Finding Our Reality (The Reality Duet #2)

Chapter 14

CRUTCH

I stare at her for the umpteenth time today. She’s the most gorgeous thing to walk the face of the planet, so it’s fair to assume that I want to stare at her. All the time. But I’m also staring because I’m mad.

Furious. Boiling.

She went home with someone again.

Friday night after my little reunion with Brittany, she wandered the bar and found a guy she deemed worthy of her one-night affection. I sent Brittany away. She and her friends left the bar after thirty minutes. After she hit on both Holt and Cullen. Hell, she even hit on Will.

But that didn’t matter. Lulu still wanted to make me pay. And she did. She kept touching the guy’s arm, whispering in his ear, laughing at things that probably weren’t even funny. And then she left the bar with him. My Lulu snuck away so some stranger could put his lips on her body. So some stranger could be inside of her, in the place that was meant for only me. The place I broke. The place I explored.

Why does she keep giving pieces of herself away? I’ve given away enough for both of us.

She glances up from her work. When she sees the look on my face, her spine stiffens even more. “So, we are meeting him at three today?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

She lifts an eyebrow, but turns a deaf ear to my attitude. “How do you know he’ll be home?”

“Trash is supposed to meet with his parole officer. I know the guy. I called and he was more than happy to turn the reins of the meeting over to me.”

She flips a few pages in her notebook. “He’s been out of prison for a little over seven years, right?”

When Lulu first found out my brother went to prison, when reading over Carrie’s updated case file, she was unable to hide the gleam in her eye. You would’ve thought it was Christmas morning and she just saw presents from Santa stacked underneath the tree.

“Yeah.” I answer quickly, hoping my one-word response doesn’t garner her attention.

“And he was arrested for the drug charges in September, after we both left town?”

“Yeah.”

She flaps her hand in the air. “Care to elaborate? I haven’t searched all the records on Trash yet.”

“Anonymous tip.” I glance down, pretending to busy myself with some emails on my work laptop. “Marcum received an anonymous tip regarding the drug activity at the gas station. It happened right after you left town.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long time. A really long time. Eventually, the anticipation forces me to look up.

She knows I’m hiding something. She’s rubbing the back of her neck and eyeballing me with suspicion. “You’re hiding something, Ry. What aren’t you telling me?”

I have to tell her. Her investigative skills are pretty stellar, she’ll piece it together sooner or later. “I called. I turned them in.”

She gasps, not expecting that. “What?”

“I called Marcum. I told him everything I knew about the drugs, who was involved, the system for buying, everything. Officially, the tip was listed as anonymous, but it was me.”

“You turned your own brother in?”

I snort. “You know how I felt about my brother. How I feel about him. He’s always been a piece of shit.”

“So that’s what Marcum meant when he said you told him about the drugs before you were on the force.” She shakes her head, dumfounded. “But why? You wouldn’t let me say anything. You wouldn’t let me go after them. You said the risk of danger was too great. What changed?”

“What changed was you. You were gone. Safe.”

She scoffs. “Safe. Right.”

I don’t like the sound of that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She stares at me, quickly avoiding the question with her glare. “Nothing. How did you know I was gone? How’d you find out?”

“Harlan. He said you came by and saw him before you left town. Said you married Hudson and moved far away for college. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him until I was in SOI for a couple of weeks. You were already gone by then. I called Marcum the day after I talked to Harlan.”

She lowers her head, for once not looking me in the eyes. It’s unnerving. That’s not the Lulu I know. “I asked him not to tell you… not to tell you that I married.”

Bile rises in my throat. I’m not sure if I prefer my own vomit or my own anger when it comes to thinking about Lulu being married to Hudson. “Yeah, he told me that you didn’t want me to know.”

I’ll never forget that conversation. Never. For as long as I live. For the first half of it, he told me everything she said when she came back from her charity trip. He told me she wanted to follow me, be with me, do anything to make our relationship work. She was ready to drop out of college. For me. My stupid brain went into overdrive, thinking my point was proved—I was ruining her life.

And then he dropped the bomb. The second half of the conversation had My Lulu getting married and leaving our world behind.

“Did he tell you other things too?” she asks.

“Meaning?”

“Well, Marcum and my family say they didn’t talk to you about me. What about Harlan? Did he?”

“I mean, we talked about the past. Nearly every time I called him when I was in the service, he wanted to rehash some old story about the fun times the three of us had. Is that what you’re asking?”

She cocks her head, gauging my reaction. “Yeah, sure.”

She’s lying. “Lulu,” I warn. My growl comes out harsher than I intend.

“We talked.”

“Who talked?”

“Me and Harlan.”

“You and Harlan talked?”

“I called him every Sunday night.”

I feel dizzy. Like I just got off a spinning roller coaster. “You’re telling me that you and Harlan talked once a week, every week, after you moved away?”

She nods.

“But you weren’t even at his funeral,” I say.

The mention of Harlan’s death has tears brimming in her eyes, but she keeps them in check, rapidly blinking and sniffling. “I talked to his son. He told me they were postponing the funeral a couple of days because you were granted leave to come home. So, I didn’t come back for it.”

“You didn’t come to Harlan’s funeral because you knew I would be there?”

She nods, just once, biting her lip.

She hated me that much. She would miss the funeral of a man she loved, a man she apparently kept in touch with even after I left her, simply because my ugly asshole self would be present. Harlan died during my third year of service, about eight months before my injury. Massive heart attack. I was terrified I wouldn’t be granted leave. My commanding officer was very understanding when I explained my relationship to Harlan. Plus, I didn’t take my ten-day leave in between MCRT and SOI, so I still had that. I came home and helped bury the man I loved like my own blood.

