only trying to help, right?”

  “Yeah, I know,” she told the window.

  The trip back to my apartment was a short one. The first time we’d pulled into the underground parking garage, Savannah had had another vocal seizure, exclaiming, “Holy shit! You live here?” This time, though, she didn’t say anything as we rode the elevator up to my three-bedroom, four-thousand-square-foot, sixth-floor apartment.

  It was overkill. Completely and totally. I’d had no reason to buy a place that big, or nice, or permanent. I didn’t need it. Deep down, I really just wanted to go back to that shitty building and crawl into Cora’s bed again. Maybe lie there for the rest of my life, alternating between playing Truth or Lie tit-for-tat, listening to her laugh, and making love to her.

  Yet, when I’d seen pictures of that apartment online, all I could see was Cora.

  Her bare feet padding against the dark wood floor—not a speck of carpet anywhere in sight—as she meandered from the bedroom wearing nothing but one of my button-downs.

  Her sleepy smile as she navigated around the large marble island to get to me.

  Her arms wrapping around my hips and her face nuzzling against my chest, making me feel more corporeal than I had in my entire life.

  Her soft lips brushing mine when she pressed up onto her toes for an all-too-brief kiss before snagging the coffee cup from my hand.

  Her sigh as she tipped it back like the caffeine had touched her soul.

  Peaceful. Content. Blissed out beyond all explanation.

  Cora would never even see that apartment, but with that scenario playing in my head as I’d scrolled through pictures, I’d cleared out another hefty portion of my retirement and bought it—fully furnished—on the spot.

  And it was that exact scene that assaulted me when Savannah and I walked inside, the beeping of the security alarm acting as our welcoming committee.

  Only, like a rainstorm of razorblades, Cora was nowhere to be found.

  And the constant reminder that she never would be was suffocating.

  Savannah stepped out of her tall wedges in the middle of the foyer, never breaking her gait as she kept walking.

  “Um, hello. Shoes,” I scolded, tapping in a series of numbers into the security panel.

  I listened for her huff, maybe an exaggerated groan. She didn’t even acknowledge that I’d spoken.

  “Hey!” I called as she disappeared down the hall.

  Christ. Teenage girls were a breed of their own.

  Kicking her shoes out of the way, I continued into the expansive living room and promptly collapsed onto the chocolate leather sofa. It was not even noon, but I felt like it was midnight. Not surprisingly, I hadn’t been sleeping well. My mind was a jumbled mess of guilt, resentment, and revenge.

  But I had shit to do. I couldn’t lie there all day and lose myself the way I so desperately wanted.

  Sucking in, I angled up only to stop when Savannah reappeared with a bowl of water and a white grocery sack dangling from her fingers. She’d changed into pink-polka-dot pajama pants and a matching oversized T-shirt I’d picked out for her. Just the day before, she’d told me that they belonged on a six-year-old and threatened to burn them.

  “Sit,” she ordered, perching on the edge of the coffee table. She set the bowl beside her and started tearing open gauze, prepping it with antibiotic cream.

  In the last ten minutes, she’d cried, cracked a joke, and ignored me.

  She’d never apologize. But this, wearing clothes she hated while offering to take care of the wound on my leg, was her olive branch.

  I still needed to figure out how to get her a new birth certificate so I could check her into a treatment program. I’d highly underestimated the documentation needed to get a minor medical help. Hell, I had no idea how Cora had registered her in school. According to my research online, I needed everything including a vial of blood and a sacrificial goat to get her enrolled again.

  But all of that shit could wait one more day.

  And for that reason alone, I folded up the leg of my jeans and propped my boot on the table beside her.

  Cora

  “No,” I snapped.

  “What do you mean no? You gave five grand to Jennifer. And I get two hundred bucks?” Meredith asked, thoroughly insulted.

  “You got two hundred bucks and a trip to rehab,” I corrected. “When you finish there and stay clean for another thirty days of outpatient, I’ll pay for a plane ticket for you to go to your sister’s house in Virginia. And when you get a job that actually requires you to pay taxes and stay clean for another thirty days, I’ll pay your first and last months’ rent on an apartment of your own.”

  “That’s not fair!” she shouted, looking around the room for someone to back her up.

  Jennifer was not surprisingly silent. Tears were still streaming down her cheeks after hearing the news that I—or, really, Penn—was going to pay for h
er first year of college, and I’d given her five grand to buy a car and a wardrobe with slightly more fabric.

  “Meredith, I’m gonna tell you this one more time and then, if you keep this shit up, you are walking out of here with nothing. I am not here to fund your life. I am here to make sure you live long enough to actually have one. So take the damn money. Go buy a toothbrush and some body wash, and I’ll text you the details on the rehab program I find for you. It’s your choice if you want to show up or not. But if you don’t, then this will be the last money you ever get off me. Do you understand?”

  She was so pissed that her face was turning red.

  I couldn’t have cared less.

  Penn had died to get them that money. If they didn’t want it, I’d give it to someone who did. Cut and dry. End of story.

  I waved the two hundred bucks in her direction. “Last chance.”

  “This is bullshit,” she muttered, but she plucked the money from between my fingers and stomped out.

  I wasn’t sure if she’d take me up on my rehab offer, but she needed it. Desperately. She’d been using drugs and alcohol to numb the pain for too long.

  And with absolute agony burning my soul, I understood her more than ever. But I didn’t have the ability to fall into the pits of despair like so many of the girls had over the years.

  I had to keep going.

  Keep moving.

  Keep…living.

  Even when I couldn’t breathe.

  One in. One out.

  “Thanks, Cora,” Jennifer said softly before giving me a hug.

  “No problem. Get those applications in as soon as possible, and let me know where you get accepted.”

  She nodded, more tears falling from her chin.

  “And stop crying. You deserve this. You’re smart, Jenn. Just keep your head up, and I know you’ll kick some major college ass.”

  “I promise. I will.”

  “Now, get out of here. You have some shopping to do.”