Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
PRESENT
It absolutely broke me to stop kissing her.
It was the right thing to do. It had to be. I tell myself that every damn minute, but my body won’t believe it. My lips still burn from hers. My hands still remember the way she fit against me. And the worst part? I’d do it all over again.
I throw my green apple core in the trash can like it’s a basketball hoop and get back to work. Sort of. I try to. But all my energy seems to be going into tapping this pen against my desk as fast as a hummingbird flaps its wings and keeping my boot coming down in sync.
My brother, Rio, turns his gaze on me slowly. I feel it before I see it.
“ Hermano . You’re fucking annoying me.” He twists back to his laptop. “Enzo convinced me to have one day per week working from home, but he failed to tell me it’s impossible to work here.”
He cracks his neck like he does when he’s been irritated and wants to concentrate again. But now he can tell I’m agitated, he won’t be able to focus.
I was borderline scared of Rio when I was a kid. He is one tough man, always made it clear he was technically the oldest if even by a few minutes. Hell, I don’t even recall him feeling like a kid when he was ten and I was seven. I swear he had a beard already then. He’s always felt like a grown person. Even though he and Enzo are twins, he likes to be seen as the leader and puffs out his chest so everyone knows it.
Over time, though, especially when our mother got sick, I noticed that even though he has a metal exterior, somewhere inside, that steel is molten, and he’ll forge his strength into the weapon you need. If the man loves you, he’ll fight your corner and remain strong even when you can’t. I could use some of that strength right now.
He asks me as if annoys him that he can’t help himself wondering. “What’s wrong with you anyway?”
If I lie to him, he’ll be even more annoyed. But there are a lot of things bothering me, so I give him the details we can talk about. “Have you heard about the new employee at Heritage?”
He taps a key hard and swivels his desk chair, lacing his fingers through each other. “The pretty one with a kid?”
I roll my eyes. “You pay too much attention to Julia’s new hires. ”
Rio doesn’t take the bait. He leans back, watching me like he already knows. “Uh-huh. And yet, here you are, looking like a man who lost something important.”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer, because something in my expression has him answering a question I never asked.
“I wouldn’t mess with a single mom with you having that foster application open. They’re practically inspecting under your nutsack right now. You don’t want to put your fate in the hands of someone you barely know. Wait ’til you’re approved, then go for it.”
This reminder is a good one because last night? I wanted to lie her down and let us make up for lost time. She felt so fucking good in my grip, on my lips. Maybe I’m stronger than I give myself credit for because I managed to hold back.
I have Owen to think of. And with all this trouble following Kat around, the farmhouse, the outbuilding, the FBI… it wouldn’t exactly enhance my image.
“Yeah… no… we’re just getting friendly, nothing like that.”
He gazes at me from under his eyebrows like I’m full of shit.
“Well, if it’s nothing like that, why do you have that forlorn expression of a man not getting what he wants?”
This is why I hate talking to Rio sometimes. The man sees through everything. And even if you refute him, he’ll never believe you because he always thinks he’s right.
This time he is.
But will I keep the fact that Kat and I used to be together a secret from my brothers?
If I close my eyes, I can still smell the linoleum of that police station. Feel the weight of that goddamn duffel bag in my hands. The crushing realization that I’d done something I couldn’t take back.
The last thing I want to do is risk losing my family’s respect. What would Rio think if he knew I nearly threw my life away over a girl? If I hadn’t taken that bag, maybe it would have been different.
Then again, something tells me Paul wouldn’t have stopped until he got what he wanted. If he was willing to go to that extent to control his daughter, to steal true love from her, among all the other things I know he used to do? Hell, he might have put a hit on me. Maybe I got away lucky. I only lost my heart but not my life.
Still, I won’t be owning up to me and Kat being lovers. The shame over making that decision to take that bag to Reno still owns a slice of me.
Now that Kat and I cleared the air, I’m more relaxed that she won’t be rushing off to share our past either, because it’s not comfortable to talk about.
But part of me wants to.
Kat and I are already visibly close. Julia noticed she wasn’t just some random old acquaintance. And part of me hates the thought of her being viewed that way. Giving her some sort of reverence seems fair. She wasn’t some girl I brushed shoulders with in high school. She was my future. And I lost it before I even had a chance to hold it.
I give in slightly to Rio’s observation. “We do know each other. Or did. I met her when we first moved to California.”
His eyes widen. He pushes up his sleeves like he’s about to dive his inked arm into a bowl of popcorn at the movies. “Yeah? Why didn’t you ever mention you had a crush back then?”
“You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“I’m merely translating them.” He tosses me one of those smug smiles I had to bat away so many times in childhood.
