Chapter Twelve
“I kind of lied about why we left Seven Roads when we were kids.”
Eve was staring at the wall across from them.
The hospital room’s TV had been off since Darius had been wheeled in after his surgery.
No one had thought to turn it on after, even on low.
Darius had never been someone who could sit in front of a TV with any real enthusiasm.
He was more of a book or hands-on-project kind of guy.
He had never been much of a fan of noise.
If Eve had to guess, she thought those ways of his hadn’t exactly changed over the years.
He was single, living in his childhood home, working a job that forced him to ask more questions than answer.
The only surprise was that he had taken on a roommate.
Though, the younger man also seemed prone to talking less than more.
At least until the young woman, Winnie, was in the room.
The three of them had spoken quietly earlier beneath the TV no one had even thought to turn on.
Then again, who was Eve to say if Darius had or hadn’t changed since they were kids? She had been gone.
Did people really change all that much from when they were kids?
Circumstances forced action—but change? Real change?
It was a question Eve had wondered throughout the years, usually in the quiet of the night, staring at the bedroom ceiling and trying to remember the little girl who had once lived in Seven Roads.
Now Eve let out a breath. This was a story she needed to tell him—she knew that—but that didn’t mean she was eager to do it.
Regardless of her feelings, Darius gave her the space to work through them. He was quiet as she tried to figure out the best entry point to the origin of her lie.
He didn’t even question why she was sharing his hospital bed.
He didn’t say anything at all.
Eve had already heard a bit of gossip in town about people often calling him cold.
That she didn’t understand.
Darius Williams had always been warm to her.
It was one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted to leave Seven Roads as a kid.
It was one of the reasons a part of her was glad to finally be able to explain why she had.
Eve adjusted her gaze to the spot across the room where the wall met the ceiling. Her memory yanked her back into the past.
“I didn’t know Dad was sick until we were in Texas,” she started, eyes straight ahead.
“Maybe because he was never really at the house because of work when we were here, or maybe because, by the time he did start to hang around after Mom left, I was so used to being by myself I just didn’t see the signs.
So when we got to Houston and he told me he’d been accepted into a drug study—his last chance at surviving—our life here in Seven Roads just kind of disappeared. ”
Eve picked at the fabric of her hospital gown.
She didn’t like hospitals, doctors or medical clinics, but over the last decade or so, she had more than gotten used to them.
“I won’t get too into the details because he’s okay now, but back then, even with the drug trial, he was really sick,” Eve continued.
“You know Mom, once she left here that was it for us as a family. And remember Aunt Pat? She’d just had her third kid.
The rest of Dad’s family wasn’t exactly dependable to start with either.
So when things started getting really bad, I realized it would be just me taking care of Dad. ”
There was still an anxiety there. An imprint of the terror in Eve’s chest when she finally understood that the position of sole caregiver would have to go to her.
That her father dying wasn’t something she could avoid or ignore.
That she couldn’t simply give him encouragement or a hug as she passed by.
That the man she had barely seen because of his work throughout her young life was now the person who needed her most.
And it had all happened so quickly too.
One week she had been climbing through Darius’s window, a lonely but happy preteen, the next she was standing in a small apartment in Texas with a father who was staring at death, asking her to hold his hand.
“We finally started getting really promising results around the time I turned sixteen,” Eve continued. “When I was eighteen, Dad was given the all clear. He still has to take meds for the rest of his life, but the shortened life expectancy we’d kept hearing about every year was finally extended.”
For the first time in years, he had been smiling too. It had been better than any present Eve could have gotten for officially becoming an adult.
At the same time, that happiness had seesawed with a new, uncomfortable weight.
“But by that point, it had been almost eight years,” she said.
“Eight years of me taking care of him. Of always being on call. Being there every minute I could. Chores and exercise. Tracking medicines and making doctor visits. Having to deal with financial problems, picking up after-school jobs to help fill the gap.”
Eight years of a childhood that hadn’t been childlike at all.
Eight years of realizing that the only taste of a childhood she’d had at all was because of the man sitting next to her now.
“So when it was time to graduate high school and head to college, I couldn’t just leave.
” Guilt mingled in with the feeling of being medicated.
It was an old, worn and beaten kind of shame.
The shame of a lie told so much that, at times, Eve had forgotten it was a lie at all.
“I didn’t tell Dad that’s why I decided not to go to college.
He’d just started dating for the first time since Mom left and was trying to find some normal…
So I lied and told him I’d rather work.”
Waitressing, tending bar, seasonal cashier jobs, odds-and-ends gigs like cleaning and babysitting. Just anything and everything she could do to help with the bills and debt that had piled up Eve did for the next ten years.
“It wasn’t until Dad got remarried to my stepmom and moved out of that small apartment that I really realized we had finally done it.
We’d gotten him out of this exhausting situation where it felt like he’d been trying to climb out of some never-ending hole for years.
But that’s when I really understood the part I’d really played in helping him get out of it. ”
Eve sighed.
“I hadn’t pulled him out, I’d pushed him out.
Which meant I was still there when he was able to finally walk away.
” She listed her next points lazily off on the fingers still resting against Darius’s leg.
“I had no real friends, no real career, no life goal or dreams I was running toward. My romantic relationships came down to a handful of dates scattered between weekend shifts and overtime, and even though I managed to get an apartment that wasn’t all that bad, it was just a place I went to for sleep. ”
Eve snorted, a bit of self-loathing in the sound.
It was another feeling she never would forget.
Over thirty years old and she felt like she was a kid again, standing at the beginning of adulthood without a clue about what to do first.
The spot on the wall Eve had been staring at blurred slightly.
She cleared her throat and continued.
“I tried to slow down after that,” she said.
