by Devney Perry
“Oh.” Genevieve covered her gasp with a smile. “Hi.” She held out her right hand but had forgotten the shoes. “Shoot. Sorry.” She tossed them on the ground, wiping her palm on her pants and extending it again. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”
“You too.” Mom was smiling outwardly, but her eyes darted to me. She had no idea who Genevieve was. Why would she?
Genevieve caught the confusion in Mom’s stare. A flash of pain crossed her eyes, but she blinked it away because Bryce was standing watch. “Isaiah has told me so much about you, Suzanne.”
A total lie, but Genevieve was playing the part. I’d thank her for it later if we survived.
“I’m sorry.” Mom shook her head. “Am I forgetting something?”
“No.” I put my arm around Mom’s shoulders, holding her tight. “Mom, this is Genevieve. My wife.”
The second the word was out of my mouth, Mom’s body flinched like she’d been punched. “Y-your wife?”
“She didn’t know?” Bryce whispered to Genevieve.
“We wanted to tell her in person,” Genevieve lied—God, I could kiss her for it.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” When would I get to stop apologizing to her for my mistakes? “I should have told you on the phone but—”
“You’re married?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“How long?”
“Since the end of July.”
“Oh.” Her chin dropped as she let it sink in. When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes.
“Don’t be upset. We wanted to tell you in person and—”
“You’re married. Oh, Isaiah.” She took my face in her hands and smiled. “This is just . . . wonderful. You’re happy?”
Happy? Never. But if Mom thought being married had made me happy, I’d go along with it. “Yeah, Mom. I am.”
She threw her arms around me and laughed. “I didn’t think we’d ever get here. Not after Shannon.”
At Shannon’s name, Genevieve stiffened. Everyone was getting surprised today.
“I’ll leave you guys alone.” Bryce smiled at Genevieve and disappeared to the office. Now she leaves?
Mom let me go and wiped her eyes. She reached for Genevieve’s hand. “Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.”
Genevieve simply nodded.
“What a surprise,” Mom said. “I didn’t expect to come to Clifton Forge today and gain a daughter.”
Another flash of pain crossed Genevieve’s face. She wasn’t ready to be another woman’s daughter, not when she was still mourning her mother.
“Mom’s going to stick around for dinner,” I said. “We can all go out once you get off work.”
“That sounds nice.” Genevieve bent to pick up her shoes. “I’d better swap these out and get back to work. See you tonight, Suzanne.”
“I can’t wait.” Mom waved as Genevieve headed for the stairs.
“Mom, can you hang out for one sec?”
“You go. I’ll head out and do some shopping. Call me when you’re off work.”
“Okay.” I kissed her cheek. “See you soon.”
I took the stairs two at a time, flying up to the apartment. Genevieve was dropping her shoes inside the trash can.
“Sorry,” I breathed. “She surprised me.”
“It’s fine.” Genevieve wouldn’t look at me. “I thought by now you would have told her, so it took me by surprise too. I mean, you never said you told your family, so I don’t know why I’m shocked. It doesn’t matter. It’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine.
I crossed the room and put my hands on her shoulders, spinning her to face me. “I should have told her.”
“Why didn’t you? Are you ashamed of this? Is that why?”
Christ. I’d fucked this up too. “No, not at all. Mom’s had a rough few years, with me in prison. I wasn’t sure how to tell her. And I wasn’t sure how she’d react. I don’t want to cause her any stress.”
“I get it.” Genevieve sighed. “It’ll be fine. We’ll go to dinner. Pretend to be the loving couple with her too. It’s no big deal.”
“Thanks. It means a lot. She means a lot.”
Mom was the one person who’d always stood by me. Even when it had cost her years with Kaine, she’d taken my side.
I didn’t deserve her either.
“I’d better get going.” Genevieve stepped out of my hold. “I have a lot to finish up if we’re going to dinner. I’ll try to get off early.”
“I’ll follow you to the firm.”
She nodded, stepping away to go to the closet and get a pair of shoes.
