by L. A. Fiore
Hank felt like he had been punched…no, kicked square in the gut. All the breath in his lungs flew out in the deep exhale he took through his nose. His eyes left the woman he once loved and moved to the woman he was currently in love with. Confusion hit him as his head swung back and forth. Both looking at him with worried looks on their faces. Anger grew with every passing second. Then he leveled hard eyes on Arissa. “What in the fuck is going on?” he rumbled, trying to keep his shit in check.
Arissa’s heart sank, even knowing he was going to be upset, seeing him upset was really hard to watch. “Can you give her a chance? There’s more to why she left than you know.”
His eyes drifted to Phoebe. Jesus, she was gorgeous. Didn’t look like she had aged a day since she left. But she did leave…left him and now she was standing on his deck. His brows drew together when his eyes moved back to Arissa. He kept them on her as his voice grew deep and menacing when he said, “Someone needs to start explaining this shit…now.”
Arissa wanted to go to him but she didn’t dare. Instead, she did as he asked. “I love you. More than I’ve ever loved anyone but you once loved her and she loves you and what you don’t know…” She exhaled; let it out slowly. “You deserve to see if there’s still something there without the bullshit and the lies. She didn’t leave. She was run off, Hank. And I love you enough that I’m ready to step back so you can make the decision about your future, one that’s based on truth and not lies. Because in her shoes, I’d want that chance.”
His eyes bounced back and forth, he stood from his leaning position before he roared, “What the fuck?”
She braced because she knew he wasn’t going to like the next part. “She left because your mother chased—”
Hank threw his hands up in the air. “Here we fucking go again!” he bellowed. “This?” He waved a hand between the three of them. “Is all fucking bullshit.” He settled on Arissa, her eyes were soft and apologetic. But his were hard, hurt, and burning with anger. “You…” He nodded toward her. “You did this? And all cause you thought my mom got in the way?”
She expected anger, and still her eyes burned, but she told him the truth. “I did this because knowing you shared what we have with someone else, and knowing there was a chance I wasn’t your choice just what you ended up with, it’s not fair to any of us.”
Hank looked at Phoebe, her hands twisting in front of her. He felt no remorse for her inner turmoil. “And you, what the fuck you gotta say?”
Phoebe’s gaze moved from Hank to Arissa and back again. “I want to make it right,” she whispered.
Hank tossed his hands up, shook his head, huffing, “I’m not fucking getting this.” He looked between the two of them. “For fucks sake, I’m the damn sheriff, solve shit and this…” He waved an arm around. “I don’t fucking get.” He looked at Arissa. “You…” He pointed and asked, “You brought her here to see if she was my number one?”
Arissa held her ground even though her legs were struggling to hold her up. “I guess you could put it that way. She loves you, you love her and she—”
“Come again?” Hank interrupted Arissa with a hard tone and a cocked brow.
“She loves you, you love her.”
“Stop!” he roared, his voice echoing across the serene landscape. His breathing picked up, his chest rising and falling. His dark turbulent eyes leveled on Arissa. “I love you. Do not say or think anything else. I fucking love you, so stop saying I fucking love her.” He ended with a hand tossed in Phoebe’s direction.
Phoebe’s eyes filled, her gaze shifting from Hank to Arissa.
Emotion caught in the back of Arissa’s throat, his words playing over in her head. How had she ever thought otherwise?
Hank didn’t let either of them speak, but he did let the silence sit a second. Letting the women soak in his words. “My number one…” The women had their eyes fixed on him but his were only on Arissa. “Is you, Arissa. You think if I wanted Phoebe I’d be with you?” He saw her open her mouth to talk but beat her to it. “You think I wouldn’t have chased after her? No matter what anyone said or thought. Did that thought ever cross your mind?”
Arissa couldn’t stop the tears that filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She hadn’t thought of that, so focused on his happiness, on what she believed he’d lost, that she hadn’t thought that this was Hank. If he wanted something, he’d take it. In a sense, she wasn’t acting any better than his mother. All she could say was simply. “Forgive me.”
