Chapter 24
NADIA
Nadia was shattered. She couldn’t believe she’d let slip a decade-old secret.
In an exhausted moment coupled with an ever-present fear, she severed the most important friendship of her life.
She could barely breathe through the crushing weight of the loss as she stood alone on Cammy’s porch.
Aimee’s final “good” was a knife thrust directly into her heart.
She grasped the porch railing with a tight grip, her body trembling. All these years she’d rationalized she was protecting Aimee. Thomas had convinced her of that. But Aimee’s accusation rang painfully true: “You chose Thomas over me.”
She had.
Not because she didn’t love Aimee, but rather because of how much she truly cared for Thomas.
That she was the only one who had. Something about him had pulled at her since they were teenagers.
Maybe it was the way he protected people with a ferocity that bordered on self-destruction.
Or, that his brokenness—the weight he carried of a fractured family—mirrored her own.
Whichever it was, he noticed things about her no one else did.
Her empty stomach, her reluctance to go home.
When she’d lie about being okay. And he never pitied her, not once.
He only responded with a quiet, stubborn presence.
For once, she saw their relationship with clarity. Thomas was the thread running through her life, sometimes visible, often hidden, but always there.
Nadia didn’t deserve Aimee’s forgiveness or her friendship.
Night after night for over nineteen months she’d watched her best friend agonize over the loss of James, and she hadn’t said a word.
She’d let Aimee suffer knowing full well she could have ended her pain at any moment when everyone had believed James died.
The walls Nadia had erected to compartmentalize her guilt collapsed.
She’d been living a double life for a decade—the loyal best friend to Aimee on one side, the keeper of Thomas’s secret and his collaborator on the other.
The cognitive dissonance that allowed her to function all these years dissolved, leaving her raw and exposed.
Locked in place as to what to do next, or how to fix their friendship. She didn’t see how that was possible.
Maybe this was what she deserved, a fractured, lonely existence. Disappearing into witness protection seemed fitting. Like some sort of cosmic punishment for her betrayal.
The sound of movement inside the house had Nadia quickly wiping her face.
She didn’t want Thomas to catch her like this, vulnerable and insecure.
She wouldn’t add to his hefty load of burdens.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she headed into the house.
She’d have to tell Thomas what happened with Aimee.
More secrets would only compound her guilt.
The low murmur of the TV greeted her, another news anchor reporting on some distant disaster that seemed inconsequential compared to the threat they’d been running from.
In the kitchen, Cammy worked at the stove, wielding the spatula Nadia had abandoned upon hearing Cammy’s update about Kane. Scents of sauteed mushrooms and melting cheese filled the room. Cammy flipped an omelet onto a plate.
“Need help?” Nadia offered halfheartedly, coming to stand beside Cammy at the stove.
The older woman glanced at her, taking in what Nadia grasped were her puffy, red eyes and sniffly nose. “I’ve got it under control,” she said gently. “Take it your phone call didn’t go as planned?”
She shook her head. The food looked remarkable, and she knew she should eat, but her stomach was in knots. “Where’s Thomas?” she asked.
“Think he’s in the shower,” Cammy said, sliding another omelet onto a second plate. “Man’s got a lot on his mind.”
She nodded and wandered back to the living room. Standing behind the couch, she chewed on the tip of her thumb, staring numbly at the TV. The news anchor’s words washed over her without penetrating. Aimee’s voice kept replaying in her mind. You chose Thomas over me.
Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. Thomas hadn’t made an appearance.
Something didn’t feel right. She headed down the hallway and through her room to the opened bathroom that certainly didn’t look like anyone had recently used it.
It wasn’t steamy. No wet spots on the floor.
The door to Cammy’s den, the one with the futon Thomas had been meant to sleep on, was open. Thomas wasn’t there.
She searched the rooms downstairs, and when she called his name up the stairs and he didn’t answer, she returned to the kitchen. Cammy had plated three perfect omelets and set them on the table. Steam rose from their golden surfaces.
“He’s not in the house,” Nadia told her, her words edged with a creeping unease. He wouldn’t have left her here behind, would he? No, she would have seen him drive away.
Cammy frowned, moving to the window above the sink. Worry lines deepened as she surveyed her property.
“What is it?” Nadia asked.
“Come to think of it.” Cammy turned back to her. “He’s probably in the stables working out his troubles.”
