The thought chilled me.
Fear had my stomach clenching.
Flashes of my life assaulted me, but I was quick to push them all away that time.
“After you were born, she left you with us and took off. Came back just before your second birthday. Next thing we knew, the both of you were gone.” She cleared her throat, then did it again, her lips wavering. “That was the first time we called the cops on her in years . . . it was also the last. Your grandpa and I had no claim over you and had no way to prove anything she ever did.”
“Lala.” Her name was a breath. Shock filled every inch of me at the news. At how deep and real her fear of Nora being taken was.
I didn’t know how to thank her for caring for me or apologize for the fear and heartbreak that must have caused.
I reached out and rested a hand on top of hers.
She glanced up and gave me a faint shrug. “But every year or two, the two of you showed up at my door because she’d run out of money. And every time, I asked for you back. I think she wouldn’t give you to me because she knew I would give her money as long as you were with her. I knew where that money was going. I could see the drugs damaging her body. But . . . well, we all make mistakes. Enabling her was mine.”
“You kept me alive.”
She offered me a watery smile. “Do you see the differences, Emma? You may be here because you needed me. You may have fallen for a boy faster and harder than you ever expected—and he may have tattoos. But Reed is not those men, and you are not your mother, not in any way.”
“That isn’t what it feels like,” I admitted softly.
“Maybe not now. Eventually, you’ll let go of your fears, and you’ll see.” She brushed a hand across my cheek and stood. “I’ve got a kitchen to get back to. If you’re not down there in five minutes to eat your fill, I’m sending whatever first responders are in my house up here to get you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said and watched her go.
Once she was gone, I sat up and focused on nothing other than breathing.
Not the pain or the anger or Reed Ryan.
Just breathing.
Just being.
I didn’t have a fucking clue how I’d ended up there.
I’d been avoiding this place for over three years now. For most of that time, I’d been avoiding calls and texts from these people too, because they were the same over and over again.
Come home.
Come home.
Go home.
Home was the last place I wanted to go. Home no longer felt like the place I was sitting in front of. Home was a small town where I couldn’t hide. Home was a girl with a fierce glare and a hard-to-come-by smile.
Apparently, I’d been wrong about it all.
As soon as my shift ended at four that morning, I’d showered, changed, gotten into my truck, and started driving.
No destination, no sunrises to watch with Emma, I’d just needed to go somewhere.
I’d needed to clear my head.
As I had three years ago, I’d realized not long after where I was headed. It somehow only made me angrier, but I hadn’t turned around.
Six hours later, I was sitting in front of my parents’ house, glaring at it like the house alone was the source of all my anger.
I turned off the engine and stepped out of my truck, wondering why I was doing this. Why I was walking toward the front door. What the hell I was going to say to whoever answered.
When I was a few feet away, the door opened, and a man filled the frame.
Other than the gray peppering his black hair and the lines starting to show around his eyes, there wasn’t a thing about him that set us apart.
From the build to the tattoos to the hardened stare to the way he stood, arms at his sides and hands fisted, prepared for anything.
Mirror image.
He jerked his chin at something behind me. “Your mom just left for Kira’s.”
I nodded.
“You gonna come in?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t know why I’m here.”
He breathed out a huff that was a mixture of frustration and hurt. “Because this is your home, Reed.” With that, he turned and walked away, leaving the door wide open.
After another minute of indecision, I followed him in.
I didn’t need to wonder where he’d gone, I already knew where I would find him—in the kitchen making coffee. After, we’d move to the kitchen table and fight it out. It’s what we’d always done.
Sure enough, coffee was just starting to brew, and he was pulling out a couple mugs when I entered the kitchen.
“Girls know you’re back?” he asked without turning.
“I’m not back.”
He twisted around and leaned against the counter, folding his arms over his chest as he did. “So, what are you?”
I lifted my shoulders. “Needed to go for a drive.”
“Last time you did that, you didn’t come home.”
My brows rose knowingly. “This isn’t the same situation.”
“Then what is it? Because you’ve been gone for over three fucking years. The fact that you left after just coming home from the military wrecked your mom and your sisters. And now you don’t talk to them at all. So, if you’re here, it better start with a damn good apology.”
A frustrated laugh rumbled in my chest. “Ah, Jesus . . . this is why I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Then go,” he said carelessly. “Leave before your mom gets back and you wreck her all over again.”
“I fucking left because of you,” I snapped. “I left because this is all we do. We fight and fight, and nothing I did was ever good enough for you. As for the girls? First of all, Kennedy has no room to fucking talk, considering she moved to California. And all anyone ever says is, ‘Come home. Come home. Come home.’ That’s all the messages consist of. No one’s asked where I am, what I’m doing, or cared that I actually love where I ended up. So, yeah, I stopped responding.”
“Nothing you did was good enough?” He gave me an incredulous look. “Are you serious, Reed?”
I just stared at him for a few moments, eyes wide and mouth open. “Dad . . . yeah. Every training, every scenario . . . once the girls got it, it was always good job. Don’t forget this. What would you do if this happened instead? Me? You were so much harder on me, and I never seemed to get it right, even though I was twice as fast as the girls. Do it again, Reed. Faster, Reed. Your family just died because you weren’t fast enough, Reed. Do it again.”
