“Why were you at the hospital?”
“Because my sick sister has a kidney infection that apparently sent her into early labor.” This time, I snapped it. The accusation wasn’t unfounded, I knew that, but I was tired and worried about Connie. Now I was worried about Brett and how this would affect everyone and I didn’t need the third degree. “I didn’t have either of our phones while I was by her side all night while they tried to stop it so her baby would be okay.”
“Oh.” Aunt Bel’s voice was small now. “Well, that settles that.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “I was there since two-thirty yesterday afternoon. This morning, I literally got home, took a shower, then turned on my phone and called Brett when I saw the missed calls. Is that convincing enough for you?”
She had the grace to look sheepish. Not a trait she usually exhibited. “It wasn’t, Lani,” she announced.
That was as close to an apology as I was going to get.
“Did they stop her labor?” Mae asked me, leaning forward. Concern shone in her eyes.
I nodded and let out a long breath. “Yeah. As long as she sticks to her bed rest, she should go to term.”
I didn’t want to look at Brett. He hadn’t moved or said a word for several minutes now. I didn’t know what he was thinking or how he was feeling, but I didn’t regret it. Lying had gotten us nowhere good before, and even if the tables now turned, I knew I’d been honest with him.
“Can you give us a minute?” he asked quietly. “Mom, Dad? Everyone?”
I swallowed and looked down. Everybody murmured an agreement and slowly filtered out of the library. Camille caught my eye as she walked past us and smiled, but I couldn’t return it. Not when I couldn’t mean it, no matter how much I appreciated the gesture.
The door closed, leaving us in silence. It was thick and heavy, and the whispers of tension that hung between us felt like brick walls.
Until he did the one thing I didn’t think he’d do.
He walked toward me and pulled me against his body. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and buried his nose in my hair, holding me tightly.
I unfolded my arms and hugged his waist, turning my face into his neck. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut.
“What for?” he whispered back into my ear. “You didn’t do anything. If you’d revealed what I’d done before, I would have deserved it. All I want to know is that you meant what you said to me that night.”
“If I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t have said it. I don’t know why I agreed to do what he wanted in the first place.” No, I did know. He’d all but pressured me into agreeing. No matter that at times I’d wanted to do it.
“It doesn’t matter.” Brett pulled back and slid his arms down so he was cupping my jaw with his strong hands. His gray-blue eyes held no hint of anger or malice as he looked into my eyes. “He’s an asshole and I can probably guess. I know you didn’t do this, Lani. I doubt you ever would have been able to go through with it anyway.”
“You’re probably right,” I agreed. “But the thought of doing it made you bearable sometimes.”
His lips tugged up. “Bearable enough for you to fall in love with.”
“I’m also debating visiting a doctor to get my head checked.”
“Why? Did you hit it on your way up from Hell?”
“I thought that was going to be really corny, but I’m actually a little impressed.”
He laughed and hugged me again. “It almost was corny.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t corny,” I said, my voice muffled by his t-shirt. “I just said I was impressed.”
Brett dipped his head down and kissed the edge of my mouth.
“Can we come in now you’ve made up?” Camille yelled from behind the door.
“Hold on!” Brett grabbed my ass cheek and pulled my hips right to him before planting a huge kiss properly on my mouth.
I laughed into the kiss, and the force of his grip on me had me moving up onto my tiptoes. “Put me down, you fool.”
“All right, all right,” he muttered. “Fine, come back in,” he yelled to the door.
I rubbed my butt cheek when he released me. Lord, he had a grip and a half.
“So,” Camille said, bouncing back into the library. “What are we doing about Anton Reeves? Except sending a hit squad of rats into his house.”
“I told you no on the rats, Cam,” Mae said.
“But they’d be fun.”
“No, Camille.”
“I think you should just let him post it.”
Everyone turned to look at me when I said that.
“Oops.” I winced. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
“No,” William said, holding up his hand. “Why should we let him?”
“Because then you still win.” I shrugged a shoulder and looked at Brett. “If you pay him off, someone else will just do the same thing. And it doesn’t stop him telling anyone, and he may have done it already. If you let him post it, he doesn’t get the money or the satisfaction that he’s hurting you.” I hopped up onto the desk.
“It makes a lot of sense,” William said to Brett.
He shook his head. “No. It’ll hurt you guys.”
“I don’t care,” Camille added quietly. “If it means you can’t be hurt by this in the future, I don’t care.”
Judging by the nodding of the family, they all agreed with her.
“Okay,” Brett said, albeit somewhat begrudgingly. “We tell him to print it. Then what?”
I swung my legs and grinned. “Leave that to me.”
I was pretty much typing in a blur. My fingers were moving faster than my brain for once, and I had no idea if the little black letters appearing on my screen made any sense whatsoever. At this point, I was simply hoping that the words in my brain were translating to the words on my screen.
“What’s that word?” Brett leaned over my shoulder and pointed at the screen.
I paused in my typing and looked at it. “This might need a proofread. I have no idea.”
“You done? You’ve been in here almost two hours.”
“Shit.” I looked around at him. “I told Connie I’d be back to the hospital soon. I haven’t got her room done yet.”
“Camille’s already gone up to be with her,” he answered with a smile. “She said she’ll stay until she’s either discharged or you get there.”
“What if she’s discharged first?”
“Then she’ll take her to her house and stay with her until you get there. Don’t worry. We’ve got it covered.”
“She needs to be at my house.”
“Lani.” Brett sat next to me. He moved my laptop off my knees and onto the coffee table and turned my face toward his. “We have movers to handle it. You have your grandma’s stuff to get rid of, so they’ll deal with that and move Connie in.”
I blinked at him. “Movers.”
“And she rents her house from us, so she can go whenever. Dad isn’t going to hold her to the thirty-days’ notice.”
“You own her house.”
“We own her house.”
I blinked some more. I was in an exhausted haze, and the only thing that was keeping me running right now was the barest fizzle of adrenaline from some deep, dark vein somewhere in my toe or something.