Chapter 22
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Ghost
Surprising me was about the same as folding a fitted sheet properly. It just didn’t happen.
So butter my butt and call me a biscuit because I felt like I’d just spent some time in an electric chair.
He kept everything. Right down to a seriously moldy cookie.
If I ever wondered if he thought of me the way I had him over the last two years, I had my answer. Might as well just handcuff me to his side and throw away the key because the longer I was around him, the harder I fell.
Hell, at this point, I’d be married with kids by dinner.
But let’s keep that little FYI on the DL because WTF.
You get all that? My guyyy, I knew you’d understand.
First things first, the WTF.
After my socks—which he’d kept—were covering his bare feet, I carried him out to the main room. By the way, I’ve seen cans of beans bigger than this place.
After placing him on the couch, I moved to grab a blanket, only to discover there wasn’t one.
“And you called me the serial killer,” I muttered. I mean, my place was minimalistic, but no blankets on the couch was just plain wrong.
“What?”
“What?” I echoed.
Spotting some black fabric on the ground, I snatched it up and shook it out to cover his legs, but he gasped.
“My coat!” he exclaimed, tugging it from my hands to hold it out and fuss over it like there was gold in the pockets.
There wasn’t, of course. I mean, it was just a coat. A worn one at that.
No, I wasn’t jealous.
Rett let out a wail and hugged the coat to his chest, eyes looking suspiciously wet.
Oh, hell no. There won’t be any more tears. Even if I went the rest of my life without seeing him cry again, it would be too soon.
That reminded me. I’d left my offering out in the hall.
I hoped the rats didn’t carry it off.
“My most prized possession is ruined!” he bemoaned.
“What?” I shot out.
Fine. I was jealous. Vehemently.
He sniffled. “I mean, it was my most prized possession until all the things you gave me.”
I was going to regret asking this, but what the hell? “Why?”
He hugged the coat tighter. “Because when I ran away from home, I had nothing. Just a few dollars in my pocket and the clothes on my back. Those first few weeks on the street were so hard. A couple times, I thought I was going to die.”
This conversation made me want to die. But please, go on.
“I wasn’t from here,” he explained. “From Buffalo, I mean.”
“Where are you from?” I asked, glancing around so I could pull up the coffee table and have a seat.
There was no coffee table.
There was a derelict old bean bag over in the corner. It probably had fleas. And maybe an infestation of lice. Or something else equally heinous. It was so raggedy and deflated that I wondered if it had any stuffing left in it. And also, I think it was made of burlap. The itchy kind.
My skin crawled just looking at it, and I had visions of throwing open the only window in this place and tossing it out into the alley. Seriously, one window. I’d seen better jail cells.
And the windowsill was crowded with plants.
Like he’d rather give them light than have any for himself.
“A small town right outside of New York City.”
His reply brought my head around. New York City was a tough place. At least in the parts that weren’t overflowing with money. There was lots of underground activity there and a few resident hitmen that weren’t “on the books” like me and mine (aka Kieran).
And yeah, just because they were “off the books” didn’t mean they were off my radar. I knew. I be knowing lots of things. “You better not have gone into the city,” I warned.
“I did,” he said.
It was as though he lived to raise my blood pressure.
“I was there for about a month. But I was scared all the time. I was a lot younger. The people were…” His voice trailed off, and I had the sudden urge to drop a bomb over the entire city and wipe it off the map for putting that look in his eyes. “But there was this one guy.”
“Guy? What guy?” I demanded.
“I’d been mean and skittish, but he was nice.”
“Does this nice guy have a name?” I inquired.
He shrugged, and I gritted my teeth. “Garrett Redding,” I growled.
“Anyway.” He brushed off my clear threat and went on. “He saw me in an alley and asked me if I needed help.”
Well, la-di-da. I took a bullet.
“I was too proud to admit I was freezing, starving, and scared as hell. Plus, trusting people on the street was a good way to get dead.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“Before I could run off, he held out this coat. Gave it to me right off his back,” Rett said, a note of awe in his tone.
Should I remind him of the clothes he’s wearing that came directly off my back?
“I refused, of course. But he dropped it on the ground. Told me he didn’t want it because he was going to steal something better.” Rett pulled the coat from his chest and looked down at it. “When he walked away, I grabbed it. I was so cold.”
Yep. I regretted asking about this.
I didn’t even have to imagine what he looked like, cold and homeless with fear in his eyes. I’d seen it. I’d seen it and walked away. I was little more than a villain.
But at least I had good hair.
