Chapter 3
THREE
Aspen
Unknown:
Can we talk?
I have a lot I’d like to say, a chance to explain, and I’m sure you can guess that I have questions of my own.
Unknown:
Please give me the chance to apologize.
Please.
Unknown:
I don’t want to have this discussion in front of your brothers. I don’t know what they know or don’t know. But we need to talk.
Tell me what I have to do to get you to talk to me.
Unknown:
I’m begging you to please give me ten minutes.
Unknown:
I can do it in five if that’s all you’ve got.
I stare at the text messages on my phone, applying another layer of lotion to my legs as I debate whether or not to respond to his latest entreaty.
Levi or Grant must have given him my new number.
But I haven’t been able to bring myself to answer him.
The man showed up after over fifteen years, like a ghost in my kitchen, spoke a handful of words to me, and then left again.
Levi claimed he was pulled away on a mission for work.
I didn’t dare ask more questions than that, as I could tell there was suspicion simmering underneath every exchange we had about Bishop.
The only thing that had kept me from a full-on interrogation was his preoccupation with Zephyrine and making sure she was safe.
A new family mystery we’re all trying to solve extended that reprieve.
But with Bishop back again? It’s only a matter of time.
The clock is ticking whether I like it or not.
I finish massaging the lotion into my skin and gently tap the side button on my phone, shrouding the room in darkness again. I’ll think about it tomorrow.
Or I’ll stay up half the night worrying about it tonight.
Like I have been for weeks now.
How am I going to tell my brothers?
How am I going to tell Fallon?
I blink as I make my way to the bed, trying to let my eyes adjust to the room, but the afterimage at the center of my vision makes me have to hold my hands out to try to feel for the bed before I trip over it.
A venture that fails almost immediately when I slam my shin into the footboard and stumble forward.
I whimper in pain as I hold my palms out to brace my fall. But instead of the ground, I’m met with large warm hands that wrap around my waist and pull me up. My back bumps against a hard, broad chest. I jump at the contact. Gasping and losing my voice to the shock of it
“I’ve got you,” the familiar deep voice interrupts me.
I still attempt a scream, one that comes out raspy and truncated by the dryness of my throat.
“Jones, it’s me. It’s me,” he insists, one of his hands going to my forearm with soft, gentle strokes of reassurance.
My fear is replaced by fury. I rip myself free of his arms and turn on him.
I can still only make out half his face in the dark.
My hand goes to my throat, my thumb swiping back and forth over the hollow of my neck as I try to regain any semblance of poise and calm.
When I imagined him being in this room again in my head, it was far more dignified than this.
“You scared the hell out of me!” I snap, as mad about his presence in the dark as I am about my near tumble in front of him, and the conversation I know he’s about to force us to have.
“I’m sorry.” He takes a step back, his eyes drifting over me, watching me even in the dark.
“How did you even get in here?”
“Is that a serious question?”
“Do I sound like I’m joking?”
“The windows and doors in this place still work like they always did. You’ll recall I used to know how to get in and out of this room unnoticed. Pretty regularly, if memory serves.”
I click my tongue and shake my head. I can’t exactly argue with that, but the implication has a thousand memories of the two of us in this room racing through my head.
The nights he would sneak in and out without anyone in my family being the wiser.
It sends a rush of awareness coursing through me.
One I don’t need right now. Not when the older version of him is an improvement on all the things I’ve always liked about him.
Or when we’re alone in the dark and right next to the same bed we spent hours—
“Did you want a more specific play-by-play?” His voice interrupts my thoughts, and I realize the unnatural pause I’ve created with my daydreams.
“Absolutely not.” I narrow my eyes at him, knowing full well it has zero effect in the dark but needing to put the armor back on anyway. “Just because you know something doesn’t mean you should exploit it.”
“You didn’t leave me with much of a choice.” His tone is flat. There’s a touch of irritation in the accusation that follows. “Especially now that I know you’ve been getting my messages.”
He saw me read them and ignore them when I got out of the shower. Watched me as I put lotion on in my silky, barely there pajamas. The ones I’m still in. Shit. I don’t blush. But if I did, I might. Instead, my fingers run over the necklace dangling from my throat.
If he saw that, how much more did he see?
“How long have you been in here?”
