Busted (Barnes Brothers #3)

by Shiloh Walker

  “It won’t be near as interesting,” Travis said.

  “Sure it will.” He twisted the towel around his hands as he readied himself to say it. “I . . . uh . . . I committed to speaking at a writer thing next month. One of the writers at my agency had to cancel—some family emergency, and Reuben decided to take a chance at asking me. I said yes.”

  For a moment, there was just silence.

  Then Travis said, “Repeat that.”

  “You heard me,” Trey said wearily. “It’s in Jersey. Not far, but . . .” Now was the hard part. “I tried to see if Al and Mona could watch him, but that’s their anniversary and they are taking a cruise. So I called Mom and Dad. They . . .”

  Shit. Hand shaking, he dragged it down his face, realized there was some stubble he’d missed. Maybe he should—

  Quit stalling. Just spit it out. “They want to take him to Disney. Just the two of them.”

  “And you’re letting them.”

  He gripped the counter. “Yeah. I’m letting them.”

  “Have you puked yet?”

  That startled a laugh out of him. “Nah. But if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “If you did, I wouldn’t tell the others.”

  Now he smiled. “Yeah. I know.” He checked the time. “Look . . . I gotta go. It’s almost time to go to the library. I’m surprised Clay hasn’t come up here and banged on the door already.”

  “Okay. Man, one second—listen. Make yourself a list or something. You do better with lists. And on that damn list, put down for you to just ask her out on a date.”

  “Shit.” Trey rolled his eyes. “I can’t be around her without my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, or worse . . . drooling.” He grimaced. If he asked her out, then he’d have to worry about other things—what if he kissed her? What if she kissed him? What would happen when he started thinking about the void of his memory from that night? Drooling would be the least of his concerns. “Trust me, a date is no good.”

  “Fine. Put no drooling on the list. But stop sitting on your ass.”

  * * *

  One hand closed into a fist as Trey stood there.

  He hadn’t just done that. He really hadn’t made a stupid list.

  He was going to kick Travis’s ass over this . . . because, dumb-ass that he was, he had made a list. More than likely, nothing would come of it.

  So, yeah. He’d made a list. Big deal.

  Ressa Bliss was gorgeous.

  She was outgoing.

  She probably had a boyfriend. For all he knew, she might even be married. Not that rings really meant anything, but . . . blowing out a breath, he looked down at the one he had yet to take off.

  Slowly, he reached up and traced the tip of his right index finger across the engraved surface of his wedding ring. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t let go that kept the ring on his finger. He had accepted and acknowledged all of this a long time ago.

  He grieved for Aliesha long and hard—probably longer and harder than he maybe should have, losing himself in a dark, ugly pit of despair. It had been easier to do that than focus on some of the other things that had gone wrong in his life. It hadn’t been until the past year that he realized just how messed up he’d let himself get.

  Oh, he’d hidden it.

  He’d hidden it well from everybody except his twin . . . and probably Mom. Travis and Denise Barnes saw past the walls nobody else had even realized were there.

  But only Travis had any idea of just how messed up Trey probably was. There were missing hours that Trey still couldn’t get back—followed by a morning where he had been forced to remember, all over again, that he’d lost his wife.

  That void, those missing hours, they haunted him and all he wanted was to forget—the whole damn night, not just pieces of it.

  Sometimes, he thought he almost remembered. A woman’s laugh, the burn of whiskey.

  Then a vicious pain.

  He’d left the hospital with bruised ribs, bruised knuckles, and various other aches and pains. At some point, he’d gotten into a fight. The bartender said there had been a man in the parking lot, and he thought the woman Trey had been drinking with had left with him.

  But beyond that?

  He only had emptiness, questions—and a good, thirty-minute gap of nothingness that the bartender couldn’t account for between the time he’d noticed the commotion on his security cameras and the time Trey had stumbled out of the bar.

