The Truth About Us (The Truth Duet Book 2) Read online

  She was wearing a black knee-length skirt that clung to her ass in all the right ways and a cream silk top that bordered on the line between sexy librarian and eighty-year-old grandmother. But, with a chest like hers, it was leaning heavily toward librarian. Her long, toned legs were capped by black pumps, and her fingers were perfectly manicured with white tips. But, even without all of that, her plump lips had been enough to command my attention.

  I watched her for the first hour as she toyed with the ends of her long, brown hair. She downed three martinis while alternating between nervously checking her phone and staring at the door.

  The second hour, I decided to make an approach while silently declaring that whichever douchebag was stupid enough to invite a woman like that to a place like that and then stand her up was my new favorite dumbass in the world.

  I’d been going stir-crazy while sitting in the hotel, but I had a few more hours to kill before Lisa was supposed to meet me there. And what better way to kill time than with a beautiful woman.

  I hadn’t said hello before she scooted down two stools.

  I’d given her space, but only physically.

  I started conversations, and just as quickly, she shut them down.

  But then it only became a challenge to me, and considering that talking was my forte, it wasn’t but about thirty minutes before I cracked her.

  Well, almost cracked her. “Leave me the fuck alone” was still talking.

  She’d told me that she was waiting for a friend. And every time the door to that bar opened, I prayed like hell that friend did not come through it.

  It took me a little while, but eventually, I got her talking—two more martinis aided me in that task.

  And then I was fucking done for.

  She was so damn funny—a real ball-buster. I loved every minute of her snarky retorts and teasing side-eyes. I swear to God I laughed more with that woman over the span of the next three hours than I had in my entire life.

  And when she started looking through her phone for the number of a cab company, the thought of her leaving hit me far deeper than it should have.

  I asked her to stay.

  She told me no.

  I asked her to let me drive her home.

  She told me no.

  I asked her to come back to my hotel room.

  She told me no.

  I asked her for her number.

  She told me…no.

  But, as we waited together outside in the dark parking lot, I didn’t ask before I dipped my head and took her mouth in a kiss that changed my entire life.

  Because it happened at the exact moment I failed the only woman in my life who mattered.

  We watched her cab come and leave, laughing and making out like high schoolers in the front seat before moving to the back.

  Penn was blowing up my phone the entire time I was inside her.

  And when I finally picked up, I kicked her out of my car so fast that I didn’t even remember if she was dressed.

  Her name was Cat and she was the biggest regret of my life.

  I’d never been brave enough to admit that I was a thirty-one-year-old man fucking a random woman in the back of my car the night my sister was murdered half a mile away from me—not even to Penn.

  Somewhere in my self-loathing and desperate need to place blame for what had happened, it’d all become her fault.

  She was gorgeous, funny, and smart—the perfect storm of a woman the devil himself must have planted in that bar to distract me.

  I didn’t know what hotel Lisa was staying at, but in the What-if game, rationale didn’t matter.

  If Cat hadn’t been there, maybe I would have left earlier.

  Maybe I would have driven past the hotel and seen a commotion.

  Maybe in those twenty-nine fucking minutes, I could have found her and saved her.

  But no, I’d been fucking a woman named Cat while my sister was being beaten, tortured, and stabbed.

  Fucking Cat.

  So imagine my surprise when, some months later, I started digging into the Guerrero family and her face popped up in the private investigator’s findings.

  She was married. Had been for way longer than four years. And she and her daughter had gone missing. Presumably dead. But it seemed all too convenient to me that she was there with me that night. It solidified my suspicions that the Guerreros were involved. That was the moment I volunteered to go to prison. My life was over, and I lost my job after I’d become so wrapped up in my own pain that I stopped showing up. I’d eventually run out of money. The only thing I’d be losing was Shane. And he was a fucking mess. Every time he looked at me, I thought he could see what I’d done until I started avoiding him altogether.

  But then I’d miss Lisa, and he was all that was left of her.

  Two years in a cell with Manuel Guerrero and the only info I’d truly gotten was that the same woman who I irrationally hated more than anyone else in the world was the woman I had to find in order to finally escape the pain altogether.

  I’d hoped she wouldn’t recognize me when Cora had given me directions to her house that day. It had been four years, so maybe I’d ghosted from her memories the way I’d never been able to get rid of her.

  One glance and I was back in that bar. Catalina was still beautiful.

  But her eyes weren’t the same.

  Or maybe it was my eyes.

  I knew more about her now. Like why she was on the run. How she had gotten her daughter. And who her husband was. And then other things, like how she was the only person who had ever been good to Cora. And God knew I’d fallen head over heels in love with that woman. Not in the sense that Shane loved her of course, but there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her or those kids.

  So when Catalina cornered me in her house that first night, demanding to know who the hell I was and what the hell I was up to, my misplaced hate for her melted away.

  I kissed her.

  She slapped me.

  And then, hours later when she heard Thomas’s gunshot from the bedroom I’d put them in before opening the front door, she screamed my name in such a terrified tone that I’d never be able to erase the imprint it made on my soul.

