On Friday afternoon Cassie took off for the weekend. She left Tenley in charge of Serendipity so she and my uncle Nate could go away. Tenley didn’t seem to mind, but her week had been stressful, no thanks to her asshole advisor. I wanted to castrate him to ensure her safety, but that wasn’t an option. So I kept track of her meetings with him instead.
She hadn’t slept well the past couple of nights; nightmares had made her restless. It meant we were both a little tired, and I was snappy, as Jamie pointed out. I finished with my final client of the evening. Since I was already set up for my appointments tomorrow, I decided to stop in the café and pick up a snack for Tenley. She’d complained about an upset stomach this morning, so I doubted she’d eaten much today. She wasn’t at the cash register when I reached Serendipity, so I bypassed the first door and went directly to the second entrance, leading to the café, so I could surprise her. I ordered her a tea and picked the heaviest, most calorie-dense baked good to pair it with.
The door to Serendipity chimed, despite it being almost time to close. From where I stood I could see into the antiques store, but Tenley wasn’t visible. The jazz music floating through the speakers made it impossible to hear the conversation taking place, but I could make out the distinct low tones of a man. Based on her surprise, she seemed to know the person. When the tea was ready, I put it in a sleeve to keep her from burning her fingers.
Tenley sat behind the counter, swiveling back and forth in the chair. The man standing across from her was an on-duty cop. I couldn’t see his face because he was leaning on the counter. He was too close to Tenley.
There was something unnervingly familiar about his voice. As I crossed through the café to Serendipity, the cop noticed my arrival. He pushed away from the counter, his shoulders rolling back, stance widening. He puffed up like a peacock, all forced intimidation and suspicion. Fucking douche in a uniform.
His smile dropped as he took me in. His hand went immediately to the butt of his gun. I was covered in ink, which inevitably made me a felon in his estimation. I recognized him. He was older than me, by more than half a decade. I held his distrustful gaze as I ran my finger along the waistband of Tenley’s jeans where a strip of black ink was visible.
She clutched the base of her throat. “Hayden! I didn’t hear you.”
“Sorry.” I leaned in and kissed the side of her neck. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I brought you tea.”
As soon as I touched her, the rest of the world ceased to exist—even the cop who looked like he might consider shooting me for putting my hands on her.
She smiled. “That was thoughtful.”
“I try.”
“Stryker? Hayden Stryker?” the cop asked with disbelief.
I reluctantly tore my attention away from Tenley. I still couldn’t place him, but the icy stab in my stomach felt like a warning. “I’m sorry,” I said. “How do I know you?”
He looked shocked. “Collin Cross.”
It took a few seconds for the name to register and the pieces to fall into place. The night of my parents’ murder came back in a rush. I was alone in the house for fifteen minutes before the police came. I was intoxicated and high at the time, tripping out hard after I found my parents’ dead bodies.
Cross and his partner were first on the scene. They were too late to make a fucking difference. My belligerence forced his partner to restrain me, while Cross went upstairs to investigate. It took forever for him to come back down. There was no sign of a break-in, so they cuffed me and read me my rights, believing I’d killed them myself.
Cross kept me in the back of the car, repeating the same questions for what seemed like hours until they finally took me to the precinct house. They kept me in an interrogation room for a long time before I was allowed to make a call to my uncle. There was no “good cop–bad cop” routine—just relentless questioning. And then there were the pictures. I never recovered from those. The interrogation sent me into an emotional downward spiral I didn’t come out of for months. Or years, depending on who you talked to.
I passed the lie detector test. My alibi, which they didn’t bother to confirm until after the phone call had been made to my uncle, was more than enough to eradicate any suspicions of my involvement. Even the evidence that was eventually ruled as inadmissible never pointed at me, but I’d still felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility.
Nate was livid when he arrived at the station. In the haze of grief I vaguely remembered him threatening a lawsuit. As a clinical psychiatrist he insisted on a psychological evaluation. It was administered by one of their shrinks. They came up with a barrage of diagnoses in the form of acronyms, which made my statement irrelevant because they deemed me unstable at the time. The abridged version was it fucked me up. I hadn’t seen Cross since the early months after my parents’ death.
“I thought I recognized you.”
I moved closer to Tenley and not-so-absently ran my fingers through her hair, stroking her like she was TK.