Chapter 4
FOUR
ME
Come on, Calla. Please talk to me.
The text message from earlier this morning stared back at me, joining the dozens of other unanswered ones. It had only been a couple of days since the blow-up at the bar, and my heart ached from missing my sister. Would she ever hear me out? Did I even deserve that? Calla was usually the most forgiving person in the world, but this was a deep secret I’d kept from her for years .
But how was I supposed to tell her? Oh yeah, so you know your high school boyfriend? Yeah, I married him on a drunken whim in Las Vegas. And even though Gray and I had been friends first, she was the one he dated, the one he actually wanted. I couldn’t bring myself to explain how I had been madly in love with him and was willing to settle for second place.
I would rather eat a tin of thumbtacks.
My phone chimed, and I instantly sat up, hoping it was Calla. But no such luck—just another text in a group chat with my law school friends. They were trying to arrange drinks, and usually, I’d try to make an effort, even though I’d most likely back out at the last minute because of some work emergency. But today, I didn’t even feel like responding, too busy wallowing about being such a shitty sister.
The worst part was that there was a moment last year when I could have told her. It was right after I found out Calla was dating her older boss, even though it was against the company’s rules. I thought it was going to end in disaster, but luckily for them, Theo was too stubborn to let my sister go. He loved her with a fierceness I only dreamed about. They were even expecting a baby this summer.
And while I was thrilled it had worked out for them, when I first found out, it hurt that Calla had lied to me, even though it had only been a couple of weeks. Add another check into the hypocritical column for me. We’d promised each other no more secrets. That was the moment I should have told her everything.
But I’d done what I always did: made excuses in my mind to hide the past with Grayson. Because as much as I wanted to tell Calla, she was the one person I couldn’t admit the truth to. Not only because Gray had been hers first, but because I would hate to see her opinion of me change. She was one of the few people who saw the good in me despite my surly personality pushing most others to the periphery. Even back home, where she’d tried to pull me into the fold of her friend group, I felt like the outsider, like I was one quip or smart ass comment away from being excommunicated.
A knock sounded on my door, and my eyes darted up to meet the smooth smile of my favorite investigator. Tomas wasn’t a tall man, probably just shy of six feet, but he was still one of the most intimidating men I’d ever met. His dark eyes were intense, able to make the most assured man question himself. His chocolate brown hair was shaved at the sides but longer on top, and a dusting of stubble covered his olive-toned chin and cheeks. He stepped closer, holding a stack of documents. I arched a brow, trying to hide my hopeful smile. “Please tell me that’s what I think it is.”
“If you were hoping it's photos of your client engaged in extracurricular activities with a woman who is not his wife…” he chuckled, passing me the envelope. “Then you’re going to be very happy.”
As soon as I held it in my hand, I ripped the envelope open, both horrified and delighted by what Tomas had captured on film. Glancing around him to make sure there weren’t any lurking ears, I whispered, “You think you can get this to the wife’s attorney without alerting anyone?”
Tomas clicked his tongue. “I’m insulted you even have to ask, querida. But I have to admit, this little assignment piqued my interest. Shouldn’t you be helping your client keep his prenup in place?”
I stared back at Tomas, trying to keep up my stony veneer, but he’d always been able to see through me, even when we met years ago. The best investigator contracted by the firm–he was only supposed to work with the named partners. Luckily for me, our paths had crossed on one of my first days, and a particularly bad one at that. He must have seen something that gave him pause because, unlike the rest of my colleagues, he stopped and asked if he could help me. Typically, I would have said no, needing to prove I could do it myself, but he caught me at a weak moment, and to be honest, I needed the help.
As they said, the rest was history.
I shrugged my shoulders as I leaned back in my white leather chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Obviously, someone on the wife’s side must have gotten wind of the affair and leaked it to her attorney.”
