Chapter 9
Kelsi
After clocking out of her first day, Kelsi threw her purse in the passenger seat of her car in a huff and drove toward her mom’s house. She was barely parked before she was out the door and stomping up the driveway, not even bothering to knock before barging inside.
“Mom!”
Savannah and Bailey came sprinting down the stairs toward her excitedly, but she barely spared them a glance as her anger at her mother mounted.
Her mom appeared at the top of the stairs with a bundle of laundry in her arms. “Oh, hey, Kelsi! I wasn’t expecting you!
” She deposited the dirty laundry on the top of the stairs before making her way down to where Kelsi stood impatiently.
Her mom looked at her appraisingly, satisfaction on her face.
“I told you that suit looked beautiful on you. How was your first day?”
“Oh, you know perfectly well how my first day was, Mother. You knew he would be there, didn’t you? That’s what the damn lasagna was about.”
“Language,” her mom said sternly, but she looked away and couldn’t quite hide the grin on her face as she feigned innocence. “I knew who would be there?”
“Dylan,” Kelsi ground out, her jaw clenched.
“Oh, yes, now I remember. I did hear from Sarah Beth that he was back in town and working there too. Must have slipped my mind.”
Kelsi squeezed her eyes shut. Of course their meddlesome mothers would plot to get them back in the same radius as soon as she was single. As kids, they had always been going on about how adorable it would be if the two of them ended up together.
“Mom.” The pain Kelsi felt was obvious in the single word, and to her horror, tears began to prick behind her eyes.
Her mom’s expression immediately lost all trace of amusement and turned sympathetic as she held her arms out. Kelsi all but collapsed into her, keeping the tears from spilling over through sheer force of will, although a few snuck through her defenses.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But I thought you would try to run if you knew, and I think it’s past time the two of you talked everything out. And, selfishly, I didn’t want you changing your mind about moving back home.”
As much as it hurt to know her mom had kept this from her, she also knew that she was right. If Kelsi had had any idea that Dylan was back in town, let alone working in the same office as her, she would have run as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.
She pulled back, out of the comfort of her mom’s arms. Kelsi walked into the living room, staring out the large window facing the driveway and trying to rein in the emotions that were all too evident across her face. She cleared her throat, which felt suspiciously tight, and asked, “How long?”
“How long what, sweetie?”
“How long has he been back in town?”
There was a heavy pause, and she heard her mom’s footsteps as she followed her into the living room. She sighed and said, “About five months.”
Kelsi’s breath shuttered in her chest. He’d been back five months and she’d had no idea?
Her mom’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper across the room. “He came back after the accident, when he was honorably discharged.”
“Accident? What accident?”
“I don’t know too many details. It’s been hard for Sarah Beth to talk about, understandably, after his father’s death.
From what she’s told me, though, he was in Afghanistan, and there was an ambush.
He was hit with shrapnel and was lucky to keep his leg.
The military told him that because of the injury, he could no longer be considered eligible for service.
Anything else, I think, would be his story to tell you, if and when he’s ready. ”
Kelsi squeezed her eyes shut as her world tilted around her, her feet unsteady and knees weak. He’d been seriously wounded—he could have died—and she hadn’t known.
Fear lashed at her, icy cold and sharp as knives driving into her chest. Her fingers gripped the window ledge in front of her tightly, knuckles turning white.
Slowly, though, the cold flames of her fear morphed into a fiery anger.
As the fury gave her limbs strength again, she whirled around and glared at her mother, who lowered herself exhaustedly onto the room’s love seat.
“How could you keep this from me? Any of this?” She practically screamed the question at her mom.
To her credit, her mom didn’t even flinch.
She stared at Kelsi with the same defeated look.
“You tried to hide it, but I knew how much whatever he did hurt you. Anytime I brought him up, you immediately shut down. Eventually I gave up and figured whenever you decided you were ready to talk about him again, you would.” She smiled sadly.