  The few dates he’d tried to go on since then, he could almost hear the echo of a woman’s laugh in the back of his mind and it was like the fumes of whiskey clouded his head. Any interest he might have felt died under a rush of near memories.

  So he’d just . . . stopped. Stopped trying to live again, lost himself deeper inside himself.

  Until he’d seen Ressa. Staring at his ring, he closed his hand into a fist and slowly relaxed it. Then, without giving himself a chance to think about it, he tugged the ring off.

  It wasn’t a connection with his wife, really, that he was removing.

  In more ways than one, it was his shield.

  How he’d kept himself cut away from everybody and anybody save for his family and a few very select friends. If he took that off, then he had to admit to himself that maybe he was ready to move on.

  He wanted his life back—or some semblance of it.

  He wanted to feel a woman’s skin against his own without memories of something he didn’t even understand haunting him. Wanted to know he could touch a woman and actually feel that need—feel something other than the grief of Aliesha’s death choking him.

  How could one night change something so basic? How did something he didn’t even remember change everything?

  “Dad!” Clayton’s voice rang through the house.

  Wincing, Trey did exactly what he’d done for almost six years—compartmentalized everything. He’d think about all of this later. “Be down in a minute, buddy!” he shouted back, slowly putting the ring down on the counter. Whether or not he’d put it back on, he didn’t know.

  But he had taken it off. Even if it was just for a little while, that counted, right?

  Picking up the little moleskin notebook he carried everywhere, he flipped to the middle and eyed the list he’d just made.

  To-Do List

  1. Clothes shopping

  2. Get groceries—you’re out of deodorant, moron

  3. Ask her out

  4. Try not to drool

  The list was out of order.

  And it was just as stupid as he’d thought it would be.

  Abruptly, he went to tear it out of the notebook, but then he stopped.

  If he didn’t do this now, then when would he?

  Abruptly, he grabbed his pen and scrawled something else down at the bottom.

  5. Start living again

  “Dad?” There was a pause, and then a more persistent yell with an edge of panic. “Dad! I can’t find my books!”

  Saved by the boy, he mused, stroking a finger down the list, lingering on the final item. If nothing else, that one right there was something he had to do.

  He’d take it as a sign. So he’d think about it. Think about it and just see. See what happened.

  Really, what could any of this hurt . . . nothing really, right? Not more than it hurt to dream about her at night, fantasize about that mouth. Or other attractive parts of her anatomy.

  It was a seductive, taunting road, one paved with fantasies and frustration, but it was better than the desolate one he’d walked for far too long.

  “In the basket on the bookshelf by the door,” he called out as he shoved the notebook into his pocket. “Exactly where I told you to put them last night.”

  Single fatherhood was nothing if not a lesson in patience . . . and repetition.

  * * *

  Usually, seeing that head of buttery gold curls brought an instant smile to her face.

  Today, though . . .

  Ressa curled her hands into a fi
st, her nails biting into her palm as she saw CD walking with his little boy across the parking lot, long rangy strides shortened to accommodate his son’s shorter legs. CD—her personal nickname for the man who haunted her dreams. CD—as in Clay’s dad.

  In time, Clayton would be just as tall as his father, she suspected. He seemed small for his age, but she could see the long limbs. It would just take time.

  “Saying good-bye sucks, huh?”

  Glancing back over her shoulder at Farrah, she lifted a brow. “Ya think?”

  “Well, since ya never got around to getting Mr. Yummy Pants’ name, I figured it wouldn’t be too bad . . .”

  “Saying good-bye to Clayton is going to break my heart,” she said, painfully aware of the sulk in her voice, and unable to do anything about it. She didn’t want to do anything about it. “I had to tell too many kids good-bye this week. I’ve only been here two years. How can it hurt like this?”

  “Hey . . .” Farrah moved in and wrapped an arm around Ressa’s waist. “You know, you’re not moving to Tokyo. You can come visit, drop in on your days off. Visit the kids then.”