“I tried making friends, find a relationship that meant something, figure out career things and if I even had dreams. Then, through one of Dad’s old friends he’d made from his treatment days, I learned about some work the Keys Foundation had done with a medical project in a small town in Alabama.
I checked their social media and found a press release about Scott Keys, praising small-town medical studies.
When he named-dropped the hospital’s new research annex that was in Seven Roads—well, I was sure it was fate. ”
“I applied for a job at the foundation’s headquarters in Atlanta, got an interview and probably was the most excited I had been in years.
” Eve laughed, but it was short and not at all humorous.
“Though, with my résumé, or lack thereof, they told me on the spot that I wasn’t a good fit.
Now, believe me, I understand their reasoning.
I was underqualified for sure. But to go all that way, just to be told I wasn’t good enough? It was rough.”
The small hope Eve had had?
It had disappeared into the night air then.
“I went to the bar later, ready to drown my sorrows in drinks I couldn’t really afford, when I ran into a group of guys being rowdy in a nearby alley. Three guys against one, and the one guy who was being pushed around didn’t look like he could hit a wet paper bag stuck on the sidewalk.”
At this part, Eve felt a smile curve up the corner of her lips. It was genuine.
Darius finally spoke.
“Let me guess. You jumped in to help the one,” he said.
Eve laughed a little. She nodded.
“I went in there all loud and fast—you know, not giving them a second to really think—and finally made enough space to get the guy and run.” If it had been a movie, their escape would have been in slow motion Eve had thought even then.
Dramatic but fun. Low stakes that, in the moment, had felt so high.
“Once we were clear of them, he treated me to a nice meal that I was in no mood to refuse. We chatted all night before I had to go back to my hotel and we’d had a good time, but there were no plans to see each other again or talk, even.
So when I got a call early the next morning to come in for another interview with the Keys Foundation, I was surprised as all get-out to see him there.
Standing all smart and proper in a suit. ”
“Mitchell Keys,” Darius guessed.
Eve nodded.
“Mitchell had gone back that night after our dinner and told Scott about my so-called daring rescue. Scott had wanted to meet me before I left town, so what I thought was an interview with HR for a job at their headquarters ended up being a meal with the big boss himself. Before that meal was even finished, he hired me to be his personal assistant.” At the time, Eve had been so surprised her mouth had flopped open like a fish out of water.
It had been the first bit of hope she’d had in years.
“Scott said I was good under pressure, and if I could handle an issue like that with his brother discreetly, then working with a high-profiler like himself would be easy. So I became his assistant.”
Again if it had been a movie, that would have been the beginning of a beautiful ending.
Down-on-her-luck, listless daughter finally finds purpose and drive again. Meets not one but two kind men who care. Finds purpose in work, love and life.
Life fulfilled.
Future bright.
But that wasn’t what happened next.
There was no need to pad the rest of the past with emotional asides and deep, life-changing epiphanies.
Now Eve was at the fact portion of her problems.
“Out of all the work that Scott did, I took the most interest in his involvement in anything medical, and when he started meeting with a man named Horace Clare, owner of Clare Biometrics, I couldn’t help but pay attention.”
“Clare Bio,” Darius echoed. His low rumble vibrated against her as he spoke.
“The company that’s about to use the research annex here for a new pharmaceutical trial?
I didn’t know that the Keys Foundation had anything to do with them.
I’ve only heard Scott wanted to invest in the town, but not how. ”
Eve nodded.
“He’s been looking into ways to boost the economy by bringing in new business, using the research annex and whatever study they do as a good example of how small towns can do big things.”
“His whole Small Town White Knight shtick.”
She nodded again.
“I thought his meetings with Horace were related to Clare Bio being the new company to move into the research annex,” Eve continued. “And that it was all happy coincidence that I, his new assistant, had lived in the same town as a kid. I was wrong.”
Eve finally turned face the man next to her. Darius did the same. His brow was drawn in.
“Scott had been interested in Seven Roads before he met me, before he met Horace and way before he made it known publicly that he was investing in the town.”
Darius’s eyebrow rose high.
“What? Why?”
Eve lowered her voice, glancing at the closed door just past him.
“I think he’s been the reason behind all of the town’s problems these past few years.”
Darius also glanced at the door. When his gaze was back on her, he looked as cold as the town rumors claimed.
“What do you mean all our problems? Do you mean our past cases? Because, as much as I’d like to blame one person for all of them, even the big investigations we’ve gone through over the last few years have been cut-and-dried once we got all our ducks in a row.”
Eve had known about the department’s big cases over the last decade simply because she had been keeping tabs on a certain detective’s career. At least, for the most part. That task had become much easier thanks to a few key investigations and their outcomes making the national news.
That’s why Eve hadn’t intended on telling Darius, or anyone else, her discovery until she had concrete evidence. Her belief, her accusation, would change everything. Without proof, though? She knew she sounded delusional.
Staring now at a man who had a successful career as a detective in part because of these past wild cases, she felt some nerves start to twist in her stomach.
She wiggled a little like the physical move could dislodge the new feeling.
It didn’t.
She continued anyways.
There was no point in keeping it in any longer.
Darius had taken a bullet because of her.
The truth would hurt less.
She hoped.
“I think he’s the reason he got the White Knight of Small-town Living nickname in the first place.”
Darius’s eyebrow lifted once more.
“He gave himself the nickname?”
Eve shook her head.
Her answer felt as loud in mostly dark hospital room as the gunshot had.
“I think Scott Keys destroys small towns just so he can save them.” Eve made sure to hold Darius’s gaze. He sure was handsome. She let out a small breath. “And I think he’s only coming to save Seven Roads now…because he’s spent the last several years slowly destroying it.”