“But you never did. And when he was hurt and brought back home to recover, he asked me not to tell you what happened.”
“You didn’t owe him that loyalty, Mom, not after how he left. I deserved to at least be told that he was hurt!” Her anger was a living thing inside of her, ugly and looking to lash out.
“Of course I thought you should know, but it wasn’t my decision. This was Dylan’s injury, his life, and his choice on whether or not to tell you. I’m sorry that you’re upset, but it wasn’t my story to tell.”
The rational side of Kelsi’s brain understood her mom’s reasoning. It had been Dylan’s choice, and she had respected that, but Kelsi was beyond rational thought at this point. Too many powerful emotions warred within her that she was itching with the need to scream or run or both.
“Kelsi—”
“No. I understand why you didn’t tell me, Mom, but I need time to process everything. It’s been a long day, hell, a long year, and this on top of everything else is just too much.”
“I understand.” Her mom still looked defeated, but she didn’t push Kelsi any further. “I’ll be here when you want to talk about him.”
“Yeah.” Kelsi didn’t look back as she walked out to her car. She pulled out of the driveway, feeling like she was adrift with no land in sight.
Needing to vent, she reached for her phone and called Abby.
“How was day one?” Abby’s excited voice filtered through the car’s speakers.
At the sound of her best friend’s voice, Kelsi lost the tentative control she had kept on her emotions since Dylan had stepped into Banksy’s office. Her throat constricted and she cleared it a few times, not wanting to give her emotional state away to Abby.
Her best friend was too smart for her own good, though, and could tell that something was wrong. “What happened?” she asked, voice sharp with her concern. “Who do I need to tase?”
Kelsi choked on a startled laugh, knowing her friend wasn’t joking.
As a private investigator, she really did carry around a stun gun, and she wasn’t afraid to use it.
Once she had even tased a man at a bar when he was giving the two of them a hard time and refused to take their repeated no’s for an answer.
Luckily, the officer who responded was one Kelsi was familiar with.
When he heard what the pervert had been trying, and after a few of the other women at the bar had spoken up too, he ignored the man’s cries of assault and let Abby off without even a warning.
Kelsi struggled to find the words to explain what had happened that day but finally went with the simplest explanation. “Dylan is back.”
Abby’s startled screech was so loud through the speakers that Kelsi winced.
“What!”
“Yeah.” Kelsi sighed. “He’s back in town. And not just that, he’s been back. For months. And my mom never told me.”
Abby let out an affronted gasp. “Oh no, she did not hide that from you.”
“She did.” Kelsi shook her head, even though Abby couldn’t see her do it, and told her what her mom had explained about the accident.
As she spoke, her voice rose in pitch and speed until she sounded nearly hysterical.
“And now, to top it all off, he’s working at the same office, and we’ve been assigned a big case together. ”
Abby was quiet for a few long moments. Softly she asked, “Do you think your mom didn’t tell you what happened because she didn’t think you cared about him anymore?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kelsi snapped. “What does matter is the fact that she hid this from me and knew I was going to see him today. I could have been emotionally prepared to see him, but instead he caught me off guard. On top of everything with Tom, I thought she might have been a little more considerate, but guess I was wrong.”
“K, you know as well as I do that if your mom had given you any warning, you wouldn’t have shown up this morning.” Abby’s voice was endlessly patient.
“That’s not true.” Kelsi could picture the look Abby was making, neither of them believing her for a second.
“So, what are you going to do?”
Kelsi thought for a long moment. “I’m going to do what I can to win this case, with his help or not. It’ll be strictly professional. I can’t let him into my heart again.”
“That’s my girl,” Abby said. “But, Kelsi, you know as well as I do that it’s not quite that simple.”
Kelsi did know that, but she sure as hell was going to do whatever it took to keep Dylan from worming his way back in again. She shattered over him once, and she vowed to never let him break her like that again.