Lie to Me

by McAdams, Molly

  “Got a girl?”

  Flashes of wrath-filled glares and hesitant, earth-shattering kisses blasted through my mind. “Uh, no . . . I don’t. That’s why I’m here though.”

  I could feel his surprise from across the table, but he didn’t ask.

  “There’ve been girls, but there hasn’t been anyone who’s caught my eye since Sadie until a few weeks ago. And she hated me on sight.”

  My dad laughed, and I shot a cold look his way in response.

  “This is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. She looked at me like she hated me for even breathing, and I hadn’t even met her. She was new in town, she didn’t know me, so it didn’t make sense. Skip forward a few, mostly hostile meetings, and she sees me in uniform for the first time.” I curled my hand into a fist as I remembered that day on my porch. “Never seen that kind of hatred in someone.”

  “Shit,” Dad said softly. “Why did she catch your eye again?”

  I laughed sadly. “Well, she’s fucking gorgeous, but she’s the exact opposite of my type, so I have no idea. But there was always something there, something on her end that wouldn’t let me leave it alone. Almost as if she was crushed that I was this person she hated. So I kept at it, slowly and cautiously because she could turn like that.” I snapped my fingers. “But things were changing between us. She was changing. She was opening up, she was beginning to trust me, she was falling as hard as I did. It was . . . I don’t know. We were crawling, but I was fine with that because she clearly needs to crawl. Then yesterday . . . I don’t even know what happened. It all went to shit.”

  “You push her too fast?”

  I breathed out something that edged on hysterical. “I don’t know. The first time I kissed her was after a couple weeks—I told her I was going to while also telling her I wouldn’t if she didn’t want me to. And it’s been steadily going from there. I always let her know what I’m gonna do because if I reach out to touch her when she’s not expecting it, she goes on the defensive. She won’t talk about it, but I’m positive she was sexually abused at some point—and I think it was recent. But then the way she reacts is like she grew up protecting herself, you know?”

  Dad gave a hard nod.

  “I just don’t know from what. But from the little I’ve heard, her mom dragged her from place to place to place, never settling down. I don’t know if they were ever homeless, but I have a feeling her mom put her in a lot of dangerous situations. Like, the type of shit you saw undercover.”

  “Might be why she hates cops,” he said thoughtfully. “If she was in those situations, around those people, cops are the enemy. Growing up like that . . .”

  “Yeah.” I raked a hand through my hair and released a heavy sigh. “But now? She looks like she eats guys like me for breakfast. She can be fucking terrifying if she wants to be,” I admitted, and my dad breathed a knowing laugh. “But when she lets go of that shield, everything about her is soft and gentle and fragile. She’s hesitant when it comes to any kind of physical contact and she’s . . .” I shrugged, trying to think of a way to explain Emma. “I don’t know, everything about her is just addicting.”

  “So, what happened yesterday?”

  My head shook as I thought back to Lala’s kitchen. “Fuck if I know. I thought about it the entire drive here. I walked in on her raging about me to her grandma—saying she wanted nothing to do with me and didn’t want me anywhere near her. When she realized I was there, she just looked at me with more contempt than ever while trying not to cry. Said, ‘You disgust me,’ and left.”

  “Jesus,” Dad mumbled.

  “The only thing I’ve been able to come up with is that morning. Early,” I added. “I work nights, but she’s gone nearly the entire day. So, we’ve spent a few hours together the last few mornings before she leaves for work. It, uh . . .” I swallowed uncomfortably. “She’s been getting more comfortable with kissing me. Not that she was bad because, Jesus . . .” I forced out a quick breath. “But even with kissing, I could tell that she wanted to and was terrified to at the same time, but she was opening up and trusting me more and more each time. And I would never do anything she didn’t want to, I would never do that to any woman, but I still know better than to take things any further with Emma without letting her know what I’m doing.”

  “Because you’re crawling,” Dad said knowingly.

  “Right, but in that moment . . .”

  “You’re caught up,” he supplied when I didn’t continue.

  “Right,” I said, the word weighted and full of regret. “I had my hands under her shirt, kinda lifting it, and she turned to absolute stone before she started shaking. Crying and saying, ‘I can’t,’ over and over again like she had no idea she was even talking or that I was there with her.”

  Dad didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.

  I explained everything that happened after, hoping my dad could make sense of what I couldn’t. From our confessions to falling asleep to Rowe showing up and Emma shutting down before I left. “Then when I came back that night . . .” I shrugged.

  “So, talk to her,” Dad said easily, as if it were ever that simple with Emma.

  My head shook widely. “I have tried so many times. I’ve gone back to her and I’ve stopped her when she tried pushing me away. But this was different. This wasn’t because she hates cops or men. This was a you-and-I-are-done-forever kind of thing.”

  “Then let it go if she isn’t worth it.”

  My body crumpled because Emma was worth it. She was worth everything.

  “I think I fell in love with her the first time she told me off,” I admitted softly.

  After a moment, Dad sucked in a deep breath and sat forward to lean against the table. “I shouldn’t have said what I did about Sadie,” he began softly. “I should have supported you, but I could see what she did to you, and there was something about her that had me worried you would get trapped in that.”