Hank moved his eyes from Arissa; closing them he rubbed at them. Hoping when he opened them this would all be a bad dream. He snaked his hand around his neck, squeezed the knot that was forming nicely. She brought Phoebe to him because she thought she was his one. The woman he wanted to be with. Jesus. Why did everyone think Hank wanted something different than what was in front of him? Hank was not the kind of man that wanted what the guy next to him ordered. So, what was with all the second-guessing about his life? He didn’t answer her question but asked his own. “Why? Why did you do this?”
“Because you, us, it’s so fucking good, and I was afraid of the other shoe dropping, of falling even more in love with you and then losing you so I brought the shoe so I could be prepared for when it dropped. Not that it helped at all.”
“This was a fucking set-up, wasn’t it?” Phoebe’s harsh voice turned both of their heads. “You had those women come to see me to bring me here so you could what…enact some kind of lover’s shit.” She glanced around. “Are the others in the bushes videotaping this shit?”
“I was honest with you,” Arissa said. “From the start.”
“What others?” Hank asked, clearly confused.
Arissa turned back to Hank. “Yesterday, the Belles, it was Phoebe we went to see.”
“The Belles,” he huffed and grumbled, “Always the fucking Belles.”
“I can’t believe I actually came here for this.” Phoebe threw her hands in the air. “I should have followed my gut instinct.”
“Hank didn’t send those texts.” Arissa reminded her.
“Yeah.” Hank spoke loudly and continued firmly, “What’s with your guy showing at my fucking house complaining about texts I never sent?”
Some of Phoebe’s ire faded. “I can’t explain that.” She inhaled then let it out slowly. “Just the language made it clear to me it wasn’t from you.”
“So who did and why? To what end?” Arissa said. “It’s the feeling that there’s more going on here that had me going down this path to begin with. Maybe my deductions are off, but something isn’t right.”
“Language?” Hank asked but kept on. “So someone did text you saying it was me?”
“Yes.”
Hank shook his head. “And you didn’t find this fucking odd?”
Phoebe squared her shoulders. “I just found out about it yesterday.”
“Wait?” Hank’s head was turning. Jesus, he had solved two murders during his time as sheriff and didn’t have this much confusion, but you toss two chicks in the mix and it all gets jumbled. “You found out yesterday?”
“Yes,” Phoebe said firmly. “When Arissa told me about Bruno coming to you.”
“So, you didn’t use me to get shot of him?”
“No.” She looked to her feet and confessed, “I did get shot of him because of you, because I can’t get over you. But really, Bruno has nothing to do with this.”
“Why did you leave?” Hank shot at her. “If you’re so in love with me, why leave?”
Phoebe looked at Arissa for the answer. Arissa just stared back because the truth had to come from her lips. Phoebe breathed in a deep breath before she told Hank the truth. “Your mom—”
“Jesus,” he grated.
“No, Hank,” Phoebe said and went on. “Seriously, it was your mother. You don’t know this but when your back was turned, she was nasty
to me. Always throwing words for no reason. I got fed up, went at her, told her I’d tell you.” Hank just stared at Phoebe but was seeing through her. Once cloudy memories were becoming clearer. Every time they were with his parents, afterwards, he and Phoebe had tension. Hmm. Phoebe continued. “She told me she’d ruin my life if I didn’t leave yours. Bring up my past and splatter it everywhere.” Hank remembered that Phoebe had a shitty past and it took her time to build herself up from the shit she was served by her own parents. So Hank knew how much she cherished the life she had made for herself. “So…” She looked down and when her eyes came back to Hank they were apologetic. “She offered me money, a cruise she had won to leave town and never come back.”
“The cruise to Bermuda,” Hank said in a whisper, remembering his parents winning it but never going. He looked at Arissa, didn’t say words but asked the question with his eyes.
