Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Rhodes

I ’d been at my computer for so long the information on the screen was starting to blur. The blue light was giving me a headache that was steadily building into a migraine, but I couldn’t make myself look away. I kept hoping what I was looking at was wrong, that I’d stumbled across incorrect information, but I knew that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t my ego talking when I claimed I was good at my job. It was the truth.

There was a reason Lincoln had chosen me to take over when he retired, and it wasn’t the family connections. Well, not just the family connections. He and Marco were still tight, and his wife Eden was part of my sister Gypsy’s crew of besties—had been since I was back in high school.

They were family by choice, not blood, but family all the same.

“You look like you’re contemplatin’ pickin’ up that monitor and chuckin’ it out the window.”

I cast a quick look to my opened office door to find Linc standing in the doorway. Leaning back in my chair, I pushed out a heavy breath and pinched the bridge of my nose. “You aren’t too far off the mark.”

My boss and mentor moved into my office and, taking one of the chairs across from me, kicked his feet up on the edge of my desk, making himself comfortable. “Three guesses as to what’s got you lookin’ like you’re ready to commit murder, and I don’t need the second two.”

I remained silent, knowing I didn’t need to speak to prompt him to continue. Sure enough, he spoke a second later. “This have to do with the case your girl brought us?”

My chest tightened like my ribs were doing their best to squeeze the air from my lungs. “She’s not my girl,” I said in a low rumble.

Lincoln arched a brow at me. “Could’ve fooled me, the way you acted when you first laid eyes on her. Thought I was gonna have to lock you down to keep you from doin’ somethin’ stupid.”

I shot him a bored look. “Did you forget why she came in here in the first place?” Because I sure as hell hadn’t. “She’s been off living her own life for years now.”

“And you’ve been sitting here stagnant that whole damn time.”

I jerked back in my chair at his declaration. My lips parted, but I couldn’t seem to form any words.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed, son. That we haven’t all noticed.”

My throat grew uncomfortably tight, causing my words to come out in a rasp as I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talkin’ about the fact that there hasn’t been a single woman who’s played a significant role in your life since you took off for the Army when you were eighteen. I’m talkin’ about the fact that you’ve spent the past several years goin’ through women like most people go through underwear, and you never once got close to settlin’ down.”

“That’s not true,” I argued. “I’ve had relationships.”

Linc’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “And did a single one of those relationships have any substance to them? Did you ever really let any of them in?” He lifted a single brow. “Did you ever introduce any of them to your family?”

I clamped down on the inside of my cheek to keep from telling him to fuck off. This was a man I respected the hell out of, but just then, I was pissed as hell that he’d managed to read me so damn well.

I also hated that what he said made me feel like a dick. I didn’t want to be that asshole when it came to women, but what he said was the truth. I’d made a few attempts at something real and lasting over the years, but no matter how hard I tried, I always seemed to have one foot out the door.

The last woman I’d seen exclusively lasted a little over six months, and that had been the longest relationship I’d had since Blythe. I’d been happy enough and was content to keep things going. Until Grace started talking about the future. She’d casually started asking if I thought I might want kids some day and if I saw myself getting married, and more than once she mentioned coming along with me to the family dinners I had with my siblings once a week. I’d hated hurting her, but I couldn’t see any of those things with her, so I ended it.

The breakup had been painful on both sides, but necessary. She was a good woman and she deserved a man who could give her what she wanted. That man wasn’t me.

“I don’t know why we’re even talking about this. Blythe and I ended more than twenty years ago. We were just kids back then, for Christ’s sake.”

Lincoln crossed his thick arms over his barrel chest. The man might have been well past middle age, but damn if he looked it. “So were Tempie and Hayes when they first found each other,” he reminded me, speaking of two more close friends tied to Gypsy’s inner circle. “If you recall, they’d been split for nearly as long as you and Blythe. And look what happened there.”

The parallels between my relationship with Blythe and the police captain’s marriage were uncanny. They’d also been high school sweethearts. They’d also broken up and gone their separate ways—Tempie to Chicago and Hayes to the Marines. Tempie had come back when the aunt who raised her passed away, and the two of them discovered they’d never stopped loving each other. They were still happily married to this day.

“Blythe and I aren’t Tempie and Hayes,” I grumbled. The distinct difference between us and them was the fact that neither of them had moved on during their time apart. They hadn’t married or had kids.

Lincoln held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, if you say so. I’ll let it go.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Just answer one question and I’ll never bring it up again.”

“Christ,” I grunted. The throb that had been building behind my eyes suddenly doubled in intensity. “What is it?”

“In all your diggin’ into their background, can you say with certainty that the man she was married to and had kids with truly deserved her?”

Fuck me . I couldn’t say a word. He had me, and judging from the slow, knowing smile that tilted the corners of his mouth, the fucker knew it too.