“I was pushing you.”
“I was five years old,” I shouted, spreading my arms out wide. “It was fucked up, and the thing is, you still don’t realize it.”
“Teaching my kids how to protect themselves . . . yeah.” He shrugged. “Real fucked up.”
“The fact that we had to do any of that at all,” I said on an exasperated laugh. “Then I went away and got my ass handed to me anytime I came home because I didn’t keep in touch while I was gone.” I placed a hand on my chest. “For the guy who always taught us to protect our family, I thought not having contact with them while on highly secretive missions was a good way to protect them.”
At that, his face turned to stone. No emotion, not a tick of his jaw, nothing.
Because he knew I was right.
“Even Sadie wasn’t good enough—”
“She wasn’t,” he added coolly, but I continued as if he hadn’t.
“But, for some goddamn reason, I always had to be okay with Kennedy and Kira’s fucked-up relationships. Kennedy meets a random guy and gets married right out of high school? I had to be okay with it because no one else was on her side. He ups and disappears on her? I was pissed, but you told me I had to be okay with it. You told me to act like it never happened. Then, that last time I came home, not only is Kennedy off in California, married to some new guy with a kid. But her piece-of-shit ex is suddenly back and married to Kira, and everyone is just okay w
ith it.”
I still remembered that day.
Remembered the shock and utter confusion. The hurt and betrayal. The rage.
I gestured to my dad and said, “I about lost my mind, and you shoved me back and told me to take a walk. Me. No one had given me a warning about what I was walking into. No one had told me anything about him. And when I was trying to understand why he was standing there, why he was with Kira, what did you tell me?”
“You missed their weddings.”
“You wanted me to apologize for it. What about no one cared to wait until I came home? No one even fucking told me they were happening?”
“You were told,” he said with a scoff.
“No, I wasn’t,” I yelled, smacking my hand on the counter. “You think I wouldn’t have been there? You think I would’ve missed seeing my sisters get married? Or that I would’ve missed Kennedy having a kid?”
“Kira just had twins a couple months ago. Why don’t you tell me?”
All the air fled from my lungs so swiftly, so painfully, I wasn’t sure I’d ever catch my breath again.
I stumbled back and then to the side, hand blindly searching for the counter again to support me. My head shook slowly as I opened my mouth to speak. To beg him to tell me he was lying, to ask if I had really done this to myself, to say anything, but no words came.
I turned and went to the table, falling roughly to one of the chairs there.
My elbows hit the hardwood and my head dropped into my hands.
Soon after, a mug was set in front of me, followed by the sound of my dad settling into one of the other chairs.
“In the eight years you were in the military, you only came home three times, Reed. Most of the time, it was radio silence from you. Your mom and I watched the news religiously because that was the only way we knew if you were alive. When anything happened to a SEAL team . . . fuck, Reed,” he ground out, voice thick. “And half the time, we didn’t know if you were stateside or there. I watched your mom and your sisters mourn you so many goddamn times, I lost count. What you were doing would’ve already had us worried for you, but you left everyone you loved in the dark, and that was a terrifying place to be. So, yeah, maybe when you finally showed up, the fear that always stayed with me lashed out at you.”
A sharp laugh punched from me. “You’re a hypocrite.” I dropped my hands to look at him and leaned back in my chair. “I never thought anything of it, just that I was protecting my family in the only way I could. But what you just said?” I shrugged. “I get it now, what I was doing. And why wouldn’t I? I learned from the best.”
His brows set low over his eyes as if he was trying to figure out where I was going with this.
“Leaving everyone I loved in the dark.” I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I can see how that would be hard for the people left behind. Then again, you used to leave everyone you loved in the dark. Without a word, without a way to get ahold of you, you’d vanish. I’m sure your family was terrified.” I gave him a knowing look. “Weren’t you sometimes gone for a year at a time?”
“I was an undercover detective in gangs, that’s different. I had a cover that couldn’t be blown.”
“I was a SEAL. I was overseas on classified missions. I was at war.” Each word was said slowly, carefully. “Tell me how that’s different.” I huffed bitterly. “Oh, wait, it’s different because I didn’t get caught. I didn’t get my fiancée kidnapped and nearly killed on two different occasions. I didn’t continue putting my family in danger.”
His jaw tightened. “I had it under control.”
“You mean after what happened to Mom the second time, right?” I asked meaningfully. “You could’ve gone anywhere. You and Mom could’ve gone anywhere and started over. We wouldn’t have been here, where you’d done all that shit, growing up having to constantly look over our shoulders to make sure we weren’t going to pay for everything you’d done.”
“Everything I’d done.” He laughed, but it was full of frustration. “I gave up my life and basically sold my soul so I could bring the filth out of their holes and put them in prison.”
“Yeah, and you made sure we were prepared if any of them retaliated again by giving us the most fucked-up childhood.”
“Tell me again how I ruined your childhood. Tell me that I was a shitty dad.” He held his arms out and looked around. “Is that why you’re here?”