  I lifted my hands slightly off the table before letting them smack down. “I clearly didn’t.”

  “Reed, she wouldn’t give you the time of day until you started training to be a SEAL. Then she was all about you and mostly about what you were. She brought it up every other sentence—she wouldn’t even say your name, just called you her SEAL. It was weird. Not to mention, she moved out there to be near you as soon as the two of you started dating, and when we did see you, she was always with you. Which is fine, but she never left your side. She literally clung to you and wouldn’t let you have a conversation without her. And things were always perfect in a way that seemed wrong. She was overly nice in a way that screamed fake, especially since we’d all known what she was like before you guys even started dating.”

  Amusement wove through my next breath because I’d never noticed before how much Courtney reminded me of Sadie.

  Fake? Yeah, Dad wasn’t wrong. Once Sadie and I had gotten together, she’d been overly nice to me, to my friends, to everyone.

  I just hadn’t noticed it until long after she’d handed me the ring I’d given her.

  “Do you remember what I told you the day you and Sadie got engaged?” Dad asked.

  “‘Why?’” I recalled, annoyance dripping from the word. “‘She isn’t the one for you.’”

  “I said you’d know when you met the one,” he added when he realized I was finished. “That she’d hate you on sight. Drive you insane and trip up your heart. Make you want to punch things one minute and pull her into your arms the next.”

  I stilled as the memory tugged at my mind. As I realized what he was saying.

  “Sadie wasn’t any of those things,” he said before admitting, “I could’ve handled it better though.”

  “You think?”

  “Your mom didn’t talk to me for two days. She was so sure you were gonna go elope without telling anyone because of me.”

  I just shook my head.

  Sadie had brought up the idea more times than I could remember, but I’d never considered it
. I wouldn’t have considered anything without my family there.

  One of the reasons I’d felt so betrayed by my sisters when I’d come home.

  “This girl,” he continued, “it’s hard to see what it is about her that draws you in from what you’ve told me. But that says everything about why she’s it for you. Says everything about why you’re here and why you’re so wrecked by a girl you’re not even dating.”

  I gave him a blank look. “That doesn’t make sense. You realize that, right?”

  “Sadie was faking being perfect so that nothing would ever appear wrong with her or with your relationship, and everything about that was wrong. We could all see it, even if you couldn’t at the time. But this girl? Everything is set against you two, you’re wrong for each other in so many ways, but you’re still fighting for her because a connection like that deserves to be fought for.”

  “Yeah, Dad, I think you missed the part where she doesn’t want me in her life anymore.”

  “You’ve been talking to me for the first time in over three years, I haven’t missed anything.” As if he hadn’t just taken a shot straight to my heart, he rubbed at his jaw and asked, “What happened between yesterday morning and last night?”

  “Nothing, I hadn’t even talked to her. She went to work. I went home and crashed and then started my next shift.” I released a slow exhale and mumbled, “It wasn’t even twelve hours, and I was asleep for most of it.”

  He looked at me solemnly and said, “I’ve been around a lot of different people in my career—women with trust issues and hatred built so deep inside them are no strangers to me. I’ve only ever needed to gain a sliver of trust to either help them or gain information, but I still know that it is a drawn-out process. It’s half a step forward and two steps back. If this girl is really as guarded as you say, and you’d gotten to a point where she was opening up and trusting you, then she wouldn’t have jumped back ten steps last night unless something happened.”

  I folded my arms over my chest and shrugged. “Other than what I told you, nothing happened.”

  “Then something happened to her.”

  My mind raced as I tried to think of anything that could’ve happened, but I came up with nothing.

  Because it had been me she had been yelling about to Lala. Me she had been disgusted with. And I couldn’t figure out what the hell I’d done.

  “You gonna stick around, or are you headed back to fight for her again?”

  “Who said I was going to?”

  He huffed as he lifted his mug to take a long sip. “Your expression. The way you talk about her. You showing up here at all.”

  I didn’t tell him he was right.

  Every part of me was wondering why I wasn’t in Colby trying to do exactly that. But there was still that small part that was hung up on the way it had all seemed so personal and final.

  I cleared my throat and asked, “Kira really have twins?”

  He dipped his head in a nod. “Almost three months ago.”

  “Then I’m gonna stick around for a couple days.”

  “Would you have stayed if she hadn’t?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly.

  Things had ended on such bad terms between us all. After I’d left, it’d been strained for months before I’d stopped talking to them altogether. I still couldn’t figure out why I’d driven here at all. Why I’d even sat at the damn table when things had immediately escalated, as they always did between us.

  My dad gave a grunt as if he’d been expecting my answer, then stood from the table and grabbed his mug. After a step away, he said, “I pushed you to do something else because I never wanted you to glimpse the shit I lived through or the danger I put your mom and the three of you in. But I would’ve never stopped you. If you’d gone to the academy and applied here, I would’ve been just as proud of you as I’ve always been.”

  A flicker of doubt wove through me and faded when he continued.