“Thought so.” He pushed up on the arms of the chair and rose to his considerable height. “So are you gonna be the one to tell her that piece of shit had a whole other family on the side, or do you want me to do it?”

I threw my hands up in the air in exasperation. I should have known he’d pull some shit like that. “Jesus, Linc. If you’re just gonna run your own investigation every damn time, why bother having me do it as well?”

He shrugged his wide shoulders unapologetically. “What can I say? I was curious and got a bit snoopy.”

That seemed to be the case more often than not. The guy was a nosy pain in the ass. But his question brought my back up straight. “I don’t think I should be the one to give her the truth,” I confessed. It had been obvious the moment I’d walked into Lincoln’s office that she hadn’t wanted me there, and she’d been hesitant to give me the story. There would be no comfort for her when she found out the whole truth—that it hadn’t just been an affair—and my gut told me that I was the last person she’d want to hear it from.

Lincoln nodded gravely. “I understand. I’ll take care of it.”

My ribs squeezed the hell out of my lungs again when I thought about how she’d take the news, and I would have given my own life to be able to comfort her when the time came. Unfortunately, I’d lost that right a long time ago.

I pulled my truck to a stop in front of the big red-brick house on Magnolia drive and threw it into park, hitting the button to kill the ignition. The house that Marco had bought for Gypsy and the rest of us years ago was still the central hub for all family gatherings, which worked fine for me. I loved my family with everything in me, but when I purchased my house years back, I’d done it for the solitude and the quiet. I’d made sure it was big enough to house the entire Bradbury-Castillo clan if necessary, but I wasn’t really a fan of playing host, so as long as my oldest sister was game, I’d let her. I was more than happy to show up, eat, catch up with my crazy family, then head home when the noise and chaos got to be too much.

I pushed the front door open and was immediately greeted with the sounds of laughter and conversation coming from the kitchen at the back of the house. “I’m here,” I called out, and my words were met with the almost immediate pounding of tiny feet on the hardwood floors. I managed to brace just in time for a tornado of dark hair and an overabundance of energy to slam into my thighs.

My nephew, Cooper, looked up at me with a huge grin, a hole where his left lateral incisor had been the last time I saw him. “Uncle Rhodes!”

After raising the five of us, Gypsy and Marco had decided not to have kids of their own, saying we were all they needed, but now that we were grown, there was no limit to the amount of guilt my big sister was willing to lay on each of us to see to it that we started popping out kiddos of our own. So far, my sister Sunny was the only one to give her what she so desperately wanted.

Sunny and her husband, Aaron, had two kids: twelve-:year-old Brynne and seven-year-old Cooper. The rest of us had made it our mission to spoil them rotten.

I rustled the hair on the top of his head and returned his infectious smile. “Hey, bub. How you doin’?”

“Good! Can I go for a ride on your motorcycle?”

I let out a chuckle. It was the same question he asked every time he saw me, so I followed it up with the same question I always asked in return. “What’d your mom say?”

He bit down on his bottom lip and cast his eyes to the left in an obvious effort to think up a lie. “She said sure!”

“Uh-huh,” I returned skeptically just as the sister in question stepped into the entryway.

“I said over my cold, dead body, mister. And if you keep going around telling stories, you’re gonna lose iPad privileges.”

Cooper hit me with a sheepish smile before the expression on his face drooped into what could only be described as hangdog and turned to his mother. He’d even managed to perfect poking his bottom lip out and everything. “Sorry, Momma,” the little actor offered remorsefully.

Sunny rolled her eyes, but I didn’t miss the tension around her mouth as she tried to fight back a laugh. “Sure you are. Go help Auntie Holly and Uncle Lee set the table.”

My nephew bolted off toward the kitchen, and I moved to Sunny, bending to press a kiss to her cheek. “Hey, Sun. How you doin’?”

She wrapped her arms around my middle and gave me a quick squeeze before sliding herself beneath my arm so it was draped over her shoulders as she guided me toward the noises coming from the back of the house. “I’m good. Tired—as usual. Between Coop trying in every way known to man to break every bone in his body and Brynne morphing into an angsty pre-teen, it’s a wonder I haven’t pulled all my hair out.”

I gave her a squeeze and let out another laugh just as we hit the open concept kitchen and dining area.

“I remember when you were an angsty pre-teen,” Gypsy said as she moved around the massive island in our direction. “Hey, honey.” She lifted up on her toes to kiss my cheek, and I dropped my hold on Sunny in order to embrace my oldest sister and lift her feet off the ground. She might not have been the one to bring us into the world, but she’d been the closest thing the five of us ever had to a mother, so I gave her the respect and devotion usually assigned to the role.

“Hey, back. Dinner smells fantastic.”

“It’s Detty’s Fettucine Alfredo,” she said in return.