Tomas’ wolf-like smile matched mine as he walked over to the corner of my office, thumbing over the top of my legal texts. My office was small, but at least I’d moved up a few floors. It wasn’t on the top, and most people forgot about me down here, but when I walked in every day, it made me proud to see my name etched onto my door.
“Does this have anything to do with the police reports the judge suppressed?”
I toyed with the rings on my pointer finger, trying to get the images out of my head, even months later. My client beat his wife within an inch of her life, and even after filing a police report saying he was the cause, she still wasn’t granted a restraining order. And because of some bullshit technicality, the overseeing partner had gotten it thrown out of court, making it even harder for his ex-wife to get any support from him now that they were divorced.
While I tried to do my job and fight for my client, domestic violence was unforgivable in my mind. My client deserved to lose everything, but I also had to think of my future, hence the need for anonymity. Luckily, Tomas and I saw eye to eye on a lot of these cases, and he was always happy to throw in a couple of pro-bono hours for a good cause.
I handed the photos back to him. “Like I said, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
As soon as Tomas took the folder and tucked it inside his leather jacket, I leaned back in my chair. My eyes closed, and I rubbed my lids, trying to push away the migraine that had been plaguing me all day.
“What’s going through your mind, querida?” Tomas asked as he sat down, kicking his feet up on the end of my desk. I tossed a stack of Post-It notes at his feet, making him chuckle and put them back on the floor, but when he leaned closer, there was nothing but cold observation in his eyes. “You look tired, Devyn. Even more than usual.”
“Isn’t that just a euphemism for saying I look like shit?”
“You could never,” Tomas shrugged. Once upon a time, his bold flirtations would have come across as more than a passing comment, but now, they were familiar. Besides, we worked well together, so we’d never crossed the line, a choice I was very grateful about. Not only would it have made work awkward, but we’d become good friends, and we would have never worked out as a couple, not when I couldn’t give more than a few sleepless nights.
Tomas’ voice broke me out of my haze. “Anything I can do to help?”
Only if you have a time machine and the ability to wipe people’s memories . Maybe if the past forty-eight hours were gone, I’d be able to take a full breath. It was tempting to fill him in, but there were eyes everywhere, and even though I trusted Tomas, I didn’t want anyone else in this building to learn my weakness. I’d seen firsthand how quickly loyalties could shift for the right price. No, this secret was mine to bear. And considering that my husband— I shuddered thinking that word —was currently at the top of my shit list, there wasn’t anyone else I was willing to let in.
“I’m fine,” I sighed, shifting forward to look over my caseload for the day, but Tomas just stared at me as if able to read the lie in my words. I sighed, dropping the glare for a moment. “I will be fine. As long as I don’t have to talk about it, especially not here. I just want to do my job.”
Tomas stood, and for a moment, I thought he was going to walk out of my tiny office without another word. But instead, he leaned forward on my desk, placing his hand on top of mine. “Remember why you came here, Devyn.”
My jaw tensed. “Of course I do.”
“Then focus on that. You’re getting close, querida. I can feel it. And then, maybe once we close all this…” Tomas sighed, like he wasn’t sure he believed his own words. “Maybe it’s time to think about moving on. Start really living.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I don’t remember asking for tough love with my morning coffee.”
“Might be tough love, but you need it,” he shrugged. “I know why, but I’ve watched you kill yourself for years, Devyn. You’re a damn good lawyer, but I want you to think if this is what you want the rest of your life to look like.”
No . The voice in the back of my mind called out before I could stop it. From the outside looking in, it looked like I had everything I could ever want: the job, the fancy apartment, and enough money to live comfortably. But it was a hollow existence, and I probably would have left a long time ago if I’d had the courage to walk away.
But I wasn’t ready to consider that. I was too focused on my goals to picture a life afterward.
I smirked as I looked over to Tomas. “And you waited how long to say something to me?”
“This is the first time I thought you’d actually hear me. Oh, and before I forget, there’s a little something extra tucked in that folder. You might find it interesting.” With a knock on the doorframe, he backed away, waving at me as he passed through the office door.