  When Shane had told me that he’d found her in the hall, being choked by a man I didn’t even know was in the house at the time, the weight of failure took out my knees.

  Cat and I did not see eye to eye on damn near anything, but there was something about that smart-ass woman. And when she snuck into my bedroom early that morning in Shane’s apartment in Chicago, while he was sleeping on the couch and Cora was in with River and Savannah, we finally got the chance to talk.

  And I told her the truth. All of it.

  But I didn’t want her truths, because while I thought she was beautiful and incredible, her truths bound us together in ways that made me wish for lies.

  She’d been at the bar that night to meet Lisa at seven.

  I was supposed to meet her at nine.

  My fucking Sherlock Holmes of a sister had been following Catalina and begging her to help take Thomas down. Seriously, my sister was crazytown.

  But, apparently, it’d worked, because in Catalina’s purse that night had been all the necessary documentation she was planning to turn over.

  And I’d fucked her.

  While Lisa was dying and Catalina’s life at home was terrifying, I’d fucked her in the back seat of a car like a whore.

  She told me that, at that time when she was taking the first steps to reclaim her life and figuring out who she was as a woman, the fact that someone genuinely wanted her and was kind and gentle about it had been the biggest turn-on of her life.

  She’d also told me that, when I’d kicked her out of the car half-naked and alone in an empty parking lot for reasons that I had not explained, I’d changed her life too.

  And not for the better.

  She’d gone home dejected and feeling more used than ever, and she’d caved to Thomas’s demands to testif
y against her father. And then spent four years living in solitude with Isabel, for fear of ever taking another chance on a man.

  Much to my surprise, she let me hold her that night in Shane’s bed. And when we woke to him and Cora arguing in the kitchen, she slipped back out of my life for what I feared was the very last time.

  That is until Manuel called my phone later that morning while we were cooking eggs and bacon for the girls, before the news of his escape had even hit the local news.

  Despite the fact that he had agreed to help Thomas track down Catalina in exchange for his freedom, the only thing Manuel truly wanted was Thomas dead. And he wanted me to do it.

  That I could do.

  That I could so fucking do.

  Manuel had no delusions about the fact that he was going back to jail. He was dying, and he said that he could go peacefully as long as Thomas Lyons made it to hell before he did.

  And then he shocked the shit out of me by telling me exactly where Catalina had been in hiding and asked me to go get her so he could see her one last time before he died. It seemed losing three of your four children and preparing to meet our maker softened the man.

  And considering she was standing right next to me, tears rolling down her face at the knowledge that he’d known where she had been all along and never turned her over to Thomas or Marcos or Dante, she picked up the phone. They talked for over an hour. And while I’d say that chat was therapeutic for Catalina, nothing was forgotten during that conversation. She hated him. But she finally got some closure.

  When the three of us hatched the plan to come down to Florida—neutral territory so Thomas couldn’t get squirrelly and pull any bullshit on us—I decided to supply the weapons—filled with blanks.

  Rightly so, Thomas decided he didn’t trust me at the last minute. When he and Manuel showed up to reclaim and kill Thomas’s wife, he confiscated my gun. But that was okay—my plan had always been to drain that motherfucker.

  And right then, as I lifted Catalina into my arms across the room from her abusive husband’s dead body, with Manuel on his way back to prison where he belonged and Penn and Cora huddled together, offering each other love and reassurance, I finally felt the overwhelming weight of losing Lisa fall from my shoulders.

  It was done.

  It was finally fucking done.

  Penn

  Another fucking hotel.

  Though this one was a two-bedroom beachfront suite and I’d never been so excited in my entire fucking life.

  She was there.

  They were there.

  And, soon, I’d be there with them.

  Forever.

  Earlier in the night, Manuel had sat on my couch, sipping a bottle of my water, and glared daggers at my woman as Catalina and Drew had given us the who, what, when, where, and how of what had gone down. After everything Manuel had put Cora through, it took all of the self-restraint I possessed not to leave him on the floor beside Thomas. Or, at the very least, tell him that I was Penn Walker and then give him the play-by-play including every excruciating detail about how I’d killed his sons. The only thing that had stopped me was the fact that Manuel was taking the fall for the dead man in my living room and not Drew.

  Per Drew’s stupid-ass plan, Cora had taken the truck and left before Catalina called the cops.

  There was no reason for her to be involved in any of this. With her record and the fact that we were harboring a teenage runaway, it was best for everyone involved if she picked up all the kids from the theater and took them somewhere safe. Cora had dropped Isabel off a few streets up, and just as the cops had arrived she’d come running up the beach and into her mother’s arms.

  The cops had been at my house for hours, asking questions, taking pictures, and searching the place. I had to admit Drew had covered his bases.

  The lies we’d all agreed on went like this: Lisa was left out completely. Catalina and Drew had started dating after he’d been sent by his old prison buddy to find his daughter. She was hiding from her husband and brothers and she didn’t trust law enforcement. So her new boyfriend, Drew, had brought her down to my house—the only place he’d thought he could make her safe.