“Long enough.” He’s curt. Which I suspect means he was in here when I was in the shower. And I’d left the door cracked. After all, I had no reason to imagine anyone would be in the bedroom.
“You need to leave. If anyone finds you in here—” I need him gone.
“Who’s going to find me? You got other visitors coming to your room in the middle of the night?”
“Anyone could. I’m—” I start to say I’m married. But I’m not. Not for several weeks now.
“You’re?” he asks, waiting for me to finish my sentence.
“I’m trying to go to bed. I have a lot to do tomorrow. Levi and Zephyrine need my help doing some research on the last relic they’re trying to find. I don’t have time for games like this.” I’m desperate to change the subject and get him out of the room.
“I’ll make this quick.”
“I’d prefer you just leave.”
“Is she mine?”
“You scare the hell out of me. Hide out in my room. Spy on me. And now you ask if my daughter is yours?”
“It’s a simple question.”
“Simple. Right. Then I guess I have a lot of complicated ones for you. Or maybe not so complicated. Maybe they’re pretty simple too. I suppose you could answer just one for starters.”
“What’s that?”
“How hard is it to pick up a fucking phone?”
He curses under his breath, and it fuels me to keep going.
“Just once in, what has it been, fifteen plus years? A simple ‘Hi. How are you? No, I’m actually not dead. Thank you for asking. How are you doing?’”
“Would you have picked up?”
I’m stopped in my tracks by that question. I don’t have an answer for it. But I’m not the only one who was affected by his leaving. My whole family mourned the loss. His best friend, the one who advocated to our father on his behalf, was left thinking he was gone.
“Never mind me. What about Levi? My father? Levi might forgive you. Maybe my father would have too. But—” I shake my head, trying to stop the cloying feeling of tears at the back of my throat.
I don’t cry. I hate crying. But when I think of all the moments…
“Everything you missed. You don’t even know what you lost.”
“I have a pretty good guess.”
“Did you have that guess months ago in the kitchen? Or did you start guessing after you disappeared again? You didn’t even talk to me before you left.”
“I didn’t expect to see you. I didn’t know you were in town. I had no idea about your marriage or about—I need to know. Is she mine?”
“I don’t owe you an answer. Not after what you did. Not after you ran, again.” I shake my head, infuriated when I think about it. “And this time you were a fully grown adult.”
“I didn’t run. I had an assignment. It was halfway to nowhere, and I didn’t have cell access. Levi knew that. I said I’d be back.”
“Months later?” I give him a skeptical once-over.
“There was an accident. One of my guys was in the ICU for weeks, and I spent a few nights in the hospital myself.”
“What kind of accident?”
“I can’t discuss it.”
“Of course you can’t. Just like my brothers. All this cloak-and-dagger shit you all are always up to. Acting like I’m not a grown woman.”
“You’re grown, Jones. No one is denying that.”
“Don’t call me that.” I snipe at him when he uses the nickname he gave me when he found out about my love of archaeology, comparing me to the fictional one that graced our screens as kids.
I tried to talk him out of it. But it stuck when he heard the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” one day in school and passed a note after class where he told me there were too many ways I lived up to it to even consider stopping now.
I grew to love the name and then hate it in equal measure.
I didn’t let Fallon watch a single one of the movies for fear that she’d like one and make me rewatch it a million more times like she did all her favorite shows.
“Is she mine?”
“Why would you think she is?” I’ve managed to keep the secret all these years. No one has ever questioned it.
“Come on, Jones. Even your brother is suspicious.” He lets out a frustrated sigh.
“He hasn’t said anything to me.” My stomach drops at the thought that Levi would discuss it with Bishop before me. They were best friends, but he left us, and I’m Levi’s sister. I deserved to get to have that conversation privately with my brother, or brothers, before Bishop did.
“He doesn’t have to say anything. I could tell by the way he looked at me after the two of you went upstairs that night.”
I go silent. Contemplating why my brother wouldn’t have confronted me by now if he was so sure. I know the exact look Bishop is talking about. Levi’s not like Grant or Ramsey. He’s quieter and more reserved with his words. But silence on something like this was a stretch even for him.
“Is she mine? I need you to tell me.” He stares at me through the dim light. I swallow hard. I suppose it’s time for us both to confront it.
“Yes.”
“Does she know?”
“No.”
“Does your husband know?”
“I don’t have a husband.”