Yup – rock bottom.
But Piper was more important, so I vowed to remain among the living. And my mother never came to her senses. And I never killed her. But I dreamed about her dying every day after that. It only took six more years for my dream to come true.
I pull the strings of my hoodie tight so my face is pretty much hidden under the ball cap secured underneath it. I have no idea what I’ll do if his wife answers. Will I tell her? Will I push her aside and hope that he’s home?
Contemplating my options, I realize minutes go by and no one is answering the door. I’m not sure it’s relief or frustration I feel. On a whim, I try the knob and my heart pounds into my chest wall when the knob turns and the door opens. I stand staring through the half-open door. Is this fate? Should I go in? I could wait for him. I could trash the place.
People pass on the street in front of the townhouse and I instinctively duck inside the front door and close it. There, I did it. I’m in.
Is it still considered breaking and entering if the door was unlocked?
I go to wipe my prints off the door handle but surmise it doesn’t really matter since no one has ever taken my fingerprints before.
I wonder what the P.I. would say about this. Hell, he probably does this on a daily basis for all I know.
I look around the foyer and the first thing I see is a wedding photo starring none other than Tony Pellman. My stomach turns seeing him again. He’s different. Not as skinny and strung-out looking. He looks healthy. Happy. But the way his bride is looking at him—I doubt she’d ever look at him like that again if she knew what he’d done six years ago.
As I stroll through the lower rooms of the home, I come across a study that boasts a wall lined with awards. ‘Best Screenplay’ is what’s engraved into most of the various plaques. So he’s done well for himself. Where’s the karma in that?
I search his desk drawers for something to debase his precious awards with. In the bottom drawer, under a pile of file folders, I come across a small handgun. It looks like it’s gone untouched for some time based on the amount of crap on top of it.
I pick it up and turn it over in my hand, studying it while musing over my choices. I’ve never held a gun before. It’s heavier than it looks. I have no idea if it’s even loaded. Without much thought, I raise it up and aim it at one of the plaques—a shiny platinum one. I put my finger on the trigger and dare myself to squeeze it. And damn it if I don’t hear Piper Mitchell in my head telling me it’ll make too much noise—draw unwanted attention. I push her out of my head. I don’t want a voice of reason. I want to be unreasonable.
But my best friend is right, so I tuck the gun into the pocket of my hoodie and instead, I take the plaque off the wall and raise it above my head, intending to smash it on the hardwood floor, shattering it into tiny little shards that I’d like to use to stab the man in his tiny little heart.
Then something on the wall behind his desk catches my attention. In the most prominent spot on the wall, highlighted by a spotlight that sets it apart from everything else, is a large frame that holds about a dozen key tags of various colors. In the center of the key tags is a certificate. I step forward and read it.
Anthony Pellman
5 years clean and sober
Nov. 15th, 2015
That date. Oh, God. It’s exactly five years and two days after he molested me.
I hear a noise and my heart rises into my throat. Female laughter echoes down the hallway as footsteps bound through the front door.
The laughter stops. “Baby, you really shouldn’t leave the door unlocked,” the woman says.
“We were just next door for five minutes,” says a hauntingly familiar voice.
“Tony,” she pouts.
“Okay,” he says. “You’re right. I’m really sorry.”
Tiny hairs on my neck rise as that voice and those words take me back to my bedroom in Maple Creek. I’m really sorry, he said over and over, even before he was done with me. It was like his body and his brain were somehow disconnected.
“Thanks, baby,” the woman says. “I love you more than the moon.”
“And more than all the stars in the sky,” he replies.
Their footsteps come closer.
What should I do? Different scenarios hastily shuffle through my head when I see a second door at the rear of the study. I step through it, away from their footsteps and into a kitchen. I spot a door to the outside and hope I can make it there before they discover me.
My sweaty hands slip on the handle of the sliding door, but I get it opened enough for me to sneak through unnoticed and I quietly close it behind me.
Shit. I’m on a balcony with no steps to the yard below.
I try to calculate the distance to the ground. Five feet? Ten? It doesn’t look all that far, but then again, it might not matter either way. It’s broad daylight and they could be in the kitchen by now, meaning I could be two seconds away from being thrown in jail.
I swing my legs over the wooden railing and jump.
Ouch! Son of a bitch, I scream in my head when my leg twists in a direction it shouldn’t be twisting when it meets the hard, frozen grass.
I look back up at the deck. Ten—definitely ten feet.
I find a gate that leads to the alley behind the row of homes and limp through it. I remove the ball cap and lower my hood, trying to blend in with the mid-day pedestrians and not stick out like a thug on the prowl.
I stop walking when it occurs to me I have no idea what I did with the award I was holding when they came home. Did I put it back on the wall? Did I put it on the desk? Leave it on the kitchen countertop maybe?
Oh, my God. The desk. I pat my hoodie pocket, feeling the hard outline of the handgun I’ve now stolen from a man who once raped me.
Chapter Sixteen
Giving my sore ankle a rest, I let my arms do most of the work in the water tonight. I arrived at the gym earlier than usual, needing extra time to work out my frustration.