  “I know, I know.” Ressa shrugged away, out of sorts and still . . . aching inside. “This just sucks.”

  “You said he wasn’t here last week.”

  She looked up and caught sight of the two males just as they cleared the top step and the ache in her chest expanded. “No.”

  A small, cowardly part of her kind of wished they wouldn’t have come here today either. If they hadn’t then she would have been spared this.

  Didn’t that just make her a coward?

  Her heart twisted as the boy came rushing up to her a few minutes later. He was all smiles as he flung himself at her for a hug and she caught him, held him close.

  “Aren’t you looking handsome today, Mr. Clayton,” she said, looking past him to see his father linger, just for a minute. Their gazes connected—he wore his trademark dark shades, but she could still feel that jolt.

  His mouth parted and maybe it was ego—or just because she wanted so badly to believe it—to believe that he felt it, too.

  She didn’t look away.

  Not that very second.

  She should have. She knew that.

  But she only had today left, right?

  “Hey, um—”

  “I was wondering if—”

  They both started to speak at once, and then, they stopped, a nervous laugh breaking out between them. He gestured for her to speak and she linked her hands together, looking around. “I just . . . well, I want a few minutes with you . . . with Clayton after we’re done. If that’s okay?”

  * * *

  An hour later, Trey had less than five hundred words on the screen and his mind kept spinning back to the way she’d met his gaze earlier.

  I want a few minutes with you.

  He’d been about ready to just walk away, forget asking her out.

  Terror and nerves had turned his gut to knots.

  Unlike his brothers, he seemed to have missed out on that inborn charm—most of the family, on both his mother’s side and his father’s side, from his cousins, to his uncles and aunts, to his brothers—they all practically breathed charm and confidence.

  Not Trey.

  But then she’d said she wanted to talk to him and he’d felt something relax inside.

  That hadn’t lasted long, because immediately, his memory, always such a visual thing with him, had started to feed him back an instant replay of how she’d looked at him, her lips parted, the irises of her eyes spiking as she met his gaze.

  No wonder he hadn’t gotten shit done the past hour.

  He heard the rise in voices that signified the end of the reading program and he saved his work, a dull pain throbbing in his wrist. After putting away the laptop, he grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen and tossed a few back dry.

  Clayton was sitting at his desk studiously coloring away while the rest of the kids gathered around Ressa.

  Both of them heard the words at the same time—

  Good-bye . . .

  We’ll miss you—

  Clayton’s head jerked up.

  Trey’s hand clenched into a fist and he shifted the bag from one shoulder to drag across his chest as dread creeped through. Dread and . . . disappointment.

  I want a few minutes with you . . .

  Son of a bitch. With him . . . so she could tell Clayton bye.

  “Why do you have to leave, Miss Ressa?” one of the older kids asked, his voice plaintive and loud, carrying through the entire library.

  The crayon in Clayton’s hand snapped and his gaze darted all around the room before landing on Trey with wild desperation.

  Before Trey could reach the table, Clayton was up on his feet, practically running toward him.

  “Let’s go, Dad.”

  Clayton’s small hand caught his, started to tug.

  Yeah. He could get on board with that. But . . . “Wait a minute, Clayton.”

  “No!” He burrowed in against Trey, his voice already wobbling. “I want to go now. And I don’t like this stupid lib’ary no more. I never want to come back. Can we get dinosaur egg oatmeal at the store? I want some for a snack. Let’s go.”

  Eyes closed, Trey reached for some sort of fatherly wisdom to offer up. He came up short, as always.

  “Clayton.”

  At the sound of her voice, Trey tensed.

  Clayton tucked himself closer to Trey.

  Slowly, Trey looked up.

  Ressa knelt down next to the boy and in her hand, she held a book. “Clayton, I’m sorry . . . I didn’t want you to hear that way. I . . .” She offered them both a smile. “I was actually going to see if you’d maybe let me buy you lunch or something and we could talk then. I . . .”

