Or going crazy. It’s entirely possible at this point.
The edge of Griff’s mouth spasms once like he might be biting down a laugh too. It’s what I’ve always loved about him. He can laugh in the dark too. “What are you going to do?”
“Fight.”
30
Two hours later, the house is clear. Griff and I drag ourselves into the kitchen, where Bren’s had dinner ready for ages. The whole house smells like lasagna and there’s the faint “wah wah wah” of the living room television.
It’s all so freaking normal.
Except for the small pile of cameras now on the kitchen table. I collapse in the closest chair and pretend not to notice when Griff takes a spot by the counter, keeping half the kitchen between us.
Bren doesn’t say a word as she fills two plates, and maybe it’s the clink of dishes that draws my sister into the room. The television goes silent and Lily materializes in the doorway. She walks straight to me and drags a chair closer. I eat and my sister sits, watching me with our knees touching.
“Are these all of them?” Bren runs her fingers through the cameras I dumped on the kitchen table.
“Yeah,” I say and force another mouthful of food into me. I’m not hungry, but I know I need to eat.
“Can you tell how long they’ve been here?” Bren asks.
“Hard to say.” I draw my fork through the meat sauce on my plate. “They were probably installed during your last bug inspection.”
“I’ve used that company for years.”
“That’s why it was a good cover.”
For a very long moment, no one says anything. I take my plate to the sink and Lily follows, watches me scrape what’s left of my dinner into the disposal. “It’s not your fault, Bren. You couldn’t have known.”
Bren’s still staring at the cameras. “I want to know everything.”
The whole kitchen goes quiet. Lily shrinks into me, putting her small body between us. I know what my sister’s thinking: Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
Can’t.
Because if I tell Bren everything, there’s no going back and I’m afraid. Everything I’ve done? She wants to know all of it? Now I’m cringing. Those confessions would be a minefield. I’d blow everything to pieces.
I meet Griff’s gaze and nod to him. He pushes to his feet and extends one bandaged hand to my sister. “C’mon, Lily. Just give them a few minutes, okay? Wick’s not going anywhere.”
He smiles and she relents. It’s like magic the way he handles people, the way they trust him. It’s thoughtful too, but part of me wishes he hadn’t taken her and that he hadn’t left. Would it be easier if Griff and Lily were standing next to me while I confessed?
I flick my eyes to Bren’s and she’s still watching me, waiting. No, there is nothing easy about what’s coming and there’s no getting past this anymore. We have lived with so many lies and secrets. If I blow those apart now, maybe whatever’s left will be real?
“It started with my dad,” I say, pushing each word. “Remember how they said I couldn’t have been involved in his scams? Well, I was. I’m the one who made Michael’s scams happen.”
Bren nods—jerks her head up and down, really—but her eyes never leave mine, and when she sits next to me, I tell her the rest.
How I worked for Detective Carson.
How Milo destroyed Detective Carson.
How Lily stole eleven million dollars and I have to find it.
Then I tell her about Judge Bay and Joe Bender, and honestly . . . I should finesse the story. I should tell Bren I had a slip of the tongue when I told Michael what Joe did to my mother and that I made a terrible mistake and that I was sorry. Bren would believe I fell from grace, but I didn’t fall.
I jumped.
“I knew what would happen,” I say, watching Bren’s face and waiting for the revulsion. “When I told Michael what Joe did, I knew he would kill him. It’s my fault.”
“You didn’t pull the knife.”
“No, but I feel responsible.”
“There is a world of difference between what you did and what your father did, but you will have to live with your actions—so will Michael. In the end, we all have to live with what we’ve done.”
We study each other for a long, long moment.
“Is that everything?” Bren’s voice is scratched and frayed, just like everything between us now.
I nod, feeling light-headed. “I think Michael is far more than a small-time redneck with credit-card scam ambitions. He was involved with Looking Glass—so was Judge Bay. But I don’t know what that means and I don’t know what to do about it and maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore because I need that money and I don’t know where to find it.”
“Anything else?”
I shrug, shake my head.
“I wish you had told me,” Bren whispers.
“I wish I had too.”
“I’m glad you didn’t until now.” Bren’s breath catches—or maybe it was mine. She stands, turns to the sink, and spends several seconds moving dishes around until finally saying, “I wouldn’t have understood. Being a mom . . . wasn’t like I thought it would be. You were getting bullied at school and you were sneaking out and I didn’t know what to do. I screwed up.”
I can’t see her face, but I can hear the tears. They always make her voice slide Southern, diluting her vowels until they spread like butter.
“I screwed up being a daughter,” I whisper. “I didn’t know what to do either.”
Bren sniffles. I still can’t see her face, but I know she’s smiling and this one will be lopsided, and somehow, that gives me hope. We can’t be truly broken if I know this about her, right? Surely I wouldn’t have learned those details if this was never meant to be mine.
“Do you want to try again?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Wick?”
Lily. She stands in the kitchen doorway, half hidden in the dark. It’s late. I hadn’t realized how long we’d been talking, but exhaustion has hollowed my sister’s face.