I closed my eyes and let my head fall. As introductions went, that could have been much, much worse. It could have been the disaster I’d imagined.
Now I just had to make it through dinner. I was counting on Mom not mentioning Shannon again, hoping she would be too consumed with getting to know her daughter-in-law to talk about the past.
Genevieve stepped into a pair of black heels, making her a couple inches taller. Then she crossed the room, passing a stack of paint cans by the dresser.
I’d already built the new shelves around the closet and this weekend, we were painting.
Genevieve had picked four different colors. One for the bathroom, another for the ceilings, another for an accent wall, and the fourth for everywhere else.
She’d be an angel to Mom over dinner, and for that, Genevieve wouldn’t have to lift a brush. I’d paint this entire place for her, twice if she asked me to.
“Thanks,” I repeated.
“Sure.” She wasn’t looking at me again as she walked to the door. She turned the knob but paused and let it go, the spring recoiling with a click. “Who’s Shannon?”
My chest tightened. “A memory.”
“Will you tell me about her one day?”
A lie would have been easy. I could promise maybe. But Genevieve had earned the truth.
“No.”
Chapter Eleven
Genevieve
“Hey.” Isaiah closed the door behind him and tugged off his boots.
“Hi,” I muttered, not taking my eyes off the brush.
In the week since his mother had visited Clifton Forge, painting had become my escape. If I wasn’t at work, I was here with a brush or roller in hand. So far, I’d painted all of the apartment’s ceilings.
Getting the tarps set up each night was a huge pain in the ass, but I would not sleep at the Evergreen Motel, where Mom had been murdered. Bryce had warned me that the other two motels were rumored to have bed bugs. So I covered and uncovered like it was my job.
We slept with the window and door open, fans blaring so we didn’t suffocate from the fumes. The trip to the bathroom in the morning was frigid, but nothing a hot shower couldn’t chase away.
Today, I’d graduated to walls. First up was the accent wall behind the bed. Tomorrow night I’d tackle the bathroom. Over the weekend, the rest of the walls would provide me with an excuse to avoid Isaiah.
I had a blister on my index finger from the roller’s handle. I had paint speckled on my face and arms. The chunk of hair above my left eyebrow was streaked with indigo blue. But if not for this painting, I would have gone crazy.
“How was your day?” Isaiah asked.
I shrugged, not bothering to turn around and look at him. “Fine.”
Jim had escorted me to my car after work each evening, saving Isaiah a trip downtown. So I’d skipped my lunch hour all week and left an hour earlier than normal so I could paint. My research had hit a dead end. Unless the Warriors wanted to give me a full roster of their members, I’d dug into all of their known affiliates without any leads.
Painting was distracting me from that too.
By the time Isaiah came up from the shop, I was in the thick of it.
“What can I do?”
I’d already pushed the bed into the middle of the room and covered it in plastic. My paint tray was full. The baseboard trim was taped so I could cut
in the edges tonight. I had an extra brush with my supplies, but I didn’t want his help. “Nothing.”
Isaiah sighed and opened the fridge to take out a Coke—just like he did every evening after work. The cans in the cardboard box shifted to fill the empty space as he popped the top and gulped.
Why did Isaiah like Coke? No idea. It was the only thing I’d seen him drink besides water. Did he like the carbonation? Was it the sugar? Why didn’t he drink alcohol?
He wasn’t telling.
And I wasn’t asking.
“Feel like dinner?” he asked. “I could eat pizza.”
I did not want pizza. “Fine.”
“Or cheeseburgers?”
“Pizza.” I had no plans to eat that pizza with Isaiah. It would reheat better than a cheeseburger. Or I’d eat it cold. My painting had saved me from dinner conversation all week. The last meal Isaiah and I had eaten together had been with his mom.
Suzanne Reynolds was a nice woman. All through dinner, she’d found excuses to touch me, like a pat on the hand or a touch on the shoulder when I said something she liked. She smiled a lot. She laughed easy.
