Chapter 22
KIERA
“Mother?” Sean gave me a startled glance.
I closed my eyes, exhaled, then opened them again, knowing from experience that I’d just entered the beginning-of-the-end zone.
“Is that why you’re here?” I asked. “Because of Braden? Is he all right?”
“No thanks to you,” Loretta sneered.
I tried again, seeking clarity. “But you’re saying he’s all right.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Loretta,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, “we’re busy. So, if there’s something you need to say, say it now, then go.”
“Listen to you,” she scoffed, “all high and mighty when you’re nothing but a waste of space.”
Sean tensed beside me, but he kept his mouth shut, probably at a loss for words because Loretta was a real piece of work.
“You don’t get to waltz in here,” I said, “without giving me a call first. You didn’t even knock, and now you’re launching in with… I don’t even know what.”
“If you don’t know what,” Loretta spit, “you’re more stupid than I thought.”
I bowed my head. It was uncanny how efficiently Loretta could ruin my day.
“Maybe you should leave,” Sean said, and his voice was so low and serious it sent a shiver down my spine.
Loretta curled her lip. “I don’t have to listen to you. I don’t even know who you are.”
I took a step closer to her, wanting to cut Sean off from this scene and wondering why he wasn’t already gone. Loretta had left the front door wide open.
“How do you fuck up something so simple as a delivery?” she asked, finally getting to the point of her visit. “You take it. You drop it. You keep your brother out of trouble.”
“More trouble,” Sean muttered.
“You can fuck right the hell off,” Loretta snapped, jabbing her finger toward his chest. “There’s more I gotta say to my girl.”
“No, there isn’t,” I said, wanting this to be over before it could get worse. “I got the message: I fucked up. I’m stupid. But despite all that, Braden’s still breathing. Good on him.”
“And,” Loretta said, “there’s a way for you to redeem yourself.”
“Kiera doesn’t need to redeem herself,” Sean said. “If anyone’s looking for redemption it should be that asshole son of yours.”
My heart lurched in gratitude. No one held their ground with Loretta. I’d barely learned to do it myself. Still, I wished he’d just go.
Loretta’s face went stormy. “Call off your dog, Kiera.”
I wrinkled my nose. “He’s not actually a shifter.”
“Braden said you weren’t taking his calls anymore,” Loretta said. “He called me so I could get you a message. He might know where that bag’s at.”
“Even if we found it,” I said, “his money’s gone.”
“He’s more worried about the gun,” Loretta said snidely, as if this should have been obvious.
“Great,” I muttered. Any lingering question I’d had about the gun was now answered. It was the priority. The money was secondary. How did Braden always manage to dig himself deeper and deeper in the shadiness of this world?
“His lawyers are saying they’ve got a strong defense on the fraud charges,” Loretta explained. “But if he gets out, and that gun’s still missing, there will be a target on his back. So, you gotta find whoever’s got that gun, girl.”
“Why don’t you do it?” Sean asked, which was an excellent question from someone who’d never met Loretta.
It was also a good question from someone whose mother, despite being a tree, rushed in to save a stranger simply because her son seemed to care about that stranger.
Loretta gave him a look that said exactly what I’d been thinking: Not likely.
God, it was humiliating to have Sean see the differences between our two families put on such stark display. It was well beyond being human and nymph. It was about love and indifference. Giving versus taking. Shelter versus the storm.
No matter how things stood between Sean and his mother right now, she still cared about him.
When I looked back on my childhood with Loretta, there wasn’t a single day I would have called “the best day ever.” She’d never taken me to New York to get autographed photos of my heroes.
“Kiera’s not getting any more involved in this,” Sean said. “She’s already done enough.”
My heart squeezed, hearing him defend me.
“Yeah?” Loretta asked snidely. “Well, now she’s gotta fix what she’s done. She can start by finding a guy named Chandler Moss.”
Before I could ask anything about this person, Sean declared, “Moss is dead.”
Loretta whipped her head toward him. “What do you mean, ‘he’s dead’?”
Sean’s body tensed more than it already was. “Lady, how many kinds of dead are there?”
“How do you know he’s dead?” Loretta asked, which was something I wondered myself.
Sean dipped his chin. “Because we found him, dead, right where you’re standing.”
Loretta’s eyes widened, then glanced down at her feet.
I did the same. That guy’s name was Chandler Moss? That sounded like a frat bro, not a hardened criminal.
“And we know he didn’t have the bag,” Sean said, “because he came here and trashed Kiera’s apartment, looking for it.”
Loretta raised her head and glanced around my living room, probably thinking, This is trashed?
“So we’ve got nothing more to talk about,” I said, chiming in again.
