“Yup. Though I did get to stay out of school for a bit. That’s pretty wicked, right?”
I lost the ability to talk. In the quietness, the knock on the door made me jump.
Not knowing who to expect, I was beyond lost at seeing the familiar face of Detective Stapler. He was peering into the room, one hand holding a white envelope tied to a gigantic, teddy-bear balloon. The instant he saw Kain and me—him shirtless—tangled on the bed, his whole head flushed.
“Oh—I—I’ll come back,” he stuttered.
Ignoring Kain’s giant grin, I flapped a hand. “Wait! It’s fine.” Was it fine? “What are you doing here?”
His eyes tracked all over the room, but not at us directly. “Mmff. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Heard what had happened.” He glanced at Kain, then away, like seeing a member of the Badd family wasn’t what he was hoping for.
I wondered if he’d come to chide me, pointing out that he’d been right about the Badds being dangerous. He’d walked into something else entirely, of course.
Kain’s grin became a cheeky smirk. “Hey there, boss.”
The detective inched my way, handing over the balloon with the card attached. “Thanks,” I said earnestly, taking it. The colorful bear was smiling for all eternity. In the mirrored back of the balloon, I saw how pale I was. “Were you with the cops that arrived at the scene?”
“I was,” he said grimly. “I wasn’t shocked to hear about a fight between the Badds and the Deep Shots, but when word came down that there was a young woman seriously injured at the scene . . .” He shook his head, seeming to relive last night. “Actually, I had a question that one of you can hopefully answer.” Finally he looked at me, his warm, brown eyes shifting with curiosity.
“Shoot,” I said, instantly regretting my choice of phrasing.
The detective didn’t get the joke, or he knew enough to ignore it. “We found something at the scene that I couldn’t make sense of.”
I glanced at Kain—did he have any idea what this was about? “What was it?”
“A very pink high heel.”
“Pffftt.” It was the only sound I could make. My lips fluttered as I tried not to crack up. I’d forgotten all about that fucking shoe.
Kain tapped his fingers on my headboard. “That is weird.”
“I could swear I’d seen those heels before,” Stapler said.
Tears broke through the corners of my eyes. Not from sadness, but from the sheer pressure of trying not to explode at the absurdity of all of this. The detective froze, noticing the wetness as I rubbed at it and entirely misunderstanding. “Forgive me, you’re still recovering, and everything is so fresh. I didn’t mean to bring up memories of the attack. I’ll go, I’ll—right. Farewell.”
“Hold on!” Tapping the card he’d given me against my palm, I offered him a genuine smile. “Thanks for checking in on me. And . . . thanks for being one of the good guys.”
He flushed all over. “Yeah, well, I just hope I never have to see you again, Miss Sage.” Tipping his head at us both, he backtracked to the door. “Enjoy the card.”
Alone with Kain again, I met his stare with my own. “Wow,” I mumbled.
“I think you have a fan.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I don’t usually like cops following me around like puppies, but in this case . . . it might not be the worst. He did have a keen eye and a good question. Why were those shoes with you? I thought that I’d—”
“Hidden them away in your bedroom to worship in private?”
His grin cut sideways. “What’s creepier, me keeping them or you sneaking into my room to take them back?”
“I didn’t sneak in at all. Lula gave them to me.”
Kain’s eyes widened while his smile crumbled to dust. “Okay. Now I’m really fucking lost.”
“It doesn’t matter. Why did you keep those ridiculous shoes?”
His arm slid around me possessively. “Saying it out loud will sound insane.”
“Then let it,” I said earnestly.
Kain looked down at me, judging how serious I was being. I passed the test, I suppose, because he began to talk. “The day of the wedding, when I took you to the impound lot, I was spending so much time just thinking of a way to keep you from avoiding me. I wanted to prove I was better than . . . well, I guess better than someone who’d gotten you thrown into jail.”
The contours of his warm voice slid through my ears and into my heart. Which was good, because the memory of being handcuffed was a cold one.
He said, “But then you climbed into your car, and you didn’t even give me a damn moment to say good-bye. There was nothing, no opening—you were done.”
My hand clutched at my lungs. He sounded so damn sad. Had he really felt like that? “Kain . . .”
Blue skies free of clouds—that was what his eyes reminded me of. This man, he stared at me without a hint of doubt, speaking from a soul I would have once called tarnished and sinful. “Then you handed me those shoes. They were sparkly and pink and everything you weren’t. I’d helped you walk in them, they were all I had to represent the tangled-up way I felt about you.”
Abruptly he laughed, his hair falling across his eyebrows with how his head swung low. He whispered, “I actually thought—well, if I’m a prince, and these were the shoes you’d cast off, I’d keep them . . . I’d use them to find you . . . because you were my own personal Cinderella.”
My heart opened up, tingles spreading up my throat and to my brain. They made my nose tickle, a sneeze that never came because the pressure in my skull was from something sweeter entirely.
“What about you?” he asked, pulling me in for a kiss. “Why did you keep them?”
Flushing wildly, I let myself smile. “I’d never wear them again, but the fact you’d hid them away made me understand how much every minute we’d spent together had meant to you. I guess I couldn’t let them go.”
“But you did. Into Brick’s head.”
“Right. The mystery weapon.” The shoe that saved our lives. I remembered the envelope Detective Stapler had given me. Peeling it open, I slid out the big and bright get-well card. It had a pair of dancing mice on it. “Why pick mice, of all the . . .” I didn’t finish.
Inside the envelope, the detective had left me two very familiar slips of paper.
The ink on the bottom right of one was a messy scrawl: Kain’s signature.
Mama Badd’s was much neater.
I hadn’t expected to see that thirty grand ever again.
- EPILOGUE -
SAMMY
Kain had tried to warn me that the meeting would be intimidating.
I’d been sure I was ready.
Then I’d entered the den.