“Holy shit . . . Did I win?” Camden asks, a huge smile across his face.
Kelly’s brows furrow, and she drops back down onto the heels of her feet. “Win?”
I roll my eyes. “Apparently, they had a bet going for when we got together.” Kelly laughs and circles her arms around my waist.
“Wait, who had June?” Mom asks, looking around at the various family members patiently waiting. Camden clutches hisphone, I assume pulling up the details of this whole betting pool they had organized.
“Linda!” Kelly laughs harder.
“Alexis!” Cam announces, pointing at her.
She jumps out of her chair. “Pay up, you bastards!”
“Damn, we should have gone in on it and stolen the pot.” She takes the knife from me and cuts a couple narrow slices of mozzarella, then rotates and sneaks them to Chicken Salad and Odin while Alexis walks around and collects cash from everybody.
“About damn time,” Dad says.
After dinner, Camden and I grab a six-pack and take the tram elevator from the outside deck down to the boathouse near the river’s edge. We descend the bluff under the dark canopy of trees and are soon met by gleaming blue water as it flows on a gentle current. The late-day sun feels like a warm blanket when we emerge from the shady wooded slope.
We step off the platform, our footfalls hollow on the wooden boards.
“So . . . You and Kelly.” He gives me a big shit-eating grin. “And how’s that going?”
I shrug, trying not to smile.
“You’ve been after that girl for years, and now it’s—” He lifts his shoulders to mimic me. “Bullshit.”
We cross the wooden wraparound deck of the boathouse, then prop our forearms on the railing to overlook the water and watch some of the boats pass by. I twist the top off one of the beers and bring it to my lips.
“She’s a dream,” I say, taking a swig. I need some advice. “But I was hoping I could ask you about something.”
“Shoot.” He pops off his bottle cap and pockets it.
“When you and Jordan first got together, she was having problems with her ex . . . I think we might be dealing with something similar.”
“Fuck.” He sighs. “What’s going on?”
I give him the rundown of everything, from the weird messages on Instagram to the paper note left on the windshield in Bozeman.
“Who is it?” he asks. “Didn’t you help facilitate the breakup with her ex?”
“It was inevitable, I just sped up the process.”
“Good for you,” he says. “So, you think he’s stalking her?”
I shake my head. “No. I think it’s Billy Akers. He was the guy who was cooking the books at Black Rabbit before I took over.”
His brow furrows. “I don’t think you told me about this.”
I didn’t. “He fucked Clyde over. While we were tending to him on his deathbed, Billy was cutting deals to sell Black Rabbit to the highest bidder.”
“Holy shit. You told Clyde, I assume. Is that why he left you the shop?”
I shake my head. “He never left the shop to me, he left it to Kelly.”
Camden turns to face me. “What?”
“Billy was the business power of attorney for Black Rabbit; he told Clyde he transferred ownership, but he never actually did it. What he did do was try to sell the shop to some faceless corporation who probably would have turned us into a cash cow, bleeding it out until there wasn’t a penny left. Those weren’t Clyde’s wishes; it was supposed to go to Kelly. I never found the paperwork to prove it, though.”
