Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

PRESLEY

This wasn’t how I pictured the night going, to be honest.

Maybe because I deluded myself into thinking that it was going to be that easy to put the ring under the tree and walk away and everyone would be happy. And I didn’t think past returning the box. There was the theoretical possibility I’d get in trouble, but I didn’t imagine things like a police station and sitting in an interrogation room in my Christmas party dress.

Most of my imaginations for this night included Brock’s jaw dropping to the ground when he saw me in my dress. (I think I did accomplish that at least.) Some dances where I didn’t hold back on the romantic touching to prove to Brock he has feelings for me. The culmination of the night being a kiss under the mistletoe and Brock admitting he was wrong.

The policeman who brought me to the station half an hour ago didn’t even ask me anything when he stuck me in this room. Are they sweating me out? Like a detective’s going to show up here soon, and I’ll be so overwrought that I’ll end up confessing right out of the gate?

I would be happy to confess! Only I don’t have anything to confess to except possession of stolen property. Is that a felony? I’m so getting fired over this. I drop my head onto the table. What a waste of a dress.

Brock wanted to come to the police station with me, but Officer Morgan said he couldn’t ride in the police car even though Brock kept saying he was in on the whole thing.

I kept countering it by telling Officer Morgan that Brock was only saying that to protect me, and Brock glared at me every time I said it.

There’s a tap on the door, and I raise my head as it opens, expecting Officer Morgan or a detective in a suit like in all the crime shows on TV to walk in. But it’s neither. I squint, as though I must be seeing things because of the stress of all this.

“Thomas?” I blink a few more times, trying to convince my brain that my aunt’s boyfriend is striding into the room and taking a seat across from me. “Oh, my gosh,” I say in a rush, my eyes widening. “I’m in really big trouble. They’ve brought in the FBI?”

Thomas puts a hand on my arm as I start to hyperventilate. “No one brought in the FBI, Presley,” he says in a calm voice. “I’m here to help you.”

I let out a whoosh of breath and take his hand in mine, squeezing. “Oh, thank you so much. I guess Brock could probably throw some money around, or my parents, but I didn’t want to get them involved.”

“You’re not being arrested. Not once I explained what had really happened to the ring.” He chuckles.

I pause at the calm way he’s handling this, and a million things run through my head, loudest of all that Thomas has the answers I thought I’d never get. But also how much I’ve missed him. We text from time to time, but he has a very busy job, and I know by the stories he’s told that he sometimes works undercover. In the three years that he and Aunt Shannon dated, there were at least four times she had to go multiple days, and a couple weeks in one instance, without talking to him at all. He’s younger than Aunt Shannon by a few years, and his profession has kept him in good shape. There are lines around his bright blue eyes, but they feel like they come more from how much he enjoys life than anything else. He has a sprinkling of grays over his head, a sprinkling I saw disappear a couple times over the years I knew him, thanks to operations he was working on. He’s a good-looking guy, but Aunt Shannon used to talk all the time about his kind eyes. He was her hero, and he was smitten with her. Watching them fall in love was what I imagined it would have been like to see my parents fall for each other. Seeing the times Thomas would look at her like he could memorize her or like he would never get enough broke my heart almost as much as losing her did. And I feel it all over again right now as he stares down at me, all the same memories probably sliding through his mind too.

“Hey, Thomas,” I say, since I didn’t really greet him before. My throat tightens.

“Hey, Pres.” He squeezes my hand this time, and we sit there, just feeling for a moment.

Finally, I have to ask. “So about that ring?” I arch an eyebrow at him.

He lets go of my hand and sits back in his chair. “The ring isn’t just some priceless family heirloom. It’s a major art piece, since it was created by some hot shot, European jewelry designer in the 1800s especially for the Westcott family. It’s also worth three million dollars.”

My jaw drops, and then my body goes cold again like it did when the security guys at the Westcott’s house showed me the video of me caught red-handed. “I had a three-million-dollar ring sitting in a storage box in my closet for a year?” The questions start spinning again. What if someone had known that Aunt Shannon had it? How long would it have been before they tracked it down to me? I put a hand to my forehead.

Thomas snorts. “Sounds like it was pretty safe.”

“How did it get there?” I blurt.

“I stole the ring.” He sighs. “I was undercover with the small heist crew, just a couple guys who were going to sell the ring to some bigger dealers we were after.”

“ You stole it!” Lightness bubbles up, maybe a release of all the stress over the last hour. I’d even considered that he might’ve been the one who stole it, but it hadn’t occurred to me it would have been as part of something official. “Oh my gosh, Thomas,” I exclaim. “You teased Aunt Shannon about being suspected, and you literally had it. How did you get through the search?”

“Put the ring in a secret pocket in my suitcoat. I had a ring box on hand to put it in once we were out.” His tone is all just a regular day on the job . “Anyway, I made sure the crew knew I was connected with someone who could get me into the party and talked my way into being the safecracker and bagman, since the crew was small.”

