“Seven minutes and several traffic violations later, here I am.” She glances past me to Kai. “Gep’s on his way. May take him a little longer, but he’ll be here soon. What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a situation.” I glance at Kai, whose eyes are fixed on the marble foyer floor. “I’ll explain when he gets here. I don’t want to go through it twice.”
I don’t want to go through it even once, but we have to. It’s probably good that Bristol got here so quickly. I don’t know what I would have said if my fight with Kai continued. I still can barely make myself look at her, and it’s not because of what we’ll see on that tape. It’s because she lied to me when I thought we had gotten past it. Because I fooled myself into thinking we had given ourselves completely to each other, and all this time she was holding back. All this time, she didn’t trust me. And that makes me question every moment we’ve shared since Grady’s wedding. And I hate that because those were the best moments of my whole life. And her lies cast a shadow over every one of them.
The three of us are brewing in a tight silence in the kitchen drinking coffee when Gep arrives. He looks fresh, alert and ready, like it’s the start of a new day, not just past midnight.
“What’s up?” Gep’s calm tone soothes me just a little bit. Kai tried to handle this alone, but couldn’t. I can. We can. We will, and I’ll deal with her lies after I’ve destroyed Drex once and for all. I’m determined that on that dude’s deathbed he’ll still be thinking about what I take from him because of this.
“Someone’s been blackmailing Kai.” The words land with a thud into the kitchen quiet. Gep glances at Kai surreptitiously, but Bristol out and out stares at her, and the questions begin.
“With what? Blackmailing how?” Bristol demands of Kai, her eyes narrow. “And what the hell does this have to do with Rhys? How are you involved?”
Even though she’s looking at Kai, I will answer her because as angry as I am with Kai right now, no one’s gonna bully my girl. Not even my twin sister.
“I’m involved because she is.” My voice is quiet, but so firm there is no doubting I’ll lay into her if I have to. “And you’re here to fix it. You’re here to work on this problem as if it’s my problem because it is.”
Bristol presses her lips together and sits on one of the high stools at the counter.
“All right.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “So let’s hear it.”
I make myself look at Kai, even though for the first time since we’ve met I don’t want to. I’ve barely been able to take my eyes off this girl since that day in Grady’s rehearsal room, and now when I look at her, she’s covered in lies.
“Tell us, Kai.”
She leans her elbows to the island in the middle of the kitchen, her eyes down, hair covering her face, and begins.
“About three months ago I got a text message from an unknown number.” She pulls the hair behind her ear, showing me only her profile. “There was a link to a write up on the fight Rhys and I had, and a warning that we should stay apart or they would release this tape.”
She glances up at me only briefly, but the connection between our eyes still runs through me like a volt. I want to turn it off, but even pissed off with her, I can’t.
“It was a clip of me . . .” Her words die, and she gulps with eyes closed, before resurrecting the sentence. “A clip of me having sex with Drex.”
“Shit,” Bristol says under her breath, but loud enough for us all to hear. She drills a look into me until I finally have to look at her. Fury and frustration pool in the eyes just like mine, reflecting some of what I’m feeling.
“You fucked that douchebag?” she asks Kai.
Kai nods, biting her bottom lip, the breath trembling over her lips before she answers.
“It was before Rhys and I met. I was a dancer in one of Drex’s videos, and after the shoot wrapped we . . . well, went back to his place.” Her eyes squeeze shut like she can’t bear us looking at her. “I had no idea he was recording it, and I never . . . God, I’m so sorry.”
Tears leak over her cheeks, and she doesn’t even try to wipe them away they come so fast. I’m surprised when Bristol grabs a box of Kleenex Sarita keeps on the counter and walks it over to Kai. Everything in me strains to comfort her, but I just can’t. I’m not past the lie, the deliberate deceptions and blocking me out of this when I gave her everything. And if I soften toward her at all, I’ll lose focus. And right now my focus is a search and destroy mission.
“So he’s disappeared.” I take up where Kai left off as she wipes her cheeks and sniffs. “San’s been looking for him, and they spotted him yesterday in Topanga. Obviously he’s connected to this, but maybe not working alone. We don’t know.”
“What do you want to happen, Rhyson?” Gep asks quietly. “Blackmail is a crime, potentially a felony. We could contact the police.”