Growing up in the trailer park, there had been an older woman who helped Gypsy take care of us. Odette, or Detty, as we’d called her, wasn’t blood, but she was more family than our own parents, and was a surrogate grandmother to all six of us Bradbury kids. We were so close with her that when Marco had bought this house, he’d chosen it because of the in-law suite in the back so Detty could leave the trailer park with us.

Gypsy had been decent enough of a cook, but once we moved in here and there was more room, Detty had decided to teach Gypsy everything she knew, and my sister had gone from good to great. We lost Detty about fourteen years ago, but her memory still lived on in so many ways, including the recipes she’d passed down to my sister.

Detty’s Fettucine Alfredo was one of my favorites.

I moved around the kitchen, greeting the rest of my family and ending at Marco, who clasped my hand and jerked me in for a quick, backslapping hug before pulling back and studying my face closely. “You good?”

My brow furrowed in confusion. I noticed everyone was watching me more intently than was normal. “Yeah, I’m great.”

Sunny’s brows climbed high on her forehead. “You sure?”

“Uh . . . what’s goin’ on guys?”

Holly, my youngest sister and the most emotional one out of the whole crew rushed me and wrapped me in a hug so tight my ribs protested. “We know about Blythe coming into your office yesterday.”

Fucking small towns .

“Jesus,” I grunted. Not this shit again, I thought as I worked to extricate myself from my tiny sister’s iron hold. “It’s all good. You guys don’t need to hover like this. I’m fine. Really.”

Raylan sauntered up, all cowboy swagger is his Wranglers and dusty boots. He handed me a non-alcoholic beer that Gypsy kept stocked in her fridge just for me and clapped me on the shoulder. “Not hoverin’, just concerned. We know seein’ her again couldn’t have been easy.”

“It’s not like we don’t know you’re still in love with her,” my youngest brother, Raleigh—Lee for short—chimed in.

Sunny looked at me, her eyes glowing with sympathy. “She’s my best friend, and you’re my brother. It still kills me that you guys didn’t work out.”

I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take. I’d gone twenty years without much mention of Blythe from my family, but now that she was back, it was like the floodgates had opened. Lifting the beer to my lips, I drained more than half in a couple large gulps, wishing it was something stronger. There weren’t many times in my life that I’d wished for a drink, but on the rare occurrence, I simply had to remind myself why I’d made the conscious decision years ago not to touch the stuff. Our folks weren’t just neglectful. They were drunks as well, so I made sure I’d never go down that road, because I didn’t want to be anything like them.

“Look, I appreciate you guys caring, but if it’s all the same, I’d rather change the subject.”

“We can do that,” Gypsy said, using a tone that brooked no argument. “Dinner’s ready anyway, so let’s eat.”

The rest of the evening went off without a hitch. Despite the ache in my chest that I hadn’t been able to shake since laying eyes on Blythe in Lincoln’s office yesterday, I’d managed to enjoy my time with my family. I even laughed at my nephew’s crazy antics.

By the time I said my goodbyes and headed for my truck, I was beyond tired and looking forward to face-planting in my bed and not moving until morning.

“Rhodes, wait.”

I let out a sigh at the sound of Sunny’s voice and stopped halfway down the walkway to turn and face her as she pulled the front door closed and made her way to me, worry creasing her forehead.

She pulled her cardigan tight around herself and crossed her arms over her chest as she stopped in front of me. “What did Blythe want?”

My features went soft. “You know I can’t talk to you about that, Sun,” I said gently.

She lowered her head on a sigh and gave it a dejected shake before her glassy eyes came back to mine. “I know. I’m sorry for asking. I don’t want to put you in a tough spot. I just... I’m worried about her. She hasn’t been the same since she came back, and I don’t think it’s only about losing Elliott.” I might not have had the right to talk to Blythe over the past two decades, but she and Sunny never stopped being best friends, even from separate states.

She paused, pulling the corner of her lip between her teeth and biting down. “Can you at least tell me if she’s okay?”

I reached out, and gave her bicep a squeeze. “That’s not for me to say. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Keep showin’ her you care. As long as she’s got good people lookin’ out for her, she’ll get through this.”

Sunny’s head canted to the side, her gaze scrutinizing. “You really do still love her, don’t you?”

There was no point in lying. “I do,” I said, the confession like a knife to the heart. “I never stopped.”

The sympathy in my sister’s eyes nearly killed me. “Then maybe this is your second chance. Whatever she’s going through, maybe you’re the one who’s supposed to help her through to the other side.” I opened my mouth to argue, but she reached up and cupped my cheek, silencing me. “I’ve always believed in fate, Rhodes, and I believe there’s a reason you could never bring yourself to settle down.”

With that, she turned on her heel and skip-walked back into Gypsy’s house, leaving me to try to stuff down the little pang of hope that her words gave root to.