Like Mom used to do.
Would Mom be smiling now? Would she be laughing if she knew how her lies and secrets had landed me here? Was she looking down on me, watching as I repainted this dingy apartment that I shared with a man who hadn’t even bothered to tell his sweet mother that he’d gotten married? Or fake married.
Whatever.
“Pepperoni?” Isaiah asked.
Ugh. We’d had pepperoni last time. I. Was. Over. It. “Fine.”
His gaze was hot on my neck as he waited for more, but that one word was all he was going to get. Finally, he muttered, “’Kay.”
Why should I talk when he didn’t?
“Would you like me to roll while you cut in?” he asked.
“No.”
Isaiah had offered to paint the entire place after his mother had left town. Suzanne had driven back to Bozeman after our dinner, calling two hours later when she made it home safely. Isaiah had waited up for her call, then he’d promised to paint after work each night.
Since I got home an hour before he was done downstairs, I started before he had the chance to stop me.
The only reason he wanted to paint was because I’d made his mother laugh and had let her ask me question after question, answering without hesitation. I didn’t need any more guilty favors. If I wanted a white ceiling and a wall the color of midnight, I’d make it happen myself.
Why count on people when they’d only disappoint? Or leave? Or die?
“Genevieve.” Isaiah’s voice was low, my name soft and gentle as it trickled off his tongue. No one spoke my name like Isaiah.
My anger ebbed. “What?”
“Would you look at me?”
I huffed and pushed up from the floor where I was crouched to paint the edge near the baseboard. I kept my face flat, expressionless, and turned to meet his gaze. He was closer than I’d expected. I’d thought he was still in the kitchen, but he stood at the foot of the bed.
“Are you okay?” He sounded genuinely concerned.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m getting that word a lot. You seem mad.”
I gritted my teeth. Why was he asking? It wasn’t like he really cared. “I’m busy.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t be so busy if you let me help paint.”
“I don’t need help.”
He pursed his lips. “Fine.”
“Fine.” Fine was my word. I said it better anyway.
Isaiah planted his hands on his hips. “Is this how it’s going to be now? I get the silent treatment every night? Can’t we at least be civil?”
Seriously? I saw red.
My paintbrush rocketed toward his head.
He dodged the actual brush, sidestepping it with an easy sway. But the paint spattered across his black T-shirt. He wiped a streak with his finger, staining his skin. “What the fuck?”
“You don’t get to lecture me on the ‘silent treatment’!” I shrieked, air quotes flying. “Your mom is a sweet, lovely woman.”
“So?” His forehead creased. “You’re ignoring me because my mom is sweet?”
“No, I’m ignoring you because you didn’t tell that sweet, lovely woman about me. I’m mad that I had to lie to that sweet, lovely woman. I’m frustrated that I’m in this position in the first place because of my mother, who was once sweet and lovely too but now she’s dead.”
His shoulders fell. “Gene—”
“Don’t.”
I was on a roll, and damn it, I wanted to get it out. For once, I wanted to set some of this anger free because keeping it trapped inside was eating me alive.
“I’m mad because I’m mad. It’s all I feel most days and I can’t even grieve my mother because the anger trumps everything else. Bryce wants to publish a memorial article about Mom, but I can’t stand to read it. I don’t want to remember how great she was because in here,” I touched my heart, “she isn’t great. It feels . . . wrong. Because if she was so great, then I wouldn’t be painting this apartment, hoping it will feel just a little more like the home I’ve been missing since some bastard butchered her at the Evergreen Motel.”
Isaiah took a step my way, but I held up my hand, stopping him before he came too close. If he crossed the invisible line between us, anger would dissolve into tears.
There was more to release before the crying began.
“I’m mad because I got shoved into the back of a trunk. I’m mad because someone took me. I’m mad because he’s still out there, and I’m scared to go anywhere alone. I’m mad because this crappy apartment is one of the only places where I feel safe. I’m mad that I’ve gained five pounds because I bake cookies from my mom’s special recipe every other day since those stupid cookies make me feel like my mom was great.”
