Busted

As he rolled out of bed, she was overcome by the urge to haul him back to her. Cling to him. Never let go.

But this had to be done.

Consequences, she thought. Mama Ang had talked about consequences and how Kiara was suffering the consequences of her actions. Maybe Mama Ang didn’t blame her, but Ressa was suffering some consequences of her own.

If she’d pushed harder, if she’d tried harder, she could have done something more to help her cousin. If she’d just never gotten involved herself . . .

Those troubled thoughts chased her until the door opened back up and Trey came in. He’d gotten dressed—sort of. He had on the white shirt from last night, although it wasn’t buttoned and a pair of jeans. With his sleepy eyes and the stubble on his face, he looked like a beautiful dream. And he carried two cups of coffee.

Maybe he was a dream. One that just didn’t belong in her life. She’d find out, sometime here soon.

“I told you I was arrested on suspicion of prostitution,” she said as she wrapped her hands around the thick mug he’d given her.

“Yeah.” Eyes narrowed, Trey lifted his mug to his lips. “And I already told you, I’m not walking.”

“Yeah.” She took a sip and then blew out a sigh. “You do know that it could get ugly . . . you, your brothers . . . your family. I see what happens when people get hooked up with anybody with some sort of scandal.”

“Look . . . just stop. I know my family. If I like you, they’re going to like you. Besides, you must not be paying attention to the gossip rags.” Trey shrugged. “Seb gives them more than enough to talk about and when he isn’t making their tongues wag, then Zach is telling nosy producers he has a freezer full of bodies in his house. I’m too boring for them to mess with the majority of the time. I live in Norfolk, I’m a widowed dad and I write books . . . I’m boring compared to Sebastian and Zach.”

“You could never be boring.” A watery laugh escaped her. “Your family . . . they sound . . .”

“Crazy?” Trey offered.

“No.” She flicked him a look. “I was thinking they sounded wonderful.”

She put the coffee down, staring into it. But no answers appeared there.

Climbing from the bed, she grabbed the sheet and wrapped it around herself. “It was a few weeks after I’d told Sharon I was quitting. She asked me to at least see through the commitments I’d made for that month and I felt bad, so I said yes. One of the guys was somebody Scott had brought in. I’d never liked him, but it wasn’t my job to like him. We were out at di

She looked back at him. “It was the same cop who’d tried to catch me and I knew right away I was in trouble. The dickhead with me starts saying he hadn’t done anything—I was the one who suggested we exchange favors.”

“The cop, though . . . Detective Moritz, he’d heard. He was . . .” She paused, reaching for a word to describe a man who’d been a part of the worst time of her life. “He was fair. I hated him for a long time, but he was fair. I spent that one night in jail—had a PD come talk to me and the next morning, Hank Moritz was there. He told me they weren’t going to hold me, no charges would be pressed.” She sighed and rubbed one hand down her arm, chilled. The sun coming through the window did nothing to warm her. “He showed up at the bus stop. I tried to just walk away but he walked with me. Told me he knew just about everything there was to know about me—all the bad shit.”

She laughed bitterly. “All the bad shit. I thought he was going to pull some crap bit and try to get me to sleep with him . . . but then he smiled at me and said, I know the good shit, too, kid. He knew about the scholarship, how Mama Ang had helped me catch up with school . . . I read fine when she found me, had always enjoyed it, but while the rest of the kids were doing geometry and trig, I struggled with multiplication and fractions. Algebra—that was hell. She got me a tutor and I was working at grade level within a year. He knew—all of it. Somehow, he knew. He told me I was smart, that I had a chance at a real life . . . if I’d just try to take it.”

Look at what you could have—you could be almost anything. Now look at what you came from. You’re too close to going back—what you need to do is go forward, he’d said. You got a chance at a real life. You’re too smart not to take it.

Gazing into the backyard, she found herself thinking of that grizzled, hard face and eyes that had seemed like granite. She’d hated him. Then . . . and after.

But those words had been lingered, echoed in the back of her mind for weeks, months. Even now. Years later.

“I got out of it. I was ready to go back to the fast-food thing, even, but I’d met Farrah.” Looking back at Trey, she said, “My best friend. You haven’t met her, but she’s amazing. I was always at the library whenever I had time, and she’d been working here a while, mentioned they were looking for volunteers. I couldn’t do volunteer work—I needed a real job, but she kept bugging me so I did it, started helping out once a month—I did it when I wasn’t flipping burgers. And found . . . something. I changed my major that summer, focused on becoming a librarian. I hadn’t even had a goal at that point—I was in school to make Mama Ang happy. I did it just to shut her up. The next summer, I was offered a part-time job. And I took it. A for-real job . . . something respectable even. I quit the fast-food place . . .” She laughed. “I still hate Big Macs, you know. Hate them.”

Turning from the window, she moved over to the sitting area, tucked just beneath the bay window. Trey held out a hand, and for a moment she just stared, and then she put her hand in his, let him draw her close. She ended up settled between his legs, one of his hands rubbing the small of her back while she talked.

“Kiara was getting into more trouble, though. The cops pretty much blew the entire thing wide open. Sharon wasn’t charged, but she moved out of the state. Ha

“Some people don’t want to straighten up,” Trey murmured, his lips against her brow. “That’s not on you.”

“Maybe not . . . Ha

Trey went still.

Ressa closed her eyes. He cupped her cheek but she wouldn’t look at him. After a moment, he stopped trying to make her and just held her.

“Kiara kept getting in trouble, more and more, all the time. She fell in with this guy who’d known Scott—Christo. He knew what had been going down—I think he might have been one of her johns at some point. And she . . .” Ressa shrugged. “She went right back to it. We’d get into fights and I’d tell her to get a clue and she’d tell me to mind my own business . . . sex was the easiest way to make money ever—and it was fun. Fun. She ended up having a little girl—Neeci—and she had no idea who the dad was. I told her she was lucky she hadn’t ended up sick or worse . . . It was the same thing. Over and over again. I was sick of it. I was the one taking care of Neeci at that point and I was tired from working and taking care of a baby—Neeci was only two months old and she didn’t sleep well . . . there were . . .” She swallowed, fighting the anger she always had to fight when she talked about this. “Neeci was in pretty bad shape the first few months—Kiara hadn’t taken care of herself and Neeci came early, couldn’t eat well . . . had other problems. She’s okay now, but that first year was hard. I was just tired.”