After it swung closed, I tried to keep my pulse calm as I searched through the file to find what Tomas had left for me. Underneath all the photos was a zip drive, and I let out an excited sigh. Peeking out into the hallway, I closed the blinds to my office and rushed into the corner to grab my personal laptop. It was a risk doing this at the office, but there was no way I could wait until I got home.
As soon as my computer booted up, I plugged in the external hard drive and made sure the Wi-Fi connected to my personal hotspot. When Tomas and I first started down this path, I talked to the IT director, flirting with him to see how I could work around our system in case I needed to access anything I didn’t want my boss to see. I'm pretty sure he thought I was filming OnlyFans videos in my office, but that was better than the truth.
It only took a moment for everything to boot up, and the drive required an encryption code to access it. Tomas and his spy games . I guess I should be grateful. He was doing all of this to keep me safe, but it was hard to be thankful when I was memorizing fifteen different codes and pins a week.
As the data downloaded, I searched through each file, looking for anything familiar. Most of the pages were financial reports, ones I would really need to sit down and analyze to make sense of it all. But as I scrolled through a few more pages, a familiar name jumped out at me.
Saint Stephen’s Lake.
“What the hell?” I muttered, scanning through that section. It was just a quick mention of a project, but it was enough to pique my interest. “What are you doing at the lake?”
A group of interns walked by my office, and I slammed my laptop shut, not wanting to risk getting caught. But after I tucked everything away and moved back to my desk, the silence around me became overbearing. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the file said. Maybe it was nothing, but the idea of my investigation leading back to the lake made me want to crawl out of my skin .
Sitting wasn’t an option, not with all this excess, frantic energy coursing through my veins. As I stood, I moved over to the window, watching the city below me. It was a world away from the lake, where time seemed to move slower. Even though I’d lived here for the past five years, it felt like I was still getting used to the noise, still getting used to how you could barely see the stars. Just the thought made me miss Saint Stephen’s Lake. I hadn’t lived there for over a decade, but it was still the closest thing I had to a home.
“Get a grip,” I whispered to myself, rubbing my fingers along my brow. This nostalgia was nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction, residual emotion from my trip back to that fucking town. It always took me a few days to shake off the memories, to focus on the present, to forget about the past that haunted me so spectacularly.
And Gray.
It was always a kick in the stomach to see him, especially after a long span apart. Even though my head knew it was a mistake to give him an inch, my body always had other plans, wanting to be as close to him as humanly possible. And even though he graced my television screen often, seeing him in real life was a completely different story.
Being the sole focus of those steel eyes was like being pulled underwater, helpless to resist the call of the depths.
And that wasn’t to speak about the rest of him. The man had been finely honed through years of hard work, baseball consuming his entire world since we were in high school. His tall frame was packed with muscles, every inch of him a finely tuned machine. I knew how dedicated Gray was to his craft, spending as much time in the gym as he did on the baseball field.
My office phone blared on my desk, and I was grateful for the reprieve. I needed to get my thoughts as far away from Gray as possible. But when I saw my boss’ assistant on the other side of the line, I internally swore. Lifting the phone, I rested it between my shoulder and ear. “Hey, Teresa.”
“Hey, Devyn. Mr. Turner would like to see you in his office.”
“I’m just working on the Masters brief right now. Can it wait?”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. He was very insistent you get up here as soon as possible.”
That was her polite way of saying he was already in a foul mood and any stalling on my part would only poke the bear.
“Great,” I sighed. “I’ll be right up.”
As I hung up the phone, I reached into my desk, pulling out a pad of paper from the top drawer. As I rifled through my belongings, I couldn’t help but glance at the paper tucked inside the corner, taped so it would never shift and get tossed by accident. With one swipe of my finger along the strip of photos taken on a summer day so long ago, I straightened my back, hoping I could borrow a little strength from my past self.