  Clayton shoved his face against Trey’s leg and sniffled. “I don’t want no lunch. I’m not hungry. I’m not ever going to be hungry.”

  Well, shit.

  * * *

  “Come on, buddy.”

  His voice was low and soothing, while one hand rubbed up and down Clayton’s narrow back.

  Ressa tried not to focus on that part as CD spoke to his son. Clayton didn’t want to look at her and she felt foolish . . . foolish and cruel and out of place.

  “You’ve got a lady waiting to talk to you, Clayton. Come on, don’t be rude. Just—”

  “I don’t care!” Clayton shouted. “She’s leaving and she didn’t tell me and I don’t like her anymore.”

  Ressa managed to hide her flinch and she pasted a smile on her face. “Look, I’ll just—”

  “Wait.” It was a command, plain and simple.

  She narrowed her eyes at the stark order, but before she could say anything, he’d peeled his son away.

  “Listen to me, Clayton,” CD said, tugging off his glasses.

  She managed, just barely, not to react when she saw his eyes.

  His son had his eyes—a beautiful, surreal blue green. The kind of blue green you saw in pictures of the tropics—an impossible sort of color, but she had no doubt that amazing color was completely natural.

  Swallowing, she forced herself to be still, to not move, to not stare as he continued to speak. “Now, I know you’re upset, but you don’t speak that way to people. You know that. You’re angry and you’re sad, but there’s no reason to be unkind.”

  Clayton’s lip poked out and he tried to curl in toward his father once more.

  “You need to say something,” his father said, shaking his head.

  Clayton shot her a look. Then, as one fat tear rolled down his cheek, he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  She opened her mouth to say, “It’s okay.”

  She managed “It—”

  And then Clayton hurled himself at her, wrapping thin arms around her neck. “I don’t want you to leave,” he said.

  Break my heart, why don’t you?

  “Oh, sweetheart.” She rubbed the back of his head. “I don’t really want to either. It’s just .
. . well, sometimes we just have to do things we don’t really like.”

  “But why are you leaving?”

  Easing him back, she reached up and wiped away a tear. “You remember my cousin? The little girl I’ve told you about?” At his nod, she said, “You know how I’ve said I’m the one who takes care of her, right? Neeci starts school this year and things aren’t going to work with me being at this library. So they are moving me to a different branch. It’s closer to where we live and the school she’s going to attend. I hate that I have to leave you kids, but I’ve got a little girl to take care of. And they’ve got good people here who will take over.”

  She waited for the next question—others had asked it when she put in for the transfer. Why can’t her mama take care of her? Why do you gotta go?

  But with her cousin, Kiara, that just wasn’t an option.

  All Clayton did was lean in and rest his head on her shoulder. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Oh, honey. I’ll miss you, too.”

  From the corner of her eye, she saw his father and her pulse sped up.

  He reached out and hooked a hand over Clayton’s shoulder. His fingers brushed her bare upper arm and she almost gasped as that light contact sent a jolt through her.

  His eyes flew to hers and for a moment, they just stared at each other and her heart raced, so hard. So fast.

  “Okay,” Clayton whispered. “I’ll . . . I’m gonna miss you.” He dashed a hand under his nose and said, “I still like you, Miss Ressa.”

  “Oh, sweetheart.” She stroked a hand down his hair. “I like you, too.”

  He nodded and then moved to his dad, leaning against his leg.

  Then, as Clayton turned away from her, she awkwardly rose to her feet. It was better this way, and not just because she needed the change to work things out with Neeci and school. She’d miss the son, but it was probably a good thing that she was getting away from CD.

  The man just wasn’t good for her state of mind.

  Taking a deep, steadying breath, she met his gaze, felt her heart trip up as those intense eyes met hers. “Did you still need to speak with me?”

  * * *

  One hand curled into a fist as she stared at him.

  Trey knew, without a doubt, that he had been right.