“You’re going to want to see this,” Lily says. Based on her flat tone, I highly doubt it, but Bren and I follow her anyway. Lily’s pale hair makes her a candle in the dark. When we reach the dining room, my hand gropes for the wall, ready to turn on the light, and she grabs my fingers. “Don’t.”
“Why?”
“Look who just joined us.”
My skin prickles. Lily points to a computer setup—my computer setup—that’s arranged on the dining room table. She resurrected my security camera feed.
“What is it?” Bren asks.
“It’s Hart.”
“Well, this feels familiar,” Lily says, picking at the table’s edge.
Not quite. Where Carson stuck to the shadows, Hart’s standing in the streetlight. He’s staring straight at the house. He’s waiting.
“He knows we can see him,” I say, and as if he heard me, Hart smiles. He slides both hands into the pockets of those always perfectly pressed dress pants and walks away.
Lily opens another camera angle, checking to see if Hart went around the side of the house. The yard’s empty though. He’s gone. “That was awfully easy,” she murmurs.
I suck in a breath. “He’ll be back.”
“It’s only beginning,” Griff adds. We talk over each other and it should be kind of funny, but both of us look away.
Bren shakes her head. “I can’t believe this is my life.”
“I’m sorry.” Again with the apologies. It’s like I’m filled with them, like they’re all I am anymore.
Bren’s hand snakes into mine. She squeezes until our fingers are tight tight tight. “I was never sorry you came into my life. Ever. We’ll figure this out.”
And for the first time tonight, Bren sounds more like Bren, like the woman she was before I exposed Todd. She takes a deep breath and it sounds only the tiniest bit shaky on the exhale.
“I wanted to believe Hart. I thought he was good, that he
was . . . I believed him because I was scared.” She’s crying, but the tears are silent. They drip down her chin and it’s like she doesn’t even notice them. Because they’ve become so common, so everyday? You don’t brush away what belongs to you.
“I am scared,” she continues. “He said he could help. He said he wouldn’t tell anyone what he knew about you. I wanted to fix everything. I wanted to make your lives perfect because mine wasn’t. I wanted to give you what I never had. But there’s something very ugly in the perfect, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” I whisper and I didn’t know how true it was until now. We both spent so much time trying to make our lives into something they weren’t. And in the end, all we did was feed each other lies.
“I wanted to save you,” Bren says. “I knew whatever you were involved in was bigger than anything I could ever fight and I wasn’t going to risk you. I couldn’t.” Her smile is razor-blade straight and just as sharp. “So when Hart came along, I was ready to hear everything he wanted to say. I was the perfect target.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Bren shakes her head. “I don’t know what to do, Wick. About the money, about Mr. Hart, about any of it. If I go to the police, I’ll have to give them you too and I won’t. We deal with this together. As a family.” She sniffles and turns to Lily. “You have practice in the morning.”
Lily rolls her eyes. “I know. I know. I just assumed we would—”
“Like they said,” Bren continues, straightening her shoulders. “This is only the beginning. There will be plenty of other nights. He’s gone. The alarm’s set. Let’s get your gear ready for tomorrow.”
Yep, much more like the old Bren. But she can only drag Lily upstairs once I swear to stop by her bedroom before I crash for the night.
“I so missed you,” my sister whispers as we hug—hard enough for her fingers to leave marks on my skin—and, somehow, it still isn’t hard enough.
“I so missed you,” I echo. Lily’s smile is watery and I promise her we’ll talk more. “We have forever, right?”
“Right.” She squeezes my hand one last time before following Bren upstairs. Briefly, I’m grateful. I need a minute. I need more than a minute. My brain is overstuffed and fried. I’m too big for my skin and too small for the room and I’m grateful for the space to breathe again.
Until I realize now I’m alone with Griff.
31
For a long moment, neither of us moves. Then he limps across the living room and takes a seat on the couch. I wish I could do the same thing. Right now, I’m glued to the floor. I need something to say and I have nothing. Wait. For once, that’s not actually true.
“Thank you for taking care of them, Griff.”
He nods, looks away. I’m sure it’s so I can’t read his expression. Too bad I can still see how his jaw flexes.
“Why did you?” I shouldn’t ask, but I’m done with all the not-askings and the not-tellings and the silences I bury myself in. Especially with him.
And when Griff faces me, I think he feels the same way. It’s simmering in how his eyes bore straight through me, in the way his right hand twitches once.
“I took care of them because they’re yours.”
It’s so honest and raw I feel like I should avert my eyes. “Why were you at Joe’s?”
A smirk. I recognize it. There’s always a bitter bent to his mouth when he’s disgusted with himself. “I was looking for Michael.”
“Why?”
“I needed to know his plans.” Griff rubs one bandaged thumb against his lower lip. “No one could figure out where Michael was—my cousin, his team at the police department, no one. I knew Michael hadn’t run. I knew he was still a threat. Problem was, I needed better proof than rumors.”
My stomach dips. “Is that what got you in ‘the wrong place at the wrong time’?”
“Pretty much. I confirmed with my contacts though—his people are running. He won’t be far behind.”
“You should never have looked for him.”
“I had to.”