My throat began to close and my nose stung, but I kept going. If I didn’t get it out, he’d never know. And tonight I had the courage—I needed him to know.
“I’m mad.” A tear dripped down my cheek. “I’m so mad at her. And I can’t be mad at her because she’s gone. So I’m going to be mad at you instead. I’m mad that you have a sweet, loving mother. I’m mad that I learned more about you from her over dinner than I have in the months we’ve been married. And I’m mad that you don’t tell me anything.”
Another tear fell and I reached up to swipe it from my cheek. I hated that I was crying and that Isaiah was seeing me break. My rant stained the air a putrid gray and humiliation shoved the anger aside. Oh my God. I’m a psycho.
My cheeks burned.
I wanted my paintbrush. I wanted to get back to work and forget this had ever happened. Damn it. Why had I thrown it?
“Will you hand me my paintbrush?” I whispered, refusing to meet his gaze.
“No.”
“Please?” My voice sounded tiny and fragile. Weak.
“I don’t want you to know about me.”
I gasped. Ouch. I’d just poured my heart out and he’d taken it in his hands and squeezed it to bits. Was I really such a monster? Why was opening up to me such an impossibility?
I blinked, another tear falling. How much more could I take until the pain swallowed me whole?
“Fuck. That’s not what I meant.” Isaiah sidestepped the bed, leaning down to snag my hand. He pulled me to the edge of the bed. We sat, the plastic tarp crackling under our weight.
I picked at a dot of dried ceiling paint.
Isaiah hooked his finger under my chin. “Look at me.”
He really did have pretty eyes.
So sad, but so pretty.
“That’s not what I meant.” His shoulders sagged. “I don’t want you to know about me, because I don’t think you’ll like me much when you do. I want you to like me.”
“Oh.” And now I was the jerk who had been so self-absorbed with her own grief that she’d missed Isaiah’s shame. Shit. “Sorry. We’re quite the pair.”
&nb
sp; “Yeah.” He dropped his gaze to my lap, taking my left hand and rubbing a speck of paint from my ring.
“I’d like to know you,” I said. “At least a little. This might go on for years. We can’t pretend to be married outside these walls and be strangers inside. Maybe we could be . . . friends.”
I was short on friends in Clifton Forge. My girlfriends in Colorado called sometimes. I’d call them other times. But with every passing week, they were getting on with their lives and I was getting on with mine. Soon, we’d drift apart because we had nothing in common.
They all thought I’d gotten swept up in a whirlwind romance. Most thought I was crazy, and though they’d never admit it, I think they were waiting to welcome me home when it fell apart.
They weren’t wrong.
Isaiah nodded. “Friends.”
“Good. I like your mom.” Despite my earlier meltdown, it was important he knew that.
“I’m glad. She’s . . . she’s the best person I know.”
“Will you tell me more about your family?” At dinner, his mom had talked endlessly about Isaiah and Kaine, her two sons. But there’d been no mention of their father. “What’s your brother like?”
“He’s a good guy. He builds custom furniture that’s more like art than tables and chairs. He’s always had that kind of raw talent. I used to get jealous of how things came so easily to him. I’d probably hate him if he weren’t the second-best person I knew.”
“And he lives in Montana?”
Isaiah nodded. “In a little town called Lark Cove. It’s different than Clifton Forge. Sits right on a lake.”
“Why did you pick Clifton Forge over Lark Cove? Did you not want to be close to your brother?”
“The job. Dash’s garage is pretty well-known and not a lot of places will hire an ex-con.”
I forgot most days that Isaiah had been in prison. That his record would follow him for the rest of his life. “And your dad?”
“I didn’t really know him. Mom divorced him just a few months after I was born. They were already separated. I was an accident.”
“We have that in common,” I muttered.
“I honestly don’t remember him much. Couldn’t tell you what he looked like. Can’t even think of the last picture I saw of him. Weird, right?”