“The first time I met your mom was at the garden center. She approached me.” Arissa paused. “Thinking back on it, she practically made a beeline to me. Told me she had reason to believe you were going to be settling down soon. I thought she was talking about me. It made me a little breathless that you’d already shared me with them but then…” Arissa’s gaze moved to Phoebe. “She told me that Phoebe was the love of your life, you know the kind of couple that were just meant to be and that Phoebe would be coming back…to you. It was that, which got this whole stupid ball rolling.” Now that she was purging, the words just tumbled out. “Dinner at their place. It wasn’t just a cross examination, it was an interrogation, and when she came to your house unannounced she made it very clear she didn’t want me in your life. Even implied you had been on a date with Brianna while we’d be together and that Brianna was looking forward to a repeat.” She softened her voice when she added, “Given all that, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was your mother sending those texts. What I don’t understand is why?”
“Showed at my house?” Hank literally scratched his head. Wasn’t sure if it was the confusion and confessions hitting him all at once, or the ache dancing around his skull.
“One day when you were at work and I was taking pictures at your house for the spread, she showed up. My car was in the garage, so I don’t think she knew I was there. She was taking pictures from the wall. I asked why, she never said, she was too busy telling me how I should mind my business, and how the spread in the magazine wasn’t what you needed. I think that’s really her biggest issue with me, doing that spread on you. Or at least it sure feels that way. Anyway, the next morning the pictures were all back.”
Hank ran a hand through his hair. He looked at Phoebe to see her reaction to what Arissa was telling him. When Phoebe felt his stare, she moved her eyes from Arissa to him and nodded in confirmation that her experiences with his mom were very much like what Arissa was sharing. Hank had to sit; all of the information was making him dizzy. This didn’t sound like his mother at all. Yeah, Catherine Weathers could be intrusive, overprotective but what he was hearing was more, so much more. He moved and dropped down on the wicker-cushioned bench. “Brianna? She’s Joanie Severs granddaughter. I never dated her,” he mumbled out loud but spoke more to himself. “Pictures off my wall.” Was muttered when he leaned his elbows on his knees. Looking up at Arissa, he asked the question he was sure she had asked herself many times. Even Phoebe…hell, maybe even the whole town since Hya had words to say about his mother. “Why?”
Love and understanding looked back at him. “I don’t know, but I wonder now if maybe there was more to losing Noah.”
That, what Arissa just said, hit him hard. What him and Noah had, he felt was solid, a buddy until one of them wasn’t walking the earth anymore. Hank put his head in his hands, closed his eyes and brought back the memories. One conversation was coming to the forefront. “You even had the balls to use a burner phone to text my girl. Fuck, Weathers, a burner phone. Anybody but you, man, never thought you’d play this kinda shit.” Then his mind wandered to another where Maisy’s voice rang loud in his head. “Saw your mom in here today. You didn’t hear it from me, but she bought you a new cell phone.”
The shooting pain that hit his chest had him sucking in a breath. Jesus. Fuck, that hurt. He rubbed his eyes with his palms, trying to scrape the memories from his mind. Hank lifted his head, his eyes red from the friction.
Arissa couldn’t take anymore; the play of emotions that were sweeping Hank’s face was breaking her heart. She crossed the deck to him, dropped on her knees in front of him, her hands coming to rest on his legs. “Tell me what I can do.”
Phoebe silently watched Hank and Arissa. They needed their time alone. Her heart ached at the sight of them because at one time it would have been her to comfort him, to love him. She’d had him and she’d let him go. That was on her, all fucking her, but at least he had Arissa to offer that comfort. Phoebe didn’t wait for Hank to answer Arissa when she offered lowly, “I’m going to head back to Charleston, let you all figure this out.” Phoebe would have liked to stay and be the one to help Hank but if this wasn’t clarification for her, she didn’t know what was. It was time to let the past just be that, in the past.
Hank looked to Phoebe, once the love of his life, and replied, “I’ll be in touch.”