I wish I would have had a shift at the restaurant today. Maybe then I wouldn’t have sat in my apartment brooding over what was and what could have been.
When I got home, I put the gun on my coffee table and stared at the cold hard metal for what seemed like hours. I had a deadly weapon in my pocket. One I forgot was there when the door opened and the voices startled me. Had I remembered it was in my possession, would I have used it? Could I have used it?
Maybe I should just leave town. Forget about this obsession with revenge. Throw away the diary and bury my past with my mother.
It would be easy enough to do now that the executor papers have come through. I could just put the apartment up for sale and live off credit cards until the insurance money and inheritance get sorted out.
Making my lap turn, I catch a glimpse of Ethan walking towards the pool. And all at once, my head, my heart and my body bombard me with reasons to stay. Reasons like his strong arms pressing me into the side of the pool. And his tongue, so soft yet demanding when it explores my mouth. And his fingers—holy hell what they can to do me with just the slightest touch.
But he doesn’t do relationships.
I could just become my old self. The one who couldn’t give a shit about things like hearts and flowers and stomach butterflies and voices that curl my toes. The one who could fuck for the simple sake of fucking. The one who could keep feeling out of it as I trained myself to do from such an early age.
I could be that person again. Couldn’t I?
I think of something Jan Mitchell told me and Piper when we were young. She said you can’t help who you fall in love with. That your heart makes decisions your head may not agree with, and sometimes you need to be smart enough to figure out which of them is right.
I spy three pairs of legs at my turnaround and look up to see Mason, Griffin and Gavin staring down at me.
For a split second, I fear they are here to kick me out unless I start paying to use the gym. Then I think better of it. After al
l, these are the guys who furnished my apartment when I had nothing. The guys who over the past month have accepted me as a third-wheel, a party crasher, and a meal poacher. The guys who would do anything for the women they love.
My eyes move from them over to Ethan, watching him as he swims through the water with the flawless form of an Olympic freestyle swimmer. And for the very first time, I’m jealous of the relationships my adoptive sisters have with these men. For a moment, I wonder why Ethan can’t be more like them. Why can’t he be the one who flies across an ocean for me? Who sings a song to me in front of friends and family? Who picks up his life and moves three thousand miles away from everything he knows just to be with me?
I quiet the voices in my head that want everything they can’t have. I tell myself stuff like that doesn’t happen to girls like me. I paste on a smile and pretend it doesn’t hurt to look up at them.
“What’s up guys?” I ask, holding onto the ledge by their feet.
“Who’s your friend?” Mason asks, raising his chin in Ethan’s direction.
I stare at him, wondering what this is all about. Then I think maybe one of the girls said something after our margarita night. “You’re the owners,” I say defensively. “Shouldn’t you know him already?”
The three of them give each other a look. It’s the same look I see on Baylor and Skylar’s faces when they big-sister me.
“Everything okay over here?” A wave of water laps at my back as Ethan’s protective words penetrate my ears.
He swims up next to me, eyeing the three men towering over us.
“You’re a private investigator, right?” Griffin asks him.
“That’s right,” he replies, holding out his hand in greeting. “Ethan Stone.”
“Griffin Pearce.” He leans down to shake Ethan’s wet hand. “And this is Gavin McBride and Mason Lawrence. We’re the owners of this establishment.”
Ethan shakes hands with the other two. “We met before,” he says to Gavin. “When I used to run on the track before my knees went bad. I didn’t know you were an owner.”
“I remember.” Gavin nods. “And I wasn’t an owner back then.”
“Oh, well nice to meet you again,” Ethan says. “Is there something we can do for you?”
The three men standing share that big-brother look again. Then they look down at me. And then at Ethan.
“As a P.I. surely you are aware we have cameras around the gym,” Griffin says, motioning to a black opaque dome in the ceiling in a corner of the pool room.
There is a moment of calm, quiet contemplation before Ethan and I fully comprehend what Griffin is telling us.
I quickly run through that night in my head, surmising they wouldn’t have seen more than the back of my head and maybe Ethan’s elated face when he came all over the water between us.
I smile at the thought of being caught. And then I remember one of Ethan’s silly rules about PDA. I turn to him. “There goes number seven.”
He raises his brows at me, questioning me with his eyes.
“Rule number seven, right?”
He looks surprised.
I tap a finger to my temple. “Not as dumb as you thought, huh?”
He looks annoyed with me. “I never said you were dumb. Besides,” —he touches my red hair, that when wet, extends to my lower back— “you don’t exactly fit the bill.”
“Are you saying only blondes are dumb?”
Well, he did sort of walk right into that one.
“Uh, no. Well, except for Gretchen. She’s dumb,” he jokes and I laugh with him.
Someone clears their throat and Ethan and I look up, having all but forgotten we had company.
“Yeah, about that,” Ethan says, nodding at the camera. “Any chance you can conveniently lose that footage?”
I elbow him. “Or at least give it to us,” I tease them with a wink.
I look at the stern expression on their faces and give them my best pouty face. “Oh, come on. That was funny.”