I drag my hand across my stubble. I should’ve shaved this morning, but I didn’t. “I’m sorry, Lulu. I would’ve stayed away if I knew you wanted to be there.”

“No. He was like a grandfather to you. Like a father. It was only right for you to be there.” Her hand slides across the table, reaching out to mine, but she quickly pulls it back.

I wish she would touch me.

I cough, trying not to choke on emotion. “No, he didn’t tell me that you guys talked. He didn’t tell me anything about you.”

She smiles, thinking fondly of Harlan. “Good. He was a man of his word.”

“He loved you.” I stare into her caramel-colored eyes. She nervously dabs at the edge of her eye with her pinky finger, making sure her perfectly applied eye makeup hasn’t smudged.

He loved you.

I loved you.

She clears her throat. Picking up her ink pen, she pretends to read through her notes. “What about your safety? Weren’t you worried about Trey?”

“I knew I would most likely be on a different continent by the time he figured out it was me. Trey had connections, but not those kinds of connections. I mean, we aren’t talking about a Mexican drug cartel or anything.”

“And then he died.”

“Yep. Pissed off the wrong people in prison. He was stabbed in the cafeteria one day about four years ago. It was before I made investigator, so I never got to interview him. Marcum went out there a couple of times but never got anywhere with specifically tying him to Carrie’s disappearance.”

“Yeah, I read the transcripts.” She licks her lips in thought. “If only we had the pictures back then. Everything could’ve gone so differently.”

Yes, but if the police had found the pictures in the beginning, then Lulu might not have ever come searching for answers at the gas station on her own. Might never have gone to the party my brother invited her to. Might never have met me. She’s probably wishing she never met me. But meeting her was the highlight of my damn life. Being with her, loving her, it gave me purpose and strength. Strength to make the hardest decision of my existence—to leave her. I wasn’t lying when I said there would be no one after her. All these years later, she’s still the love of my life.

And that thought scares me shitless.

Her cell phone beeps with an incoming text message. “Ry, I just got notice that I need to do a web call meeting with an attorney’s office in Macon, Georgia.” She waves her phone in the air. “I’m doing some work for them, and it looks like they just came across a ton of other paperwork they need me to sort through. Do you mind if I use the conference room in private for a little bit?”

I close the lid on my laptop and grab my phone. “No, I have some other work I need to do. I also have to walk over to the courthouse for something.” I glance at the watch on my wrist. “It’s one now. What do you say we just meet in the parking lot at two-thirty?”

“Okay.”

Then I hold her gaze a split second too long. And because she’s My Lulu, she doesn’t turn away.

***

I’m standing in front of the station, watching the cars drive out of the parking lot, when Lulu pushes open the door. Sashaying her hips left and right, she struts over to me. I’m too stunned to even speak. My eyes drop to the pavement and start their slow perusal up her body. She’s been in black ankle pants all day long. Except now, she’s in a short black skirt. Still long enough to be considered business attire, but when you have legs as long as Lulu’s, it doesn’t take much for something to be considered short. And her legs are completely bare.

They look even better than I remember.

Firm and lean.

Her skin always has a soft glow to it, even in the wintertime, and it makes her whole body look like a butter toffee treat, ready to be eaten. She watches me checking her out. I don’t even hide what I’m doing; I’m not ashamed one bit. She tries not to blush, but pink tints her face regardless.

As much as her bare legs make my dick super happy, it makes my brain and heart a little pissed off to know that my idiot brother is going to see her this way. It’s cold out today, no Alabama winter making us sweat. Why did she change?

“What happened? Did you spill something on you?”

She looks down at her blouse, tugging it out to inspect it. “Why? Do I have something on me?”

“No, it’s just… you changed clothes.”

She props a leg in front of me. “Yeah. Trash always made a big deal about my legs, so I changed into a skirt.”

Rage blinds me. Makes me stupid. It makes me say asinine things. “So, you’re whoring yourself out for him?”

Wrong thing to say. I am a total and complete asshole.

Lulu agrees.

Her eyes widen in shock and her mouth falls open. The shock wears off in about two seconds and she hauls back, slapping me across the face. The noise rings out across the parking lot. My face tingles with burning heat and my jaw buzzes with pins and needles.

I completely and totally deserved that.

She spins away, shaking the stinging pain from her fingers. Stomping across the parking lot, she comes to a complete stop when she realizes that she has no idea what I drive. I quickly hit the unlock button on my key fob several times. My taillights flash and my horn honks. Lulu doesn’t say anything. She just makes her way to the large black pickup and climbs into the passenger’s seat. My truck is pretty damn tall, so I can only imagine what body parts she flashed when trying to climb in.

A couple of guys pour out of the station door, waving to me. I really hope they don’t see the red mark of a palm print on my face. Then again, I deserve to be embarrassed by that. I can’t believe I basically called My Lulu a whore.

No wonder she hates me.

Shaking my head in disgust, I climb in the driver’s side. Instead of starting the engine, I lean my head back against the supple leather, close my eyes, and take several deep breaths, trying to calm my nerves. Eventually, I lean up. She’s not looking at me. She’s just staring out the passenger-side window, rubbing the hem of her skirt between her fingers. In the enclosed space, her coconut and mint smell invades my nostrils, making me think all sorts of things I shouldn’t be thinking. “I’m sorry, Lulu. That was an absolutely horrible thing to say. I don’t even know where that came from.”

She doesn’t make any noise.

I sigh. “That’s a lie. I know where it comes from. You’re right. Trash has always had a thing for you. For your legs. For your body. And I can’t stand the thought of him looking at you. I know that’s none of my concern anymore—that I have no right to be concerned by that. But it doesn’t mean I don’t think about it.”

“Can we just go, please? We’re gonna be late.”

Late to see my druggie, pathetic, worthless, felon of a brother? We can’t have that, can we?