“Have you forgotten what frustration feels like?” He asked huskily and I wanted to punch him in the face.
“I hate you.”
His lips curved up into my favorite smirk and he winked. “I love you too, Sour Patch.”
Douche.
OKAY SO I GUESS I should be thankful that the meeting went off relatively smooth. Mason’s parents and sister were actually really nice, and although we’d gone through the mandatory introductions for me, Marcy and Richard had come to dinner also and made the introduction fast and flawless. I’d just kept my mouth shut for the first five minutes unless I was saying the customary
Until dinner started anyway.
“So, Rachel,” Mrs. Gates began and took another sip of her tea before continuing. “We’ve heard bits and pieces of what happened in Texas from the boys. But you know how men are with details,” she teased.
“I’ve really been wanting to hear your side of what went down.”
“The whole time they were there. We had no clue where they even were and didn’t talk to them more than once or twice a month, so we don’t know what was happening.”
Memories of the few months in Texas with the guys went flying through my mind and I swallowed hard. I knew this was coming at some point, Marcy and Richard had never asked and I knew it was only a matter of time. But I was fine with never reliving those three months again.
Kash seemed to sense the unease pouring off me and stopped talking to Mason and Mr. Gates. “You okay?” he asked softly, and sat back when he realized the other half of the table was completely silent. “What’s going on?”
I looked up and caught Marcy and Richard giving me sympathetic looks. They had to want to know this too, and it hit me then that Kash must have told them not to ask me. There was no way we could have gone this many days together without them saying something unless he had talked to them.
“Nothing, I just asked Rachel to tell us her side of what happened in Tex—”
“No,” Kash stated firmly at the same time Mason hissed, “Mom!”
“What? Is it so wrong for us to want to know what went on there?” Mrs. Gates asked, and I couldn’t blame her.
“Rachel, you don’t have to say anything.”
“He’s right,” Kash agreed with Mason before whispering in my ear, “If you want to get out of here we can.”
“It’s fine, we can’t keep avoiding the elephant in the room, can we?”
His eyes shut tight and he exhaled roughly. “Babe, please—”
“Kash, they deserve to know what happened to you guys.”
When his eyes met mine they were pained, and I squeezed his hand tightly before looking back toward Kash’s parents and Mrs. Gates. “Where do you want me to start?”
There was an uncomfortable silence for a few moments before Mrs. Gates spoke, “So, you knew the boys because they lived near you?”
“Yeah, they lived in the apartment directly across the hall from mine. My best friend, Candice, saw them moving in and introduced herself, we all went out for dinner that first night.”
“And you had no idea what they were really doing there?”
“Not at all, the only thing that seemed off to me was where they were from. Kash was kind of evasive with his answer, but I had my own secrets so I didn’t really push it. But Candice and I were in college, moving somewhere for a new start was kind of what everyone was doing after graduation anyway unless they went back to their hometowns . . . so I didn’t have a reason to think them being there and looking for work was weird.”
Mrs. Gates fidgeted a bit. “Mason told us they would have meetings a few times a week at the police department. Even when you started spending more time with them, you never noticed them going off to these meetings?”
I laughed softly thinking back to all the times the guys would up and leave suddenly. “At the time, they played it off well to the point I thought they were going to work out or something. After I found out about everything, it all made more sense though. They were good liars,” I teased and winked at Mason as I nudged Kash. Neither looked happy right now.
“They are very secretive, that’s for certain.” She rolled her eyes but still looked lovingly at both. “So tell us about Blake. We know the boys’ side, but I know that has to be so different from your experiences with him.”
Something that sounded dangerously close to a growl came from Kash and my eyes widened when I saw his murderous expression.
“Um, Blake was . . .” I trailed off and attempted to tear my eyes from Kash’s face to look back at Mrs. Gates. “He’s Candice’s cousin, I grew up with him.” The icy feeling that always accompanied thoughts of Blake began making it’s way through my veins, and I took deep breaths in as I spoke to keep myself calm. “I had a crush on him growing up, but he was so much older than me that it was just one of those schoolgirl crushes.”
“I didn’t know you’d known him before,” Marcy whispered, and after a glance in Kash’s direction, snapped her mouth shut.
“Yeah, we were all really close, but he left for the Air Force and I didn’t see or hear from him until fall of my junior year of college. He started working for the school and began asking me out immediately.” I waved a dismissive hand and tried to smile. “Long story, short, I finally agreed at the end of that school year and almost immediately there was a change in him. I didn’t want to keep dating him and—uh, some stuff happened between us right before the year ended. I met Kash and Mason just a couple weeks after that.”
From the sympathetic looks the majority of the people at the table were giving me, they knew exactly what had happened between Blake and me. Part of me felt . . . embarrassed. Knowing that they knew, wondering what they must think. Kash was gripping the table and staring off into nothing as I swallowed down my unfounded embarrassment and kept talking.
“I didn’t see or hear from him until the end of July, he showed up where Kash and I were working one night . . . and from there things just kind of escalated. Things kept going missing or being moved around in my apartment, he was always leaving me anonymous notes on my car when school started back up. But in front of anyone else, he was the perfect Blake everyone was in love with. And really—what he’d done in the apartment, none of it was anything bad, it was just enough for him to show me that he still had control over me. Like turning on the dishwasher with nothing in there when we’d all been gone for hours, putting out things in my kitchen to make pancakes because he knew Kash was always having me make them . . . just random, stupid things that separately were harmless. It was the fact that he was getting in and was watching us that closely without us realizing it that made it bad.
But, honestly, I didn’t even know that any of it had been Blake until the night before everything happened. I’d been blaming Mason and Kash, and then the next day he was there waiting for me when I came out of the administrative building from dropping my classes in an attempt to avoid him. He forced me to break up with Kash. He had one of his guys blow up Candice’s dad’s car as he was walking to it—I watched the whole thing on a live feed and Blake swore he would kill her parents first if I didn’t do what he wanted.”
My breathing had been escalating, but stopped altogether when Kash shoved away from the table and stalked out of the room. I swallowed roughly and tried to straighten my back from how I’d unknowingly curled in on myself.
“I think you all know the rest of what happened that night and the next morning,” I whispered and excused myself before going after him.
Even if Kash hadn’t left, there would be no sense in repeating what I was sure they already knew. That was the night and morning that brought everything crashing down. Kash and Mason had been undercover looking for a serial killer for the Carnation Murders while simultaneously keeping their lives from Candice and me, and making sure that Blake and the men he had stalking me couldn’t get close to me. Even with all that had happened between Blake and me, no one had been expecting him to be the murderer Kash and Mase had been looking for. And by the
