Ah, fuck. The sooner I said it, the easier it would be to remove from my mouth.
“Garrett wound up with my sister.”
“What?” Rachel said in shock before I’d even finished the word “sister.”
“Strange but fucking true,” I said. “I beat Garrett’s ass a couple times for it. It’s probably more appropriate to say Garrett knocked her up, and then they got together.”
“And now?”
Begrudgingly, I had to admit that now, they were in a pretty good place. I damn well wasn’t fucking happy about it, and I still cringed at the idea ofGarrettand my sister being together, but compared to the alternatives…
Well, what kind of a brother would I be if I wasn’t a little bit of an asshole to her partner?
“And now, they have a kid and things are going well,” I said. “Or as well as they can be. It’s still a fucking weird world for me to live in.”
“I can imagine,” Rachel said, arching an eyebrow and giving a short giggle. “And Connor?”
“Yeah, Connor found someone too. Strange, but he wound up dating this chick who owns a convenience store. She’s a fiery one, but I think he needed someone that wouldn’t tolerate him being a hardass. And then there’s Professor Smartass; no surprise, he wound up with someone smart.”
I shrugged. Rachel wouldn’t have known Zack that well, but that wasn’t what I was shrugging at. I was shrugging in anticipation of what the follow-up question was.
“And now, it’s just me for the officers.”
I almost added a clause on to the end of that. “But I’m in no rush.” “But I’m happy being single.” “But we’ll see.”
I chose to remain silent. Nothing else I could have said would have helped things.Helped for what?
“How fascinating!”
I couldn’t believe how intrigued Rachel was by everything. I felt like I’d told the most boring story in the history of humanity, and Rachel was hanging on to every word like it was the most gripping movie she had ever seen. Granted, I suppose it did involve a bunch of happy endings, but…
“Yeah. And you?”
I regretted those last two words as soon as I said them.
I had no idea how the fuck I’d ask about how Rachel had been, but I’d eventually settled on just not asking about it at all. Well, too late for that now.
“It’s been tough.”
The words weren’t unexpected.
But her tone—relaxed, honest, not flustered—was not. Perhaps I had underestimated Rachel.
“After the incident, I went into shock for a little bit. I know you guys tried to reach out to me and whatnot, but I was just in something of a confused daze. Like, even when Brock tried to touch base, I couldn’t make myself be present. Like I’d be with him physically, but my mind would be in a thousand different places. When we broke up, it was all me—he was nothing but a saint, but I couldn’t give him what he deserved.
“After that, I found myself just shutting myself off in my room. My parents tried to reach out to me, but no one could. They suggested we take things to the police, but I worried about retribution from the Bandits.”
Unfortunately, that was probably the smartest thing anyone’s ever done in this town.
“It took honestly a couple years before I even thought about emerging from the shadows, but it all moved so slowly. Embarrassingly slowly.”
She says as if that’s anything to be embarrassed about.
“I eventually started seeing a therapist, who recommended that I move away. And so I did—I started attending community college in a different part of the state. But all the while, it just never felt like home. Which seems like a weird thing, right? You’d think that for as much as Santa Maria hurt me, that I’d want to stay the hell away.
“But that’s not what happened. I was missing you guys. I was missing my family. I was missing the familiar comforts like Southwest Dine. My therapist was very open-minded, but she warned that if I came back here, I was risking a lot. And…”
She sighed, shrugged, and gave me a gentle smile.