“The point is, she’s not some meaningless contact on social media, so I have concerns. Plus, she has a child… I think there’s some trouble following her. So… I care.”
He wiggles his finger in the air. “Oh yeah, Dad mentioned someone got hurt when we were in the stables this morning. He said there was a booby trap at Julia’s? I thought he was reading pirate romance or something now and getting a bit excited.”
I laugh roughly. “Not his imagination. A bag of feed was rigged to fall in Julia’s outbuilding.”
“Fuck.” He turns more serious. “How do we know it wasn’t meant for Julia?”
“Kat’s place was ransacked the day before. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”
“You think somebody is following her?”
Now that the words have been said out loud, they carry a weight they didn’t before. I need to get to the bottom of this before Owen moves in. I can’t be sleeping on Julia’s couch at that point, and Kat will never move in here.
But not because she doesn’t want me anymore. More because, last night, in that kiss, I felt it, she does.
“So that’s why you slept at Julia’s? For her?”
“And her son.” I need to keep reminding him it’s not all about the pretty new girl.
He reflects on the situation for a moment. “Does she have any ideas who it could be? Stalkers and shit like this are typically an ex.”
“Her husband is dead. No boyfriends. Just her dad who is one entitled motherfucker, and I wouldn’t put it past him, but Kat spoke to him. She’s adamant it wasn’t him who broke into her house. I don’t think he’d physically harm her.”
I want to believe that. But I also wanted to believe Paul Castellanos wasn’t capable of ruining two lives just because he could. And look where that got me.
“Do you want GhostEye help?”
I can’t get the big guns in now. Ava, Rio, and my brother are busy, and their software is taking down huge gangs, decimating the drug trade and sex trafficking… they work on international cases, and there are far too many. It feels too big a favor to call in just yet.
“Maybe at some point.”
“We should ask Anton or Gabriel to trail her,” Rio suggests.
Anton, Ava’s best friend and bodyguard in her years of captivity, used to be a Navy SEAL and was a vigilante for years. Now that my military brother, Gabriel, is back in town, the pair seem to have taken an interest in starting some private investigation company. I’m not entirely sure what it is…
I shake my head. “It seems a bit sick to have her trailed when someone else might be trailing her.”
“ Idioto . I don’t mean for them to trail her in secret. I mean Kat can hire them. They could be kind of half bodyguard, half PI. If they see anything suspicious, they can tell her.” He lifts an eyebrow. “Or you.”
He just won’t let up, will he?
But it’s not a bad idea. “I’ll ask her tonight at the cookout. Are you coming to Zo’s? Dad’s cooking tonight.”
“In that case, yes.”
“You don’t like Enzo’s cooking?”
“He’s fine. But, love her as I do, Ava has zero talent in the kitchen. And that’s saying a lot from me because I’m a meat and potatoes man.”
I laugh lightly.
I force myself to focus on the legal document in front of me. Something concrete. Something that doesn’t have Kat’s name written all over it. But the words blur together, shifting out of focus no matter how hard I try.
I blink. Shake my head. Try again.
Useless.
Because all I see is her—standing in the dim glow of Julia’s living room, her voice low, steady, undeniable.
I was never engaged to Nicholas.
It should have changed everything. Maybe, deep down, it already has.
I pick up another Granny Smith and toss it from hand to hand, needing something physical to pull me back to the present. But as soon as my teeth sink in, the taste drags me back—to our tree, to Kat feeding Hector a green apple and throwing one to me…
I drop the apple onto my desk like it burned me.
Damn it.
I need to get my shit together before tonight. Before I see her again. Before she’s across Enzo’s patio and I have to fight the instinct to pull her into the dark and kiss her breathless all over again.
Rio exhales sharply through his nose. Not quite a sigh. Not quite an accusation.
“You good?”
His voice yanks me back, only now realizing I’ve been gripping the edge of the desk so hard my knuckles have gone white. I force myself to let go, rolling my shoulders back.
“Fine. ”
Rio isn’t convinced. He never is.
“So,” he says casually, “since you don’t like her, can I have her?”
The words hit me like a match to gasoline. Heat surges up my neck, my chest, my whole damn body enflames.
Before I can think. Before I can stop myself. I want my tone to come off like banter but it’s slightly sharper. “Fuck off.”
Rio’s slow, knowing laugh fills the room, smug as ever. He leans back in his chair, stretching his arms behind his head like he’s just won something.
“If there’s one thing you can count on,” he muses, “it’s that I’m always right.”
I rub a hand down my face, willing myself to ignore the way my pulse won’t settle.
I can fight this. I have to. But deep down, I already know the truth. With Kat, I’ve never been able to walk away.