Parker Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  “And it’s really been killing me,” he said. “It has. You say we have to move on? You’re right. But I think it’s going to have to be separately. I just can’t deal with the guilt I feel about all of this. You deserve so much better than what you can get with me now, because of everything that happened.”

  I stared at him. He was breaking up with me? What? “Shep…”

  “Please don’t try to change my mind. This is all I’ve been thinking about. It hasn’t been an easy decision to make. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to decide, if you want to know the truth. And trust me when I say, I don’t want to do this.”

  “Then don’t,” I said, and there were tears in my eyes, and then they were overflowing and running down the sides of my face, and all of a sudden I was crying in front of him. But I didn’t care. How could he be serious right now? After everything we had been through, he was just going to walk away now? “You don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to do this. Doesn’t that matter?”

  “Of course it matters. The reason I’m making this decision is because I want what’s best for you. And I think what’s best for you isn’t staying with someone who looks exactly like the person who kidnapped you. Who had you prisoner. It’s so fucked-up Lena, I can’t even wrap my head around it.”

  And he had tears running down his face, too, and the whole thing was so sad, because I knew from the look on his face that he had made up his mind. There was nothing I could say that would change anything, even though what he was telling me was breaking my heart.

  “I’m just going to go,” he said, wiping his arm across his face. “There’s no point in drawing this out.” But he stopped before he left, and he looked me right in the eyes. For the briefest of moments, my heart leapt; I thought maybe he was going to say he’d changed his mind. “Please don’t hate me,” he said. “Please tell me that you’re going to be okay, and that you’ll go out and have a happy life. I just need to know that.”

  I barely managed a nod, because having a happy life suddenly didn’t seem at all possible, or even desirable, if he wasn’t going to be a part of it.

  “Good,” he said. He nodded, and then he stepped forward and kissed me, his lips barely brushing mine, before he stepped back and walked out the door.

  I had thought that the whole ordeal with Holden would be the hardest thing I would ever have to go through. But as I watched Shep drive away, I realized I was wrong.

  Chapter 24

  Shep

  I drove straight to the gym. I taped my wrists up and beat the shit out of one of the punching bags. I didn’t care. I needed to get to that point where all thoughts ceased to exist, where you work your body so hard that it can’t register anything else except sheer exhaustion. A few guys stood around, watching me; I barely noticed them. I had so much anger, about everything, and I thought if I came here and beat the shit out of this bag and physically exhausted myself, then maybe that would help dissipate some of it. But it didn’t. If anything, it made it worse.

  On my way out of the gym, my phone rang. I almost didn’t even look at it, because I knew if it was Lena, it would be next to impossible not to pick up. But it was a number I didn’t recognize, and because I was still feeling like such shit, I did pick it up, hoping it would be a telemarketer, and I could take out some of my bad mood on them.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Shepherd?”

  “Yes, speaking.”

  “It’s Cody. Your uncle. How are you, son?”

  “Uncle Cody.” Shit. I couldn’t remember the last time I had talked to him. “Hi. I wasn’t expecting you to call.”

  “Of course you weren’t. How long has it been? It’s been years. A long time. You still living in San Francisco?”

  “You knew about that?”

  “I kept in touch with Devin. Well, when I say kept in touch, I mean it in the loosest sense of the term. But he’d write me letters. I like letters. Kept me updated. It’s hard to just completely walk away from your family, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I heard about what happened. What’s happening, I should say. Can’t say I was too surprised about Devin. Prison life would never suit him. Always knew if something like that happened, he’d take his own life. I think it’s better that way, if you want the truth of it.”

  “The whole thing is completely messed up,” I said. “I don’t know if you heard the whole story, but it started because Holden kidnapped my girlfriend. My own brother did that to me. And now he’s dead.”

  “And now he’s dead. Holden was also a little too reckless for his own good. When you’re a kid, it’s easy to dismiss it. Boys being boys and whatnot. But if you don’t rid yourself of that sort of behavior by the time you’re an adult, you’re setting yourself up to do some pretty stupid stuff.”

  “He was always doing stupid shit. And trying to get me to go along with it. This last thing, though… I still can’t wrap my head around it. How could he do something like that to me? He had her locked in a room in the barn. For days. Who knows what he would’ve done to her if she hadn’t managed to get out.”

  “That room in the back of the barn?”

  “Yeah.”

  Uncle Cody laughed, though it wasn’t a particularly happy sound. “Spent some time in that room myself,” he said. “Not days, just a few hours, but it was hellish enough. Can’t stand being in a small enclosure with no windows. Your dad and Frank thought that spending a little time in there might change my mind about leaving, but it really did the opposite.”

  “Wait—what?” I said, not quite believing my ears. “You’re telling me that Dad and Frank locked you in there the same way Holden locked Lena in there?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Hell, it was probably your dad who gave Holden the idea in the first place.”