I hold up a hand. “Wait. If the ring was worth so much, why didn’t the Westcotts have the same security like they had this year? They just searched us all when it came up missing.”

Thomas frowns. “They had cameras and everything. They do every year. But we were professionals, and I had the FBI on my side.”

I shake my head. “I feel so stupid.”

Thomas laughs. “I hope it deters you from a life of crime, if anything.”

“I promise.” I tilt my head at him. “So then you hid it at my apartment because…?”

He swallows, the amusement draining from his expression quickly. “When Shan and I got home from the party, she found the ring box in my jacket. She didn’t know the ring was famous or anything, and I hadn’t told her about my undercover assignment. She thought…” He clears his throat. “She thought I was going to propose. We’d tabled the proposal discussion when she got her diagnosis—her idea.”

“I know.” We were all aware that Thomas and Aunt Shannon were arguing over getting married, that she insisted she wouldn’t saddle him with an invalid so he could play nursemaid in her last years. “But how come she didn’t recognize the ring?” I knew what it was the moment I found it.

“I don’t know if you remember, but the Westcotts didn’t tell us at the party what had been stolen—just said something of great value to them. The family and the police didn’t release that it was the Christmas Ring until … later.”

Meaning, after Shannon had died. She never knew what she had.

“She…” He pauses, closing his eyes as he tries to compose himself, but his words come out soft anyway. “She was excited. And then she pretended to get mad about me ignoring her wishes, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her what the ring was for, because I had to argue with her about letting me take care of her.” He clenches his fist on the table, his frustration with her evident. And that must be complicated to deal with along with the grief. Mom and Aunt Shannon got into a couple arguments about Thomas, about Aunt Shannon pushing him away after her diagnosis. One of the few times I heard my mom raise her voice to Aunt Shannon was to tell her how stupid she was being, that Thomas loved her, and he was a good man. Then Mom had gasped, started crying, and pulled Aunt Shannon into her arms.

I can still hear their voices, their sobs, when Aunt Shannon cried that she couldn’t do this to him.

Tears run down my cheeks now in earnest. It feels as fresh as the day Mom called, crying so hard she couldn’t get the words out and Dad had to take the phone to tell me Aunt Shannon was gone. “She was so stubborn,” I whisper.

He nods, but he doesn’t go on yet. I reach across to him again with both hands, and he puts his in mine. Finally he clears his throat. “The next morning, the guys on the heist crew we thought were small-time got caught up with some terrorists, and I ended up on a flight to Albania. Everything happened fast—the addition of terrorists to the case had pushed the ring completely out of my mind, and the FBI thought I’d handed it off to my partner already. My partner thought I had it with me to play my part. By the time we realized everything, Shannon was gone. And so was the ring.” He lets out a long, resigned breath. “The only explanation we could come up with was that another player we weren’t aware of tracked me and Shannon home and stole it after I left. FBI forensics combed over the scene, making sure it was nothing more than an accident.” He shrugs. “I don’t know why she put it in your box, Presley. That’s the only thing I don’t know.”

I think back to the morning that Mom found Aunt Shannon. She had fallen sometime the night before. When Mom couldn’t get a hold of Thomas right away, she’d called the FBI. He’d gotten home late that night, and as I think back to the fear in his eyes then, it makes sense. He’d thought his job had gotten Shannon killed.

“It was an accident?” I say to confirm they didn’t find out anything later.

“Yeah. No sign of anyone else playing a part, and everything lined up with what seemed to have happened.”

In other words, Aunt Shannon lost her footing, thanks to the ALS beginning to rob her of her strength in her limbs, and fell headfirst into her wooden coffee table, knocking her out, giving her a massive brain bleed that killed her within hours since she couldn’t call for help. Mom agonized for months after Aunt Shannon’s death about all the things she should have done, things they’d talked about for the future. Aunt Shannon’s diagnosis was less than a year old. They thought they had time to think about a caregiver who checked on her regularly or moving in with Mom and Dad.

Thomas and I sit in silence, both of us remembering the days that followed Aunt Shannon’s death and the shock that reverberated through us. Mom would say things like, “She hated the idea of us having to take care of her like she was a baby,” trying to find some sliver of comfort in what had happened, and it never worked .

“Well,” I say, breaking the silence. “That all means we know one thing, Thomas.”

He squints at me, his eyebrows coming together. “And what is that?”

“She was definitely going to say yes.”

He pats my hand, tears in his eyes, and then pulls away. “Let’s get you out of here. There’s a very large man out there threatening all kinds of things, and we should avoid him getting arrested if we can.”

I blush. “He had nothing to do with this,” I say for good measure. Despite the fact that I’m basically innocent in all of this and Thomas can prove it, Brock and I still concealed stolen property, and who knows what other crimes. If Brock annoys LAPD enough, they might decide to charge him with something.

Thomas chuckles. “Sure, Pres. Sure.”