“Should I leave him be?”
“Breakfast is getting cold,” Cammy said, but her tone suggested she was concerned too.
Nadia debated what to do. Thomas held everything so close to his chest and had been doing so for days now—the attacks, Phil’s murder, his mom’s disappearance, and now Kane’s betrayal.
He always managed an unbelievable level of control.
But how long could one reasonably hold on the way he did before they snapped?
“I’ll go get him,” she decided, using breakfast as her excuse to check on him. He just might need her more than she did him.
Nadia crossed the yard to the stable. The heavy door groaned as she pushed it open, letting in a shaft of morning light that cut across the dusty air.
The sharp, acrid scent of horses and fresh hay mingled with the metallic tang of tools and the earthy odors of wool blankets and leather saddles.
From somewhere in the shadows came the rhythmic, violent sound of metal striking metal.
She followed the noise deeper into the building past stalls where Cammy’s horses shifted nervously, their ears flicking back and forth. Their agitation was unmistakable—stomping hooves, tossing heads, agitated whinnies. The noise had the animals on edge.
“Thomas?” she called, her voice nearly drowned out by another thunderous crash.
She rounded the corner to the last stall and found him.
He’d changed into jeans and a black shirt which he’d already sweat through.
Dark patches spread across his back and chest, under his arms. Dirt smudged his jeans along with what looked like grease.
With savage focus, he pounded at a broken hinge on a stall door, each strike of the hammer reverberating through the wooden beams above them.
“Tom.”
He didn’t hear her, or he chose not to. The hammer came down again, the impact jolting up his arm as a ripple of muscle. The massive screw he was trying to dislodge bent but didn’t budge.
“Tom!” she shouted, finally breaking through his concentration.
He stalled mid-swing, his chest heaving. Slowly, he turned to face her, casting dark and hollow eyes her way. “You told her,” he said.
Her stomach sank and she glanced away. He’d overheard her conversation with Aimee. She slowly nodded, turning back to him.
“Why?” He spoke with the same hard, cold anger he’d displayed after the siege on his house.
“It sort of slipped out.”
“Glasses slip out of hands. My dick slips out of you.” His face twisted with disdain. “A secret like that doesn’t just slip.”
Fury painted her vision crimson. She welcomed the hot, blinding rage against his frigid contempt. No simpler way to say it than he was being a dick. He was mad—she’d even wager he was scared—and he wanted to hurt her.
Hackles raised, she threw out her arms. “Maybe a part of me wanted her to know. So sue me. What more have I got to lose? I just ruined a thirty-year friendship because I chose to listen to you over her. We both know she’ll never forgive me.”
His jaw worked, the skin over his knuckles white where he gripped the hammer.
“You know what? I’m relieved she knows,” she continued, the words tumbling out.
“There’s been this sky-high wall between us for a decade.
It kept us apart. I always had to climb over it or walk around it to feel any sort of the closeness she and I once had.
I’ve never felt the same around her as we were before James’s funeral. ”
She took a step closer to him. “Now there’s nothing between us. It’s just her and me, the real me, not the one keeping secrets. Better she hates me than mourns me like she did with James after I’m gone.”
Aimee wouldn’t see it this way, not at first. But Nadia had given her a gift. Because, yes, she had been there when Aimee mourned James. Front row, center seat. She wouldn’t put Aimee through that again with her disappearance.
“You got that right. She will hate you,” Thomas said, flatly. Something he hadn’t wanted for her since the beginning of this, that Nadia knew. He was probably thinking “welcome to his world.”
“She already does.” She studied him. Tension vibrated through every muscle. “What are you doing out here?”
“Fixing the gate. What does it look like?” He turned back to the hinge and resumed pounding, each blow more violent than the last. The metal was warping, the screw beginning to pull free of the wood.
That was not fixing the gate.
“Cut the crap,” she shouted over the racket. “What are you really doing out here?”
He got in one more strike before whirling back to her. “Waiting,” he spat. “I’m fucking waiting on everything. Our papers. News about Ruiz. An update on Kane’s family.” His voice rose with each item he ticked off. “For James to return my calls. My mother—” A visible shudder ran through him.
He didn’t know where she was or if she was still alive. And that was killing him. Nobody liked to feel useless, powerless. Thomas most of all.