  “That’s so messed up.”

  “It’s hard to accept that people you’re related to can do these sorts of things. Trust me, I’ve been there. It’s why I had to leave in the first place.”

  “Are you… are you happy? I don’t even know anything about your life.”

  “Through no fault of your own; that’s how I wanted it. And I didn’t talk to anyone from the family for a good long while after I first left. The letters with Devin started later. I needed the space to figure out who I was, without the Parkington name attached to it. Around here, no one knew me; it was like having the slate wiped clean. It was the best feeling in the world, actually, and I highly recommend it. But it sounds like you’re already doing that. You’ve got your own thing going on. You weren’t arrested that day, were you? You weren’t hauled off to jail. Because you didn’t have anything to do with that. Been to see any of them?”

  “No, I haven’t. And I don’t plan on it.”

  And I didn’t plan on going to see any of them. I didn’t plan on going to any of the trials, either, unless I had to testify. But they would probably all eventually take some sort of deal, if they were smart.

  “They betrayed me,” I said. “They betrayed me because they were completely unwilling to let me live on my own terms. I wasn’t doing anything wrong; I wasn’t hurting anyone. But that wasn’t good enough.”

  “You know that’s not true, though,” Uncle Cody said. “You know that they have a warped view of things. You probably don’t remember too much about your grandfather, since he died when you were pretty young, but he had it ingrained in us that it was family first—you didn’t turn your back on your family. You did what was best for the family, even if it didn’t square with what you wanted. But you can make your own family, Shep. And I guess that’s the real point of this call. I wanted to check in and see how you were doing, but I also wanted to tell you that you can find happiness and it doesn’t have to be doing what the rest of them are telling you. You just keep on living your life with your girlfriend, do your own thing, and you’ll be good.”

  “I appreciate the call,” I said. “And I will try to do that. The gir
lfriend and I broke up, though. But… that’s just how things happen sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She didn’t want to break up, but I had to end the relationship. I couldn’t stand the thought of her being reminded of what happened every time she looked at my face. And there you have it—one more thing that the family has completely messed up for me. Holden’s not even here anymore and he’s still managing to screw things up for me.”

  I hadn’t really spoken these thoughts out loud to anyone, and it felt good, especially because I knew Uncle Cody could relate. He knew exactly what I was talking about. Any other person could say they did, but they wouldn’t, not really. You had to really be in the situation to understand it.

  “There are other girls,” Uncle Cody said.

  “Not like her.”

  “Then maybe you need to reconsider your position.”

  “I’ve got a fight coming up. I need to be focused on that.”

  “You’re still doing that?”

  “Yeah, I am. Haven’t made it in the big time yet, but hoping that might change.”

  “Things can always change—don’t ever let yourself forget it. I’ve got a wife. We have two golden retrievers. I manage a garden center, and I actually really enjoy my job. My wife and I like to go hiking on the weekends. We’ll be taking a trip to Iceland in September. All these things that I wouldn’t be doing if I hadn’t left, if I hadn’t believed that some sort of change was possible. The same thing is possible for you, too.”

  “I know,” I said. “I want to believe it.”

  After I got off the phone, I thought for a while about everything Uncle Cody had said. And I thought about him, living his own life, going to work at the garden center, coming home to his wife. A completely normal, probably mundane sometimes, but enjoyable life. The sort of life I thought I might’ve been able to have with Lena.

  Chapter 25

  Lena

  I just had to get on with life.

  This was a lot easier said than done.

  I woke up each morning and grabbed my phone, hoped that Shep might have called or texted. That was all I wanted—just to hear from him. It was jarring to go from being in someone’s life to suddenly not. To not being able to reach out, just to say hi. Instead of getting up right away, like I normally would have, I lay in bed and scrolled through our past messages. I knew this wasn’t helping, that this couldn’t be a productive way to begin the process of getting over someone, but I wasn’t ready to let go just yet.

  Eventually, I got up and made coffee, tried to eat something, though I wasn’t hungry at all. My pants were loose at the waist and I could tell that I’d lost weight, even just in the past few days. This was not supposed to happen. Things were not supposed to work out like this. The appreciation I thought I had been feeling for all aspects of my life had vanished. I knew that was lame, that such a thing shouldn’t be dependent on whether or not a guy was in my life, but this was so much more than just some guy. I had been about to ask him to move in with me. I kept replaying the scenario in my head where I had actually gone first in what I wanted to talk to him about. It would have been mortifying if I had put that out there only to have him turn around and break up with me.

  I dragged myself into work and hurried to my office, closing the door before I had the chance to interact with anyone. I looked at my calendar, trying to remember what it was I had to do that day. Return some emails, go over a few contracts. Nothing pressing.