Loretta wetted her lips. “Braden gave me another possible name.”
“The name doesn’t matter,” Sean said. “Kiera’s not swinging her ass out there for your son.”
Well, I didn’t know about that, but I liked that he thought so.
“He’s her brother,” Loretta snapped.
“Brothers don’t put their sisters in the line of fire,” Sean said.
“And while we’re at it, mothers crawl for miles on their knees, just to make sure their children are safe and cared for.
They don’t barge into their children’s houses, call them stupid, then demand they wade even deeper into something seriously dark and twisted. ”
Uh…wow. That might not have ever been my reality, but I definitely appreciated the sentiment.
“You’re going to let him talk to me like that?” Loretta asked, looking at me.
“Sean does his own thing,” I said. “I don’t really let him do anything.”
Loretta pressed her lips together into a thin tight line. She recognized my dig on the way she treated Byron, my father.
“Now,” Sean said. “Do I have to drag you out of here?”
“Touch me, and I’ll call the police,” Loretta said.
“Do that,” I suggested. “It’ll make it more convenient for me to file my trespass complaint.”
“Trespass?” Loretta asked like I’d made some kind of joke.
“You barged in here uninvited,” I explained, “then refused to go when asked.”
Loretta wrinkled her nose. “If anything happens to Braden…”
“He’ll have no one to thank but himself,” Sean said.
Loretta huffed but held her ground.
“Get out of here,” I insisted.
She folded her arms. “I need a ride home.”
“You what?” I asked, my voice getting dangerously close to a screech. “How did you even get here?”
“Byron drove me.”
“He dropped you then took off?” I asked, even though it was definitely plausible. I leaned toward the open doorway, trying to get a glimpse of the street.
“No,” Loretta said. “He’s still out there, but I’m not getting back in that car with him.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because the bastard’s got a date tonight with another one of his floozies.”
“Misty?” I asked. That was the name of the last one I could recall. Or was it Crystal?
“No,” Loretta said sarcastically. “This one’s name is Star, if you can believe that. So, I need a ride.”
I sighed. “I’m not giving you a ride home. You’ll have to suck it up and go with Byron.”
“Yeah, right,” she said with an incredulous laugh, as if she totally expected me to give her a ride.
And maybe that was my fault for having done it in the past.
I took a step toward her. “Loretta. I mean it.”
“Oh, fine,” she said. “I’m going. I don’t know why I expected charity from ungrateful trash.”
“Leave,” I repeated.
“Go fuck yourself, Kiera.”
I clenched my teeth, not wanting to take the bait, but there were too many years of muscle memory not to. “No, Loretta. Fuck you.”
Loretta threw her hands up in the air in exasperation, as if I were the unreasonable one, then turned to go.
She didn’t run. But she was gone. She got in Byron’s car, which was idling at the curb, and slammed the door. I could tell they were already fighting as Byron pulled away.
A few beats of silence passed before my adrenaline began to taper.
Sean, probably still stunned by what he’d witnessed, hadn’t moved.
“Sean,” I said, not knowing what to say.
No one had ever stood up for me like he had. Not anyone. Not ever. But that didn’t negate the tension in the room. I could feel Sean’s awkward discomfort growing.
It was a painfully familiar sensation because I’d lost track of how many times my heart had been broken. I just hoped Sean would turn his back before I saw the disgusted look on his face.
That would be something I couldn’t survive.
Sean bowed his head and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
Right. I’d been here before, too, and I knew what he was doing.
Sean wasn’t the type of guy to make a run for it. He was the type who made a graceful exit. He’d make it seem like he had other reasons to leave. He’d let me down easy.
So, that’s how I’d let him play it.
We continued to stand there in silence, both of us staring at the door Loretta had just walked through.
I gave him the time he needed to come up with the kindest way to kill me.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, finally breaking the silence, because I really needed this to be over. “I’ll call Elli, and she can be here in five. You can go.”
“I do have to get to my meeting.” His voice was wooden.
“I know,” I said, even though we both knew it didn’t start for another four hours. “I’d hate for you to be late.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Thanks, Sean. For everything. You’ve been…great. Really great.”
“Do you want to talk about…anything?” he asked, but his eyes remained on the door.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said, making a dismissive wave of my hand.
His mouth twisted as if he tasted something bitter.
“Really,” I insisted. “It’s okay.”
“I’ll wait until Elli can get here,” he said, because he was just that great of a guy. “Then I’ll go. I’m…sorry.”
“Sure. No worries.” I pulled out my phone and called Elli.
Sean went outside and sat on the front step. Obviously, he wanted to to go as soon as she arrived.