Chapter Sixteen #2
“Because I wasn’t any better than her back then. Didn’t you see me hit rock bottom and then punch through the floor to hell when I threw coffee on that waitress? I sucked,” I said. “Honestly, why did you even marry me, weirdo?”
A startled laugh burst out of him, cracking the stern exterior. “Because I loved you, weirdo. And because...” He sighed. “I was making excuses for you too. Turns out I’m a hypocrite. There, Sue. You got me to admit it.”
I gave him a long, serious look. “That’s not the confession I’m looking for, Rhodes. Could my mother have been speaking about Micah or Alex—possibly. I doubt it, but it’s possible, and I don’t have any proof saying otherwise. But what can be proven is that you left the ballroom and went upstairs—”
“Whoa, wait—”
“—around the time she was killed. Around the time my racist, prying, digging-up-dirt-to-destroy-you-in-the-divorce mother—”
“Sue, stop,” he cried, throwing his hands up.
“Are you serious right now? Are you really asking me what I think you’re asking me right now?
How did we get from your mother hiring someone to dig up skeletons last year, to me killing her last week?
That’s insane! Why would I even bother? She was already dying. ”
“Maybe what she knew was still a threat to you—”
He flung away. “No.”
“Maybe you had to silence her for good—”
“No!”
“—and you easily could’ve stashed a second pair of clothes and—"
“NO!” he roared, veins bulging in his face and neck.
I lurched back, eyes blowing wide—but not because he yelled at me. I stared at his right hand, the air trapped in my lungs.
Rhodes flicked down, looking where I was looking, and saw his hand on the cutting board—wrapped around the knife’s hilt.
He threw it away like it burned. “Sue, I’m sorry.
I’m sorry,” he beseeched me. “I didn’t mean to raise my voice, but you’ve got it so wrong, it’s ridiculous.
I did leave the party around nine thirty, but it wasn’t to kill your mother.
” Just the way he said it made me feel a little ridiculous.
“I went up, and kept going up, to the third floor. To my office.”
It took me a minute for my heart rate to slow. “Your office?”
“My office. I told you that I’d be using the party as a chance to hook some new clients,” he said.
“Well, your man is good at what he does because one of them wanted to sign with me right then. He said if I’d had the kind of money to drape my wife in diamonds and throw parties like that, he wanted in.
“I wasn’t going to give him a chance to change his mind, or sober up, so I ran upstairs to get a client contract. I was back down and watching you bounce around the dance floor like ten minutes later.”
I hesitated. “R-really?”
“Really,” he said gently, taking a step.
Then another. “Baby, come on. You know me. That mugger came at us with a knife that night coming out of the subway, and all I did was punch him once in the face and disarm him. I didn’t take the knife and stab him thirty-four times.
” Rhodes stepped closer, erasing the distance.
“I could never kill anyone. Especially not my wife’s mother.
“I love you.” Rhodes gathered me in his arms, melting me with his warmth and steady, smooth baritone. “Even more than I did before. You’re finally the woman and mother I married, so why would I ruin what we have now that we finally have something worth fighting for?”
I buried my face in his chest, shaking. His I love you wasn’t for me, and yet... it was. “I love you too.” I tipped my chin, lips parting just in time for his to crash on mine.
Fireworks exploded in my mind, their sparks lighting the fuses that burned and sizzled through my body—setting every nerve ending on fire. I gasped under the waves of crashing, rising heat, and Rhodes plunged inside—his tongue tangling with mine and wrangling it into submission.
I moaned into the kiss, losing myself in Rhodes, Rhodes, Rhodes.
No, I didn’t have ten years of dating, living with, and raising a child with Rhodes to say I knew him. But I did have ten years of dating, living with, and thanking fate that I didn’t have a child with the string of bastards in my past.
I knew a bad man when he was oozing his slime on me, and that wasn’t Rhodes. Because he was here.
Rhodes endured the hell I knew my sister put him through and stuck by her until she told him she wanted out. He obviously had the patience of a saint, because if he was going to snap and kill anyone, I had a feeling it would’ve been my sister.
He broke away, resting his forehead against mine. We were quiet breathing each other in.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have accused you.
I’m just in a weird headspace right now.
I see now how lonely, isolated, and despised my mother was.
First, she marries a misogynist who controlled her even after his death.
Then she gets cancer, and instead of allowing her to pass away on a cloud of morphine, she’s violently murdered in her bed.
“It feels like this house and everyone who lived in it is cursed,” I rasped. “Cursed and haunted by evil everywhere we go until we lose the battle. It scares me, baby. I’m scared.”
“Hey, don’t talk like that.” He stroked my hair—his hand heavy but comforting. “Our home isn’t cursed and our family isn’t cursed. It’s not, because we have each other, and together we’re going to get through this. I promise.”
“Promise what?” Micah walked into the kitchen, turning our heads. “You guys okay?”
“We’re cool. Sue was just grilling me on where I went when I left the party.” He smiled at me to take the sting out of it. “Thankfully, I’m accounted for. All of the usual suspects—those closest to Omma—are. Even Reynard had a rock-solid alibi.”
“Reynard?” I said to his back as he crossed to the stove, getting ready to plate dinner. “Why? Because he was out with his friends?”
“No, because he wasn’t. When I was up in my office, I looked out the window and saw him in the garden—sneaking a cigarette.
I remember thinking that boys’ night couldn’t have been that wild if it was over before ten o’clock,” he said.
“But the point is, if he was three floors down smoking a cigarette at nine forty, he definitely wasn’t also upstairs hiding the evidence and cleaning up after committing murder at nine thirty-seven. ”
He gave me a sweet smile. “He didn’t do it.
I didn’t do it. No one who lives in this home hurt your mother, baby, so there’s no need to be scared.
The evil is not in this house. It’s not in your family, so don’t push us away.
We’re here for you, and we’re going to discover the truth together. That’s the promise.”
“Then it’s one I’m one hundred percent on board with,” Micah said. It was his turn to hug and kiss me. “Let us take care of you now. You and those sweet lager nipples are in safe hands.”
I rolled my eyes, but he got a little smile out of me anyway. “Thank you, guys. I really needed to hear that.”
“Of course.”
“We mean it.”
“We love you.”
I just smiled, my gaze drifting up. Yes, my lovely, hot borrowed husbands. I really did need to hear that on the night my mother was murdered, Reynard Agassi was not where he was supposed to be.