  Maybe it would’ve been better if there had been something pressing to do, because that would’ve required my full attention. Doing something that required only half my attention meant the rest of my mind was free to wander and think about what Shep was doing and if he was going to call me—or, worse, was he out seeing someone else? Had he even thought about me at all?

  I couldn’t stop the deluge of thoughts. It was like someone had turned a faucet on, full blast, and there was no way I could turn it off. I put my arms on my desk and then rested my head on them. This was how Cole found me when he came into my office.

  “Lena?”

  I lifted my head. “Don’t you knock?”

  “I did. But there was no response.”

  “That generally means the person isn’t interested in talking. Most people would take the cue and move on.”

  “Oh. Well, not me.”

  “I don’t really feel like talking right now,” I said.

  But Cole was undeterred; he came right in and sat down. “Lena,” he said. “You need to talk to someone. You at least need to eat something.” He slid a paper plate across my desk. There was a bagel on it, with chive cream cheese, which was my favorite. “At least have half.”

  I looked at the bagel. “Maybe in a little bit. I’m not that hungry right now.”

  “Lena.” Cole waited until I met his eye. He did not have a smile on his face. “We’re… we’re a little worried about you. You just haven’t really seemed like yourself. And I’m not saying you should be back to normal yet or anything—I mean, you went through something really traumatic and it can take time to heal from these things. You might have PTSD or something. I’m not an expert, but that wouldn’t surprise me. We just think… we think that maybe it would be good if you talked to someone.”

  “You think I should talk to someone,” I said slowly. “And this ‘we’ you keep mentioning… who? You?”

  “Yes, me! Everyone here. Everyone who knows you. We want you to get better, Lena. We want you to know that we’ve got your back, that we’re here to support you in any way we can. But sometimes talking to a professional is necessary. There’s no shame in that.”

  Part of me wanted to let him—to let all of them—think that this was because of what had happened. It would be easier that way. I could agree to go talk to someone. They would be understanding that I might be adversely affected by this. But that wasn’t the truth at all. The truth was I had been broken up with and I didn’t know if I could recover. It was not the sort of position I ever thought I would find myself in.

  “I appreciate your concern,” I said. “But it’s not what you’re thinking.”

  Cole did not look convinced. “It’s not? What is it, then?”

  I did not generally make it a practice to admit any sort of weakness, especially to Cole, but I was sick and tired of pretending to be strong all the time. It was a constant effort, and at this point I just wanted to give up.

  “Shep broke up with me. He’s not a part of my life anymore, and that is what I’m having such a hard time dealing with.”

  “Oh.” Cole sat back in the chair, mulling over this new information. “You love him, don’t you, Lena?”

  Not a question. “Yes. But apparently that doesn’t matter.” I waved him off. “Look. It’s a breakup—it sucks. And yes, I am having a hard time dealing with it right now. But I’ll get over it. People get broken up with all the time, and they manage to carry on. I’m certainly not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last. It’s just… it’s just not what I was expecting. None of this was, really. But you can let everyone know that I’m going to be all right. I will. I just need some time to process this, is all.”

  “Is that really what it is?”

  “Yes. And if I felt like going to talk to someone would help, I definitely would. But I think all that is going to do is reopen old wounds. I don’t want that. I want to move on from this. It just feel like that’s impossible right now.”

  “It won’t always feel that way,” Cole said. “Trust me; I know that breakups suck.”

  I sighed. “You got any advice?”

  “I’d normally say a rebound, but I don’t think that would be the wisest idea here.”

  “No. I’m not interested in ever dating again. That part of my life is over.”

  “Aw, come on, Lena. You’ll meet someone else. There’s a lot of great people out there. You’re a catch.”

  The thing was, I didn’t want to meet anyone else. I really didn’t.
I just wanted this awful feeling to go away. Meeting someone else would not make the feeling go away; it would probably just make it worse because there was no one who would compare to Shep. Anyone else I dated after him would never be able to compete. So it was pointless. I had planned on being single before I met him—obviously I just needed to go back to that.

  “Why did he break up with you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “He said it was because the guilt was eating him alive. That he couldn’t stand the thought of me looking at him and thinking about his brother.”

  Cole let out a low whistle. “Damn. That’s heavy. But I hear where he’s coming from. That’s legit.”

  “I know, but that’s not how I feel. I am not thinking about Holden every time I look at him. I see the person who saved me from that. But he thinks that he’s the one responsible for it all. Which he’s not.” I sighed. “He’s got that fight coming up really soon. I don’t want to bother him.”

  “You love him, though, huh?” Cole said.

  I took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know why I’m about to tell you this,” I said, still looking up, “but I was about to ask him to move in with me.”

  Cole let out another whistle. “Really?”

  “Yes. Luckily, he said he needed to talk about something, too, so I let him go first—sparing me the humiliation of having to be broken up with by someone I had just asked to move in.”

  “It’s all about timing. But I really thought it seemed like the two of you had a good thing going on there.”