“Yeah, but after Zara left, I saw Mallory at the restaurant.”
I clenched my jaw at the realization that this must’ve been what was bugging her when she’d shown up. “Are you sure it was her?”
She nodded. “Very.”
“So she’s still in town.” I reached for her hand, sliding my palm against hers and lacing our fingers together. “Did she talk to you?”
“Yes,” Jane said, scoffing softly as she shook her head. “She introduced herself. Can you believe that? She came over to me and said that since we’d never formally met, she wanted to fucking introduce herself. Like I’d want to meet her.”
“Shit. What do you think she wanted with you?”
“I don’t know. She just approached me like a bad smell you can’t place at first.”
A short breath of laughter escaped me. “Charming.”
“She said she wanted to talk properly,” Jane said, sighing as she raked her hands through the tips of her hair. “She even offered to set up a time, like it would just be a coffee date between old friends. I mean, that’s ridiculous, right?”
“I don’t know.” I held her gaze. “Is that something you’d be interested in, talking to her?”
Her mouth twisted. “Mostly? No. God, no. I hope I never see her again as long as I live.”
“But?” I prompted, sensing that had been the answer she’d wanted to give, but not necessarily the whole truth.
She held my gaze for another long beat before she finally answered. “I won’t give her the benefit of the doubt. I never will, but part of me wonders if I acted too rashly. If there are things I don’t know.”
“That seems fair.”
“I told her that I wasn’t interested, though.”
“You did the right thing, Killer.” She looked at me then, searching my face like she expected an argument. I just shrugged. “If you ever change your mind, I’ll help you get a hold of her. You won’t have to do it alone, but for now, you do what’s best for you. Not for closure or for justice, but for you.”
Her shoulders eased just a fraction. “Thank you.”
I reached over and slid my arm around her shoulders again. “Anytime.”
We finished shopping in relative quiet after that, both of us pretty clearly lost to our own thoughts. Then reality reasserted itself on the drive to her family’s house after. There was an emotional minefield waiting for us behind that front door and I didn’t particularly want her to navigate it when she already had so much on her plate, but there was nothing I could do to change it now.
“Wyatt is still keeping his distance,” Jane said as we pulled onto her street. “I’m hoping tonight changes that.”
I nodded because that was the supportive thing to do, but deep down, I doubted it. I’d been that age once. Seventeen-year-old boys weren’t exactly known for their rationality or forgiveness, but whatever he was going to throw at us tonight, I could take it.
I just hoped he remembered who had really raised him, and that he appreciated everything she’d done and was still doing for him. Because if not? Well, then it might be time to start applying some pressure.
She was staying in this house for him, because of them, and if he couldn’t respect her despite all that, I was dead set on taking my wife home with me tonight—and keeping her there.
CHAPTER 37
JANE
By the time Alex and I walked through the front door, the house was already loud in that familiar, chaotic way that made warmth bloom in my chest. All my brothers were finally here again, under one roof, and it filled our home in a way I’d been craving for months.
Holden was leaning against the counter, tall and broad-shouldered now in a way that still startled me, laughing about something Ryan was saying too fast and with too many hand gestures.
Ryan was twenty-two, almost finished with college and convinced he knew everything. He had his jacket slung over a chair like he’d been here for hours already. Colin stood near the stove with a spatula in his hand, looking exactly like the man who had helped me hold this family together when everything else had fallen apart. Wyatt was perched at the far end of the kitchen counter, his arms crossed and his eyes sharp, but the first feeling I got from him when I walked into the room wasn’t tension, it was relief.
I barely made it three steps inside before Ryan looked up, spotted me, and grinned. “Holy shit. You’re alive.”
I laughed, dropping my bag on the table next to the door. “I texted you yesterday.”
