27
“There you are,” Koa says as he comes around the front of the house. The dress pools around my feet on the stairs as I stare up into the night sky and soak in the quiet away from the party. “What are you doing?” He kisses the top of my head as he sinks to the step beside me.
He looks so handsome today in his dress shirt and pants.
He’s done away with the jacket but the suspenders are hanging on, digging into his shoulders and over his chest. It’s strange to see him dressed so modestly.
Usually every inch of his arms are out and on display, the caramel tones the perfect canvas for the dark ink that covers him head to toe.
Koa brushes his lips over my cheek and his scruffy stubble tickles my skin enough to draw a tiny laugh from me. I lean into his chest, a little cold but a lot grateful for him coming to find me. The party was getting too loud and I needed a break.
“Appreciating the night,” I tell him quietly.
“It’s been a good day.” He hums. “You looked real pretty.”
“It’s nothing fancy, Birdie found it at the thrift store last weekend.” I play with the cheap white fabric and he pulls my hand into his.
“It’s perfect.” Koa kisses my shoulder as everything goes quiet for a few moments. I could stay here forever with him, where nothing is wrong, there’s nowhere to be. Just me and him.
“Hey, you know I love you, right?” he says after a breath, and I look up to find him staring down at me.
He’s so handsome it hurts. Endless mischief lies in those brown eyes and he watches me like he can’t get enough of my face.
I lift my fingers, smiling at the delicate ring as I brush them over his bottom lip.
“More than anything,” he says, kissing the pads of my fingertips.
“Even that stupid party?” I ask him.
“Especially that,” he laughs, moving my hand out of the way and kisses me gently, his hand coming up to brush under my chin. There’s more, I know there is, because Koa never hands out compliments without a reason; there’s always a trade involved. “I have to meet Riggs and Rafe.”
“What?” I freeze, pulling back a touch.
“They called. Some shit is going down at the garage and they need help,” he tells me. The information makes me worried and pissed off all at once. There can never be just one day without this chaos and Koa is always the one having to clean up the mess.
“Do you have to?” I ask, selfishly.
“I do,” he confirms and kisses me again. “I won’t be gone long. I promise.” He stands from the step and I hang onto his hand for a moment longer as he spins away from me lazily. His eyes tell a different story than his smile. He's lying to me and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“Don’t go.” I stand suddenly.
PRESENT DAY
I sit up in bed, sweaty and disoriented.
The rain beats down against the window and creates a blanket of white noise that tangles with the soft sounds of Riggs still sleeping beside me.
I look down at the necklace hanging on my chest and frown.
I remember that day, every second of it.
I never asked him not to go. I let him, without so much as an argument and yet…
Don’t go.
“What are you doing?” Riggs clears his throat, it’s husky with sleep and his hand reaches up to tug me back down into the sheets with him. “It’s freezing in here…” He wraps his arms around me and buries his face against my side.
“Riggs?” I brush my hand into his curls and inhale him to settle my nerves.
“Mm,” he grunts.
“The wedding.” I pause as he tenses uncomfortably.
“I thought we said no ghosts,” he grunts but doesn’t look at me.
“I need to know,” I push when he doesn’t prompt me. “He left that night.”
Riggs moves finally, angling his face up. The dreary morning light seeps through and makes his usually intense blue eyes look sad and confused.
“What?”
“Koa left. He went to help you and Rafe at the garage,” I explain.
“No he didn’t,” Riggs says with conviction, shaking his head gently. “We drove to Cananea that night. I wasn’t with Rafe and we weren’t even in Arizona, Cress.”
I shift, suddenly feeling like an idiot again.
“Maybe you aren’t remembering it right?” he says gently but it stings all the same.
“It was my wedding night. I remember everything.” I snap and he groans. “Like being left on the porch to our new home, cleaning up after a bunch of drunk idiots and crawling into a cold, empty bed.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He sits up away from me and hands me a fist full of blanket to cover myself. “What did he say to you that night?”
“That you and Rafe were in trouble and needed his help at the garage.”
“The last time I saw him and Rafe that day was when I left the house.” Riggs stares at me, and unlike Koa, there’s no doubt that he’s telling me the truth.
It’s there, plain as day, all over his face.
“Jesse was with me the entire time. I complained about taking him because it was his first pick up. He puked in the Boss,” Riggs says, getting worked up over it.
“So where did he go?” I ask, my mind spiraling. “Do you think…”
“Hey,” Riggs closes the space again, his hands coming around my face. “Koa was built on secrets but he never did that. Ever. Do you hear me?”
“How do you know?” I ask, scared that the lies were just curtains concealing something so much worse.
“Because for all his faults, his love for you was real. It was just… crooked.”
