Chapter 52
Kinsley
Chapter Fifty-Two
A few days later
I woke up with warm sheets wrapped around my body and the scent of Thomas in my nostrils. I turned around, expecting his place to be empty and for him to already be downstairs, but he was there reading. I wrinkled my nose as I tried to read the title of his book without much luck. His dark eyes found my tired ones, and when he realized I was awake, he put the book aside.
“Good morning.” He bent down to kiss me, his lips soft and warm against mine.
“Morning.” I pressed my face into his side, hiding from the sun shining through the window.
There was a bump coming from downstairs, and I sat up, my back straightening as sleepiness suddenly disappeared from my eyes.
“Easy.” Thomas wrapped an arm around me and pulled me back down. “It’s just the guys.”
“What are they doing?” I turned to get out of the bed, but Thomas pulled me back.
“If I read Braxton’s group chat right, they moved Josh’s boat out earlier, and now they are doing the same thing with the grill,” he answered, locking me down by my waist.
Josh. A conversation between him and Thomas flashed into my mind from a few days ago. They were talking in the living room, and Connor and I might have been eavesdropping while we ate.
“Why did you step away?” Thomas suddenly asked, and the spoon stopped halfway to my mouth. There was a long silence following, and neither I nor Connor moved. Everything seemed tense. I had my guesses about why, and I knew Connor had his, as he shared some of it with me but?—
“I didn’t,” Joshua answered. “And I did.”
I frowned. What does that mean? But Thomas didn’t ask; he waited.
“I tried to find her, I talked with multiple private investigators, multiple lawyers, but they were no help. You know how tiring that can be? Raising two children on your own all the while trying to find your fucking wife?”
“So, you gave up?” I heard Thomas’s raspy voice.
If I tried really hard, I could see their expressions in front of my mind’s eyes. So similar yet different.
“No, I came back here, multiple times, working with the chief. Until he died.”
“So that’s why he was so shaken about us coming here,” Connor muttered to me. “He tried to talk us out of it even when our things were already loaded into the car.” So that was what they were arguing about before we left.
The people Josh had hired had worked on this case for years, and we solved it in a week all because of Samantha’s help. If she hadn’t have sent me intentionally to the wrong hallway, and I didn’t see those pictures…well, Eric helped, too, by robbing the Sunnyside, which told us that whatever happened there had to be important.
“Hey.” Thomas’s breath tickled my nape, pulling me back to the present.
“Moved the boat out?” I frowned, turning to him. “As in, onto the water?”
“Where else do they usually go with a boat?” he teased.
I rolled my eyes. That sounded like fun, but…
“Is there a specific reason?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Just read the chat, please,” he said, turning back to the book he was reading, but when I reached for my phone, he pulled me back again.
“Five more minutes and I will get up, make breakfast, and read the chat to you if you want, but just. Five. More. Minutes,” he muttered, and I laughed.
“Have you talked to your dad since…you know? He went home,” I asked.
“You won, you can go,” he replied with a groan, and I elbowed him in the side.
“No, but seriously. My mom still hasn’t returned any of my calls.”
He flinched. “Admit it, you just want to win the game again,” he joked, and I snorted. His features changed, and I waited for his serious answer. “I think she already moved out.”
I nodded, picking at my nails.
After the chief and Officer Maeve left on the night of the Fourth of July party, Kevin came inside and dropped himself down next to us on the couch. The three of us just sat there in silence until Thomas came down to check on us. He laid down on my other side and turned on the TV, handing the remote to Connor, who then put on Tangled. We must have fallen asleep right there on the couch while we were watching the movie, because we were woken up by Josh the next morning. He only spent a few hours here, talking to his sons, to the police, and to me, when he told me that he and my mother went their separate ways. It would have shocked me if I didn’t know what I knew now about him and Lizzie. And him and my mother…well, they were two people who were only in love with their jobs and their strict schedules.
Since then, the question of where I would spend the rest of the vacation has been stressing me out. I couldn’t reach my mom, and she didn’t even send me her new address. If I had to guess, she had probably moved back to Manhattan, but that was a big place to cover. I didn’t want to go back to Thomas’s father’s in Harrison, either, even though he offered to let me stay there until the start of the semester.
I bit the inside of my cheek and tried to relax back into the mattress.
“What are you reading?” I asked, trying to distract myself while I reached for the book in Thomas’s hand. “The Choices Justices Make,” I read the cover with a grimace. “Well, that’s dry,” I said, handing it back to him, and he chuckled.
“Ah yes, I should have been reading one of your smutty books, isn’t that right, Sage?” he smiled, and I rested my head against his shoulder.