  “You were always more than enough, Reed. You always exceeded every expectation I had of you. I pushed you harder than the girls because I knew what it felt like to lose my entire world, and I never wanted you to experience that. I wanted you to have every tool to prevent that. I gave the girls what they needed to stay alive. I was giving you what you needed to protect your future family from the unimaginable.”

  I slanted my head in his direction when he faced me again.

  Jaw tight.

  Hands firmly gripping my mug.

  Trying like hell to see things from his side when all I could remember was the constant training.

  I knew how to escape cuffs and zip ties and the trunks of different types of cars as well as hotwiring them. I knew how to look at my surroundings and make almost anything into a weapon and use it, all because of the man standing in front of me.

  And that was all by the time I was five . . . those were all things the girls knew too.

  There had been so much more for me.

  “When you came home . . .” He blew out a harsh breath and gave me a helpless look. “All we knew was that you hadn’t come back for the girls, that you hadn’t shown or said anything at all. You and I could’ve figured out why that happened then rather than waiting three years, but when one of us gets mad, the other follows. It’s how we’ve always been.”

  “We’re too alike,” I murmured.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” The corner of his mouth tipped up in a smirk, but it quickly fell. “You’re right though, we are. It’s why I shoved you toward the door that day and told you to go for a walk. I knew exactly what you were going to do. I knew you were about to lose your shit and do something that would end up hurting Kira in the process.”

  I huffed. “I was gonna do what you should’ve done the second he showed back up.”

  “Her husband . . .” he said slowly, a little bit uncertainly, and then grimaced, “you’re not all that different from him.”

  “I fucking doubt that.”

  He listed his head and said, “When Kennedy introduced us to him after they were already married, I didn’t know how to be mad because I was devastated for her.”

  Confusion slowly wound through me.

  “Mason and I had just met him that afternoon at the department, and we’d told him to cut ties with any relationships and friendships.”

  “He was going undercover,” I said under my breath as the realization hit me like a slug to the chest.

  Dad nodded. “I couldn’t tell Kennedy anything or even let on that I knew him. When he left to go undercover, it was hard to be mad at him when I knew the truth. When he got out of that division years later, he came back looking for her and fell for Kira—Kennedy was already dating the guy she’s married to. I thought the whole thing was fucked up at first, but the girls are clearly with who they’re meant to be with.”

  “He still a cop?”

  He made a confirming sound in his throat. “Good one. But he isn’t you.” He headed into the kitchen, draining his mug as he went, then called out, “Let’s go. Hope you don’t like the shirt you’re wearing.”

  “Where are we—wait, what?” I glanced at my shirt. “Why?”

  He gave me a pointed look. “It’s about to get covered in spit-up and your mom and sister’s tears.” A wry smile crossed his face. “Welcome home.”

  Everything in me ached, my heart most of all. Everything groaned in protest when I attempted to move. I couldn’t remember ever being more tired in my life. But I was happy despite it all. I had all this excited energy that made me want to keep going.

  Made me want to do that one last thing every day.

  Then again, I was sure if I stopped for even a minute, I would fall apart because there was a hole in my life in the shape of Reed Ryan. But, just two and a half weeks after being approved for the loan, the store looked brand new.

  The windows were cleaned inside and out, then opened to let out the stale, musty smell. The carpet had been replaced and the wood polished.
The walls were given a fresh coat of soft, gray paint that brightened up the place while also giving it a calming effect. And the lighting fixtures had all been replaced and updated.

  I’d found a lady in town—who happened to love reading and also hadn’t known there was a bookstore—who offered to make genre labels at an extremely discounted rate. Then, while the remodeled bathrooms had the finishing touches put on them, I’d taken Donna to a flower market and bought enough flowers to fill huge bouquets throughout the store. Those, combined with the essential oils set throughout, made it feel and smell like home.

  At least, that’s what both Donna and Lala said.

  I wasn’t sure what home was supposed to smell like—though, if I could choose a scent, it would’ve been books. Thousands upon thousands of books, waiting to bring comfort and safety.

  The days our shipments of books came in, I’d considered walking out the door and never coming back. It had felt like we were drowning in a sea of boxes and books . . . but Donna hadn’t been able to stop smiling, so I hadn’t stopped moving until every book was cataloged and in its place.

  Every reading chair.

  Every children’s bean bag lounger.

  Every knickknack.

  Nearly everything.

  “I haven’t seen this place look like this in . . .” Donna laughed, a soft, kind of hesitant sound. “Actually, I’ve never seen this place look quite like this.”

  My stare drifted to her, worry swirling through my stomach. “Is this good or bad?”

  She’d had a say in all the changes and additions, not that she’d said no to any of my ideas, but this was her family’s store. It needed to be perfect for her.

  She looked around and sighed, her frail shoulders sagging with the exhale. “It’s wonderful.”

  I glanced at Lala and tried to contain my smile when she just nodded approvingly at me.

  Lala had come and gone every couple of days, watching and giving her opinion. Snapping at me throughout it all when I’d climbed too high or rushed through the store, holding something she deemed too heavy while wearing the heels I refused to give up.