Ethan climbs out of the pool and stands next to them. I get it. As a guy, he more than likely felt small down here with them towering over us. But damn . . . the amount of testosterone I see before me is astounding. The collective strength of these four men standing here could power a small town.
It’s now when I realize just how big Ethan really is. I mean, Mason is a professional football player. The man literally works out for a living. But Ethan is just about as tall and almost as broad as he is. And although I’ve yet to see Mason without a shirt on, I’d bet this week’s tips that Ethan’s fine physique could give him a run for his money.
“We could probably lose the footage,” Gavin says to Ethan. “How about you join us for poker night and we’ll let you take care of it yourself. We play every Monday night in the gym office.”
“You want me to join your poker game?” Ethan asks, like they just invited him to become a part of some super-secret man club.
“Charlie is like a sister to Piper, Skylar and Baylor,” Mason explains to him. “That makes her our sister-in-law. And we protect our family. Anyone in a relationship with her needs to understand that. Well, that and we just lost our fourth player.”
Ethan takes a step back as if Mason’s words had physically pushed him off balance. “We’re not in a relationship,” he says, his eyes flitting over to me for a brief second. “But I’ll be happy to take your money at poker.”
I berate myself when I realize my heart just sank upon hearing that declaration. Again. This is nothing new, Charlie.
I shake it off and put my big-girl panties on. “I’ll just leave you boys to it then.” I swim to the other side of the pool and climb out to get my towel.
Faster than I can dry off, Ethan is in front of me again. “Is your leg injured?”
I look down at my slightly swollen ankle and then back up at his concerned eyes. I didn’t think any of them were watching me get out of the pool with their looming poker game and all.
“It’s no big deal. I went for a run earlier and twisted it.” I shrug. “I guess I should just stick to swimming.”
“You coming?” Griffin shouts from across the pool.
Ethan holds up his hand with outstretched fingers, never breaking eye contact with me. “Give me five to shower and change,” he yells back.
“You were limping, Charlie. Maybe you should see a doctor.”
“I’m fine. I’ll go home and ice it. It’s no big deal. Really.”
He holds my stare. He’s searching for the truth behind my eyes. I can see the questions. Did I really injure it running? Is it really fine? But I’m very good at hiding the truth. Just ask Jan Mitchell. Or the ten police officers who came to my childhood home over the years. Or any man who ever asked if it was ‘good for me, too.’
I walk towards the locker room, trying my best not to limp even though it hurts like hell. “Go,” I tell him. “Have fun at poker night.”
“I’ll try,” he says behind me, walking away.
I spin around and follow him. I should tell him he doesn’t have to play along with their little game of luring him to poker night. He doesn’t have to make nice with them. After all, like he said, we’re not in a relationship.
But before I reach him, he runs a hand down the back of his head, grabbing his neck as he mumbles, “But it won’t be the same as being with you.”
I freeze. And he enters the men’s locker room without realizing what I just heard.
Yeah, like I said—messing with my head.
Chapter Seventeen
I was dying to hear how poker night went, but when I asked the guys, all I got out of them was that they invited him back because they liked taking his money. And apparently poker night is akin to fight club, because none of the girls could extract information either.
And my only contact with Ethan this week was the texts he sent me telling me he’d been called out of town on a case and wouldn’t be back until Friday, so would I mind keeping Mrs. B company at the pool. He
also asked about my ankle.
Now, I know I’m not an expert on relationships, but him texting me twice about personal stuff—does that not constitute one? Maybe he’s just considerate that way and would have texted anyone who he swims with on a regular basis.
I wonder if he would text Gretchen to ask about her swollen ankle.
By the time Friday rolls around, I find myself missing him way more than I’d like to admit.
I’ve tried to become more attentive to other men. I’ve flirted with them. Engaged in witty banter. I even went so far as to give one of them my telephone number. But when he called me, all I felt was disappointment that it wasn’t a certain private investigator.
“Charlie, someone is asking for you at table eight,” Mindy tells me at the drink station.
“Thanks,” I say, whirling around, happy to have a distraction from my thoughts. That is until I see who the occupant of table eight is.
Every bad thing I ever thought about this man comes rushing back in one large wave that almost knocks me on my ass. I spin around and duck into the kitchen, sinking against the wall as I hunch over and support myself with my hands on my knees. I try to keep myself from hyperventilating. I take deep, deliberate breaths as flashbacks from the past play out in my mind.
“Charlie, what’s wrong?” Skylar asks, running over to me. “Are you okay?”
I can’t yet speak so I shake my head from side to side.
She rubs my back in long, soothing strokes until my breathing settles enough for me to get out a few words. “Dad. Table eight.”
She gasps. She knows good and well how wrecked I was when my father left me at the age of twelve. I think she was the one who even offered to share her father with me. It was then that I started spending more and more time with the Mitchells. My dad—who was the only parent who loved me, cared for me, and made sure I was fed and clothed—completely abandoned me without a word. Without so much as a goodbye.
The Stone Brothers: A Complete Romance Series (3-Book Box Set) Page 10