“You were the best dad,” I said softly. “I looked up to you—shit, you were my hero. It wasn’t until I went into the Navy that I realized you and I were always fighting because, suddenly, we weren’t. Because we weren’t talking at all. Then I started hearing stories from other guys, stories about their childhoods, and I quickly found out that mine hadn’t been normal. Nothing about it was.” I roughed a hand over my jaw, my head shaking. “I wanted to be just like you . . . but I never measured up, and you stopped me at every turn.”
Dad’s mouth had formed a thin line as I spoke. At the last part, his eyes shot to mine.
“You and Uncle Mason are legends here. Even the shit you did that nearly got you fired only made the two of you more notorious. All I ever wanted was to be like you,” I repeated. “But the second I mentioned becoming an officer, you shot it down. Every time I brought it up, you shot it down harder. ‘Do something else with your life. Go to college and get a degree that puts you in an office somewhere,’” I mimicked him. “‘You don’t want to be known as Kash Ryan’s kid.’ Except I’d always been known as your kid. You trained us to escape life-or-death situations from the time we could walk because of it.”
My dad’s chest pitched with a defeated-sounding laugh. “First time you said that I was so damn proud.” Before I had a chance to argue, he said, “Then you said, ‘I’m gonna go undercover, just like you did.’ Scared the shit out of me. And you were already the best at everything—better than my undercover trainees—at only thirteen. So, I knew whatever you went for when you grew up, you’d get it.” He lifted his mug, a haunted kind of look washing over his face, his stare faraway. “And I couldn’t let you live that life.”
I knew stories from when he’d been undercover. He’d told them plenty of times as lessons, so I knew he and Uncle Mason had lived in ways that still haunted them. Just as I knew there were worse things they’d refused to tell us.
But that didn’t change what I’d wanted or how he’d stopped me at every turn.
“Instead of tearing down my dream, why couldn’t you have tried to steer me away from that division?” I asked, voice soft and holding a hint of bitterness. “I was a kid, things change. I mean . . . sort of. I’m pretty sure I had a mohawk around that time too.”
“You did,” he said with a twitch of his lips.
“And I don’t have one of those anymore.” I let my hand fall heavily to the table. “Not that where I’m at has an undercover division, but even if it did, I like being on patrol.”
Silence settled between us, heavy and filled with pain for long minutes before he finally said, “You didn’t have to run away and abandon your family to be a cop.”
I slanted a glare at him and reached for my mug. “You know that isn’t why I left.”
“Apparently, it’s because of me, so might as well get it all out now since we’re having the best conversation of my life,” he said dryly.
“I told you,” I murmured, “I was already reeling because Sadie left me. Then I came home to the twins and all their marriage surprises, and the first thing you did was make me feel like shit for not being there when I hadn’t even known.”
“You were told,” he said, echoing his response from earlier.
I lifted my hands. “No, I—when? Who tried to tell me? Who tried to contact me? Because I fucking promise you, I would’ve been there.”
“Both girls sent invitations. They called and texted for the weddings and when Kennedy got pregnant and had the baby.”
“I never got anything,” I said adamantly. “Never once. I—” Denial and regret slowly wound throug
h me. “Radio silence,” I said through shallow breaths.
Dad grunted in affirmation.
“But Sadie would’ve gotten the wedding invitations. She would’ve told me that they’d gotten married while I was gone.” My chest pitched as everything started adding up. “Except I came home to the news that she was leaving me.”
“Still could’ve found time to tell you,” Dad said. “Never did like her.”
I shot him a look. “Yeah, and you reminded me of it any time she was mentioned. You were mad when we got engaged, and the day I came home and told you she’d left me, you said, ‘I warned you about her.’” An irritated laugh crawled up my throat as I placed my hands on my chest. “I have to be okay with my sisters suddenly being married, one of them to the other’s asshole ex, and I’m not supposed to ask questions. But I’m standing there, devastated because my fiancée left me, and that was all you could say?”
His head bounced in a faint nod. Sorrow and regret etched across his face.
“You and I nearly came to blows that night, Dad. I hadn’t even been home for six hours. I’d left a huge chunk of my life behind, my heart had been ripped out, and my family had gone on with their lives like I didn’t exist. Why the fuck would I have stayed?”
“You stay because we’re family.”
“Yeah, it didn’t feel like my family anymore.”
His jaw ticked in that way it always did when he was mad or hurting, but he just sat there, turning his mug in circles.
After minutes passed in uncomfortable silence, he asked, “You’re happy in Colby?”
My chest heaved with a muted laugh. “Knew you’d track me.”
“Had you flagged. Soon as you applied for a South Carolina license, it popped up. Right after, saw everything else you were applying for and knew you were going into the academy.”
I sighed and sank lower in my chair. “Yeah, Dad. Really happy.”
“No one knows who you are?”
I sucked in a quick breath through my teeth. “Small town, they all know who I am.” I sent him a quick look before focusing on my coffee. “But no one wants to kill me because of my last name, so there’s that.”
Lie to Me Page 24