The blue in his eyes grows dark but they never leave mine and there’s conviction in his words that helps dull the thrum of anxiety.
“It still doesn’t tell us where he went? What was so important that night that he left…” I swallow tightly, trying not to let the sad memory consume me. It’s unfair to Riggs.
“I don’t know.” Riggs’s jaw tightens uncomfortably and he slips out of bed. I want to ask him to come back, but he’s sliding into a pair of jeans before I even work up the courage so instead I grip the blanket around myself.
“Last night—”
“Don’t.” Riggs pauses with a clean shirt in his hand. “If you’re going to give me some excuse of why it meant nothing. Don’t.”
“Okay.” I smile softly and his shoulders relax.
“That’s it? Just okay?” He shakes out his bed head as he pulls his shirt over them. He comes back around and kneels by the bed, allowing me to gently touch the curls as he stares at me. He closes his eyes as my fingers trace his jaw, unable to control myself.
“I was going to make something up that made me seem less like a pathetic one night stand. I feel…” I sigh, “a little thrown aside.”
Riggs pushes up on his feet and wraps himself around me in the bed, his lips finding my shoulder blade and then the back of my throat.
“If you weren’t directly in danger right now they would have to tear me from this bed, Cress.
” His breath is hot on my skin. “But we don’t have the option, so I want you to get up and shower. Meet me in the garage.”
“You want me to come?” I look down at him.
Riggs smiles. It’s bright and I almost laugh with relief at the sight of it because it’s been so long since I’ve seen it that genuine.
I lean in, kissing him, and it only makes the smile grow.
His hand tangles into my hair and he deepens the connection, pressing against my back as his other hand splays out over my stomach.
“Leaving you behind was never my choice,” he says in a low, serious voice as he parts from me. “I’ll never do it again.”
“Alright.” I kiss him again quickly and his fingers dig into my skin.
“You gotta stop. This is serious.” He laughs against my lips but I don’t believe him for a second. “Shower.” He kisses me again. “Please.” Another two quick ones follow as he rises from the bed. I grab the front of his jeans, pulling him back. “Now,” he adds, stealing one more.
“What about…” I pause and my eyes go to the only photo on Riggs’s wall. It’s of him, Rafe, Murphy, and Birdie.
“What about them?” Riggs stops in his tracks.
“Well…” I lift from the bed with the sheets still wrapped around me. “Won’t this be weird?”
Riggs chuckles, turning back toward the bed. “I’m not going to run downstairs announcing that we had sex, Cress. They’ve seen the photos… Murphy’s been studying them for Christ’s sake, if that’s what you’re worried about?”
“Birdie is going to know,” I warn him.
“Birdie’s always known.” He’s quick to respond.
“What?” I don’t know why I’m surprised anymore. It’s like every time I think I have all the information I’m back to being in the dark again.
“She pushed me to make things right, after Koa…” He swallows tightly. “She wanted me to try to fix things with you.”
“Does she know?” I ask him. “That you weren’t driving.”
Riggs shakes his head gently. “She loves him. To her core. That’s Koa’s daughter and I can’t do it to her.”
“I know.” I nod, understanding why that’s a secret that still needs to be kept. “So why was she pushing? Shouldn’t she have been angrier?”
“She was.” Riggs shifts uncomfortably. “For a week I woke up with her sitting right there,” he points to the old chair in the corner, “staring at me. She wanted answers I couldn’t give to her without destroying everything she knew about Koa.
So I ate that pain, that frustration, her questions, her digging.
She spent most evenings down where the accident happened just walking the street, trying to get everything to make sense. She fell apart, Cress.”
I chew my lip and hug myself a little tighter.
“We both did. And it was a mess of the two of us trying to be strong for each other… When she came to her senses, the first thing she asked me was why I’d let you just walk away.” he says. “She wanted to know why, after everything, I didn’t try harder for you.”
“Did you answer her?” I ask, curious.
“No,” he shakes his head. “But I should have. I should have told her that I’d bring you back to us. That I’d fight to make sure that I kept the family together. I let her down.”
“Will you now?” I ask and he laughs gently like I’ve said something funny. “What?”
“I don’t have to,” he answers. “She knows, and there’s only one thing Birdie loves more than racing.” Riggs smiles.
“She loves to be right.” I finish his sentence with a nod.
“Get up. We have too much work to do,” he reminds me as he disappears from the room.
I intend to but my eyes drift to the photo of them.
Birdie would be okay. Rafe is still on the fence, I can feel it every time he looks at me.
Murphy is just sweet, but that’s how he’s always been and I don’t think time will ever take that away from him.
We can fight now, together, I think and rest my chin on my knees.