Phoebe nodded and left without as much as a wave goodbye to Arissa. She was hurt and it was understandable that she felt Arissa was the one responsible for the ache that she felt. As she walked to her car, though, it dawned on her that she would have done the same, anything to hang on to a man like Hank, she should have, but she didn’t.
Once Hank heard Phoebe’s car start, he put his hands to Arissa’s on his legs. He looked her in the eyes, his burning, holding back emotions that he couldn’t swallow. “I don’t know,” he whispered in a husky tone.
She touched his face, his pain her own. “I’ll just stay here, with you, if that’s alright.”
He palmed her cheeks, holding her head so he could hold her eyes steadily. “Don’t ever, please, don’t ever fucking question my love for you…ever.”
Tears welled but she held his tender stare and whispered back, “I won’t again. I promise.”
He laid his forehead to hers, breathed in the air she expressed from her lungs, needing that connection. Then he said what he never thought he’d ever say in his lifetime when he whispered, “We need to call the Belles.”
Arissa’s expression shifted right before her jaw dropped. “Did you just say we have to call the Belles, like voluntarily call them, over here when you’re here? Did I hear that right?”
Hank moved a thumb across her cheek, watching as he did and seeing the slight lift of it as she held back a grin. “You did, and it only gets worse cause we need to call Sal and Elmer too.”
“I broke you.”
Even though Hank could barely feel his body, numb due to the beating of words he took, he grinned. “No, Baby, you’re just fixing me. But if anyone knows anything about this town, it’s the five of them. They all might be losing their minds, but together, they’ll put the missing pieces together.”
She hated that he had to do this, that he had to find the missing pieces to his own family, but for him she tried to keep it light. He’d had enough for one day. “We’re going to need a lot of alcohol and a lot of food.” She teased, and then pressed her mouth to his before she asked, “When?”
“Now.”
* * *
Hank walked to the side of the building, pulled his cell from his pocket and stared at it. He didn’t want to make the call for one reason; he didn’t want to give her false hope. But it needed to be done. Thumbing through the screen, he brought up her contact information and hit call. It didn’t even ring twice before she picked up.
“Hi.” Phoebe’s voice was sweet and soft.
“Hi,” Hank repeated lowly. There were so many memories that flew through his head in that second. How, at one time, he couldn’t wait to hear her
voice, to see her, all the late nights sitting on his porch. They were good memories, but just that, memories.
“Hank—”
Hank wasn’t sure what she intended to say, but to stop any possible pain he cut her off. “Phoebe, I just wanna know you’re okay.”
He heard the soft sigh of disappointment before she replied, “I’m okay, Hank.” She paused, took a deep audible breath and carried on. “I’m not going to lie, it hurts but I was in the wrong back then.” Again, she paused and her voice was much lower this time as if she was talking more to herself than to Hank. “I should have been brave enough to do what Arissa is doing.”
Hank wasn’t going to sugarcoat anything; they were adults. “I am in love with her.”
“I know. You used to look at me with love, but, Hank, the way you look at her is like she is your source of air.”
“She is,” Hank admitted.
“Again.” Phoebe took a breath. “I know. Go, go be happy, Hank, you deserve it.”
Hank leaned against the brick wall and told her. “So do you.”
“I’ll find mine, in time I will.”
Hank knew it was time to end a chapter in his life and he did that when he said, “Take care of yourself, Phoebe.” And before she could even reply, he ended the call. But he didn’t move, he gave himself a second to take a deep cleansing breath of putting closure to something that was long overdue.
Jo’s eyes lifted to the door when it opened. Her eyes hit Hank’s and with an even voice she told him. “Your dad’s in your office.”
Hank’s eyes drifted past the desk, through the bullpen to his office. Through the window, he could see his dad looking at the pictures on the bookshelf. “Thanks,” Hank muttered and made his way to his office.
No one said anything to Hank as he walked through the room. Henry Weathers very rarely left his spot at Moe’s. Furthermore, Henry never bothered his son at work, no matter the situation. So it wasn’t only Hank that felt the tightness in the air.