“I was running away when he shouted at me. Told me about a place a couple blocks over that gave out free meals. He said to tell her Fletch sent me.”
“Fletch,” I said, latching on to that name and rolling it around in my head.
Rett nodded. “I mentioned his name, and they gave me a free meal. It was the first time in so long I’d been shown any kindness. For the first time, I believed I might be okay.”
“Then what?” I demanded.
“I found twenty bucks in the pocket of the coat, and I used it to buy a bus ticket. It got me here.”
He looked like he wanted to say something more, so I motioned to him. “Spit it out, Pip.”
“About a year ago, I saw him on TV.”
My eyebrows arched. “The guy who gave you the coat?”
Rett nodded.
“Probably a mug shot,” I conferred.
“Actually, he was standing beside some big real estate guy in the city. Ethan… Abbott?”
“Ethan Abbott,” I repeated.
Rett nodded. “Do you know him?”
“He’s the richest man in this state. Everyone knows him.”
“Well, Fletch was standing beside him on TV, and they were holding hands.”
“You’re talking about Fletcher Abbott?”
Rett nodded. “He looked so familiar, but at first, I couldn’t figure out where I knew him from. It’s not like I know any rich guys, and also, why would my brain connect some guy in a rundown alley with him?”
“Fletcher Abbott is actually the long-lost heir to the Cosgrove family,” I said, mind churning.
Rett gave me a blank look. “Should I know them?”
“No,” I said, pleased he wasn’t impressed.
“The patriarch is a well-renowned violinist. Anyway, Fletcher was kidnapped as a baby and raised in the slums of New York City by a vile woman. A few years ago, he met Ethan Abbott, and they fell in love. But it turns out he was the missing son of the Cosgroves.”
“So that’s how I met him in the alley. It was before he got rich.”
Fletcher Abbott was also the “brother” of one of the deadliest hitmen in the entire state. The unsanctioned kind. Of course, that wasn’t public knowledge. And supposedly, he retired.
But if you ask me… once a killer, always a killer. It also meant my revenge plot for the guy that Rett seemed to think so highly of was off. Family of assassins was off-limits. Hard stop.
Besides, I was glad he got a meal and a ticket to Buffalo. I still didn’t like that coat, though. It was ugly.
“Anyway, this coat has always meant a lot to me, but Tommy slashed it with his knife,” Rett said, holding out the fabric and showing me the long slash in the sleeve.
Tommy was about to learn the true meaning of fuck around and find out.
Gently, I tugged the coat away to carefully drape it over the back of the couch. “Don’t stress about it, baby. I’ll fix it.”
“You can sew?” His big, wet eyes looked so impressed and enamored that there was only one response.
“Of course.”
He smiled, big and bright. His happiness was so pure it actually made me feel dirty.
“Thank you, Hiro.”
I mean, sewing a coat couldn’t be that different from closing gunshot and knife wounds. Right? It’s definitely less bloody.
I plopped down on the couch and immediately got a lap full of feet.
I can’t believe he kept these socks. I remembered pacing at the door the night I left, knowing I had to go but not wanting to.
I’d given him all the cash I had on hand, cookies, the bag, the stuffie… paid for the motel room through the week. But it still hadn’t felt like enough.
Just as I was about to walk out, he’d made a small noise in his sleep that had me rushing back to his bedside, panicking that something was wrong.
He’d just been shifting in his sleep, his bare foot hanging off the side of the bed. When I grabbed it to slide it back beneath the covers, I’d noticed how icy his toes felt. I immediately stripped off my boots to put my socks on his feet.
After that, I forced myself to go.
“Hiro?”
I snapped out of the memory to glance around the ransacked room. “What happened?”
“Tommy wants me to deal drugs for him.”
I was not prepared because:
What do you mean he wants my little Pip to deal drugs? No. Absolutely not.
and
“I did not expect you to answer that easily.”
Rett made a face. “It’s easier this way, and I’m tired.”
The dark circles beneath his eyes backed up his words, as did the pallor of his skin.
I couldn’t shake the feeling he wasn’t just tired.
There was something else. I’d had that sense two years ago too, but I’d refused to acknowledge it because it would have made leaving even harder than it always was.
“Are you an addict?” I demanded, suddenly impatient to know.
Kieran seemed completely convinced, and while I admit he was a drama queen, his judgment of character was usually spot on.
I trusted him. More than anyone else. So even when I told him his head was full of bullshit, I still respected his word.
Rett sat up a little straighter. “W-what?”
“I had this whole plan to shadow you around the city—”
“What?”
“You know you would have liked it.” I defended my stalker-y ways.