“Why?”
“For you.” His eyes travel past me to the darkened hallway. “And for them.”
“You shouldn’t have risked it! You knew what would happen if he caught you! You knew what you had to lose!”
Griff tilts his head ever so slightly, almost as if he’s trying to hear me better. “As long as he’s loose, you’re not safe. You’ll never be safe.”
“That’s not an answer.” Except it is. Griff knew what he stood to lose and he did it anyway. I feel like I’m spinning, but the room doesn’t budge. He sacrificed himself for me.
I sit down. Hard. “Where are you staying now?”
“Here. Guest room. Bren is . . . really generous. I can’t go back there. Even if I hadn’t worked for Carson and my cousin . . .” Griff shakes and shakes his head like the words are something he has to loosen. “I can’t take it there anymore.”
There. Our old neighborhood. Funny how a place can be so much more than a location. Griff and I have been defined by that neighborhood for years. It’s what people think about when they meet us. It’s what we think about when we look at ourselves.
I pluck at the braided trim on one of the couch pillows. “What’s going on with your mom?”
“Ran off with a trucker.” Griff’s smile is so white against the bruises, and everything I remember about him sweeps over me. Through me. I have to look away. “Who’d have thought that would be such a good thing?” he asks.
“I’m sorry. I know you miss her.”
“Yeah, but I’m trying to kill that.”
I wince. I shouldn’t because I understand what he means. It killed me how much I missed my mom too. It killed because she left me, because she left Lily, because she left us with him. I thought if I smothered her memory enough, I would be whole again.
Correction: I would be whole for the very first time. Eventually, I discovered my mother was taken from me, and maybe Griff will discover something took his mother too. Booze, men, something.
But it won’t ever replace this: Neither of us was ever enough for our parents. Life would be so much easier if you always loved the things that would love you back.
I clasp both hands together. “I know it’s a stupid question because I know you’re not, but still . . . are you okay?”
“Are you?”
Once, that would’ve been sincere. Now, it’s a challenge. We look at each other, and this time, Griff’s the one to look away.
“I’m glad you told Bren everything,” he says to the kitchen beyond me. “I had no idea . . . until it was too late.”
My throat funnels shut. “Griff, there were all these things I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“So you just what? Buried them inside you? Let them hurt you instead of me?”
For a second, I’m suspended above us, and then, suddenly, I crash into me. “Yes.”
His laugh is so soft it should sound sweet. Instead, it makes all the hairs on my arms stand up. “You don’t get it, do you, Wicked? When you hurt so do I.”
He says it like he hates it. Again. We’re staring at each other. Again.
Or we are until my eyes swing to the carpet and stick.
“I couldn’t watch you destroy yourself anymore. You’re demanding, difficult, sensitive, difficult . . . and so incredibly perfect.”
His breath catches and I glance up. This time, I don’t look away. I can’t.
“And you’re so far into this,” Griff says softly. “I’m going to have to watch you drown.”
My vision blurs. Tears. He’s not going to make me cry. He’s not. “Then leave.”
“I can’t.”
“If you want to play the tortured hero, go somewhere else.” Blurry. Blurrier. I blink and blink. “It won’t work for me. I don’t need it. But—” I force myself to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry I let you down and I’m sorry about what happened to us.”
F
or a long moment, neither of us says anything. Tears are sliding down my face and I’m pretending they’re not there. Stupid really. I know he sees them and that’s worse.
Griff’s bandaged hands go to his knees. “I’m sorry too. I wanted you for you, but I didn’t fully understand who that even was and I punished you for . . . well, I had my own shit that I didn’t come clean about. I just didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to pretend it was happening to someone else.”
“I get that.”
“I know. I understand that now. I wish I’d understood it sooner.”
More quiet. It makes fresh tears crowd my eyes. This is all that’s left of us: awkward pauses and broken promises and realizations that come too late to save anything.
“You went so dark, Wick. Where you were . . . I wanted to reach you and I couldn’t. I don’t think anyone could.”
“You’re right. I didn’t know what I wanted or who I was.”
Or maybe I did.
“Maybe,” I say, rolling the word carefully because this feels so true and so foreign. “Maybe what you find in the dark is what you really are? Maybe it’s what’s really there?”
His jaw tightens and his eyes narrow and I don’t care because I’m picking up speed and this needs to be said. Not for him.
For me.
“How do you find your way when you can’t see through the shadows, Griff? You grope. You stumble. You feel for every crack, every hold, every edge. I know all of my broken places now. It used to be something I was ashamed of, but now it shows me what I want.”
His eyes briefly widen and that beautiful, ruined mouth opens. Shuts. Griff shakes his head. Because he doesn’t understand? Or because he doesn’t want to hear?
“How much did you find out about Looking Glass?” I ask and I know I’ve broadsided him. I need to. I need to wrench this conversation somewhere else, anywhere else. “Did you know Milo is Dr. Norcut’s son?”
“No.” There’s a long pause. “Shit. Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Then that means . . .”
“They were engineering my arrival for a while. I have no idea how long they’ve been watching—long enough, I guess.”
Trust Me Page 17