“Would have been better,” I agreed. “At least those have action in them.”
He laughed, and my stomach tingled.
“I think it’s time for me to move into my own place,” I blurted out, and he turned toward me, lifting a brow. “I mean, after we get back. I want to find an apartment.”
He nodded, then furrowed his brows. “I thought you were moving in with me,” he said, and I wrinkled my nose. “You do know I have my own place, right?” he asked, and after a moment of hesitation, I nodded, which made him laugh again. “We could stay there until we finish school. Then we could find something else, if you’d like to.”
When I didn’t answer, he leaned over me. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” He brushed his nose against mine.
I shook my head, furrowing my brows. Did he really think that? Who wouldn’t want to move in with Thomas Rhodes?
“Of course, I want to. But you are starting at Yale Law this year.”
He breathed a kiss onto my lips, and my toes twirled under the blanket.
“True,” he replied, and I frowned, which made him sigh. “And?”
“I thought you wanted to move closer to college.”
He knotted his brows, a smile playing on his lips. “There’s a thirty-minute drive between the two colleges. I think I will be fine. Except if you don’t?—”
“I do,” I cut him short. “I would like that.”
Thomas chuckled. “Good,” he whispered, and warmth flooded my chest.
Suddenly I remembered something I bought two days ago, and I crawled to the nightstand, pulling it out of the drawer.
“Here,” I said, turning back around and handing the postcard to Thomas.
He furrowed his brows, confused, before turning it over. I chewed on my lip, waiting for his reaction. A smile curled in the corner of my mouth as he read. Then his lips parted, his nostrils flared, and he turned his head toward me.
“I—” He lifted the postcard back up and scanned the five things I wrote down to him again with disbelief.
“Do you like it?”
He looked up at me, lifting his brows. “Do I like it?” he asked, widening his eyes, and I waited, not knowing what to say. Did I write something bad? “I fucking love it, Sage,” he exhaled, pulling me against his chest, and I let out a relieved chuckle. “Thank you,” he murmured into my hair, and I buried my head into his neck, taking a deep breath of his scent: sandalwood, cedar, and body wash.
Maybe I was worrying about nothing. Maybe home wasn’t what I thought it was. Maybe it wasn’t the fancy apartments and houses, maybe it was the person you shared it with. The person you trusted enough to fall asleep with. The person you couldn’t wait to talk to after a long day. I hadn’t developed a good relationship with either of my parents, but maybe things would change in the future. But even if they didn’t, I was going to be all right because, at the end of the day, I have my family right here by my side.
???
An hour later, I was standing on Josh’s deck boat with a mojito in my hand while Braxton blasted the music on the shore.
“It’s my turn!” Connor shouted before jumping from the edge of the boat and disappearing under the water.
I pulled down the sunglasses in front of my eyes and looked out toward the house, where Aaliyah and Cora were talking on the front stairs. They had been doing that a lot in the last few days, which was a good thing, in my opinion.
It wasn’t smooth between us just yet, and that was all right. But I appreciated her showing up and apologizing. I knew Thomas would come around eventually, and Connor, too, and with time I think Kevin as well. Just like the others, even if most of us needed more time.
“Kins!” Connor screamed, getting out of the water. “Swim with me, pretty please.” He sent me a suspicious grin, and I took a step back.
“No,” I said, crossing my arms. “I’m busy drinking, as you can see.” I took a sip of the mojito, and Connor stepped closer.
“Come on, it’s a boat party,” Kevin joined in, and I sighed.
“If you take another step, I might break a bone,” I warned, and Thomas chuckled behind me.
“She would,” he added, and I nodded.
“I really would. You haven’t even paid for the last time,” I added, glaring back at Thomas, who lifted a brow at me playfully, before straightening up and stretching his muscled upper body.
Kevin’s eyes widened and Connor took a step back. A big splash of water hit us all in the face, and I coughed as I swallowed some of it. Thomas patted my back, and I darted my head toward Braxton, who grinned at us from his red and black Jet Ski. I put down my destroyed drink, almost slipping on the wet deck.
“You all looked hella bored,” he called with a wide smile, and Thomas growled from beside me.
“I’m gonna kill him,” Kevin gritted out, shaking out his short hair and stepping closer to the boat’s edge.
“I think I might help,” Thomas muttered, stretching his neck, and I chuckled when Braxton’s grin faltered, his eyes widening.
I stepped backward, sitting down next to Connor, who then rested his warmed-up cheek against my shoulder while the guys dove into the lake’s blue water.