  Thomas and Manuel had tracked them down.

  Manuel had thought they were saving Catalina, and Thomas had double-crossed him and tried to kill her. Manuel got there first, with a knife to Thomas’s throat.

  The end.

  With Manuel’s capture and confession, there wasn’t a lot of whodunit police work happening. The whys, though, were definitely in play, especially when they realized that Catalina and her daughter had been declared missing persons for four years.

  But, like she’d promised, she had more than enough dirt on Thomas to put him away for life. In this case, it was shared after his life had ended, but it was useful nonetheless. All of her allegations were corroborated with a small filing cabinet she’d instructed the police how to find in a storage unit in Wisconsin. In it were countless documents tying Thomas to Guerrero business and videos of him assaulting her and Isabel.

  I was the first to be released from police questioning. After all, I was just the innocent, clueless brother-in-law with no motive.

  Catalina, Isabel, and Drew were still at the police station, but they had attorneys, and when I’d caught sight of Drew as I’d left, he was smiling in a semicircle with a few cops.

  It was good that he was making some friends in uniform, because the moment I saw him, I was going to beat the ever-loving shit out of him. He needed all the protection he could get. That dumbass had told me nothing of his little plan. He’d said that he was too afraid I’d tell Cora, who no doubt would have thrown the brakes on some stupid shit like that.

  And, given our new honesty policy, he would have been right, I absolutely would have told her—and then I would have thrown the brakes on some stupid shit like that.

  But it had worked.

  Thomas was dead.

  Manuel was back behind bars.

  And I was walking into a fucking hotel room, where my woman and kids were waiting on me.

  I knocked softly, and it took her less than a second to open the door. I’d called to tell her that I was on the way up, but I would have much preferred a “who is it” before she pulled it wide.

  “Baby, did you even check the peephole?”

  She didn’t reply as she threw her arms around my hips, brought her torso flush against me, and then smooshed her face against my chest.

  I smiled, smoothing down the back of her hair. “You okay?”

  She shook her head.

  I walked into the room with her still plastered to my front; my every step forward she matched with one back. “You want to lay down and talk about it?”

  The door clicking shut behind us was the only sound in the otherwise silent suite.

  She craned her head back, her red-rimmed eyes meeting mine. I hated that she’d spent the rest of the night crying, but the reasons for those tears were fine by me.

  “It was too easy,” she whispered.

  My eyebrows shot up. “Easy? Are you kidding me? I think I’ve died at least seventeen times tonight alone.”

  “Something is going to happen, Penn. I just feel it.”

  I scooped her off her feet and carried her to the bedroom, though I paused at a cracked door with one brown eye and one green eye peering out at us. I wanted to check on them, give them a once-over, to reassure them and my own frazzled mind that we’d all made it out unscathed. But, when I shot them a wink, I heard a giggle and then the door quickly shut.

  When we got to our room, the bed was unmade like she’d not only been in it already but spent that time tossing and turning rather than resting. I set her on the edge, toed my shoes off, and then crawled in. My overstressed body sagged into the cool, soft sheets. Cora did not delay in assuming her spot at my side, her leg across my hips, her head on my shoulder, and her hand on my chest.

  “You’re right,” I told her as soon as we both got comfortable
. “Something is going to happen. We’re gonna buy a house in Seattle. I’m going to put a ring on your finger. God willing, a baby in your belly. Savannah is gonna get a homeschool tutor because we are not chancing enrolling her in school. She’s gonna start going back to NA meetings, and we’re going to look into getting her a new addiction specialist. River can have her choice if she wants to go back to school or work with that tutor too. And we’re going to get the kid a dog because that is what families do. And, after we do all that—well, maybe before the ring and baby—I’m going to get a job. You’re going to finish school. And then, one breath at a time, I’m going to figure out how to give you the moon the way I promised River I would.”

  Her face got tight, but in the way that told me she was blinking tears back. “You promised River you’d give me the moon?”

  I gave her a squeeze, pulling her in, and touched my lips with hers. “Yep. She said her dad already gave you the stars. I can’t let him show me up, Cora.”

  She smiled, those tears breaking free. “And what do I get to give you?”

  I stared down into her sparkling, blue eyes, my chest so full that it was almost painful in the most incredible way possible, and I told her the truth. “A reason to breathe. One in. One out, Cora. Nic may have put those words on your ceiling, but I’m gonna be the man to make sure those breaths come easy and often for all of us. From here on out. All you gotta do is…” I dipped low for another lip touch and whispered, “Breathe.”

  Cora

  Ten years later…

  “Oh my God, is it broken?” Savannah cried.

  “Relax, it’s not broken. It’s just stuck.” And maybe broken. But, since we were approximately twenty minutes before her wedding was supposed to start and we couldn’t get the zipper on her dress up, I spared my eardrums the pain of her shriek and kept that information to myself.

  “Move. Let me try,” River said, squeezing in front of me. She was wearing a long, purple maid-of-honor gown she hated with a passion. That, I suspected, was the reason Savannah had picked it out in the first place.