So we did.
But it was too late.
Way too fucking late.
“So you know before he married Analise he beat the shit out of his last girlfriend so badly she was hospitalized.”
“What?” I wheezed.
There was no way that could be true. People talked and they did it whether what they were saying was true or not. And since Slater wasn’t well-liked the news of him beating up a woman would’ve been spread far and wide.
“That’s not possible,” I started.
“It’s not?” Practiced sarcasm dripped from his tone.
“What I mean is, if he’d beat up a girlfriend everyone in town would’ve been talking about it.”
“Not if his girl was up in Whitefish.”
Well, damn. He had a point. Whitefish was about an hour north with double the population of Blackhawk.
“How do you know this?”
My question was met with a look of confusion that quickly became conflicted before he blanked his face and set his jaw.
“I hate you can do that,” I mumbled.
“Do what?”
Without thinking my hand came up and swept through the air in the general direction of his masked expression.
“Whatever you’re doing right now with your face.”
“My face?”
“Yeah, your face. You never used to do that before,” I pointed out.
One of the things I’d always loved about Garrett was his expressive eyes; they said everything without him speaking a word. Now, they were totally devoid of any emotion.
I watched as his jaw clenched but he didn’t bother denying he was hiding from me. The problem was I didn’t know what he was hiding. He’d pushed his way into my house full of fire but now he looked like he was wondering how he got there. That was annoying. But it was the vacant stare that hurt.
“You need to stand down,” he repeated.
“Dude, I’m not gonna stand down.”
Garrett’s lip curled in disgust.
Someone who didn’t know him the way I did might think that lip curl was due to me not giving in. However, they’d be wrong.
“Dude,” he spat.
I shrugged off his unspoken censure.
“Hey, if you don’t like the way I speak or what I’m saying, there’s the door.” I pointed across the room for good measure. “Feel free to use it. No, wait, please use it whether you want to or not. This conversation’s over.”
“The fuck it is, Melissa. Slater is dangerous.”
Since Garrett wasn’t telling me something I didn’t already damn well know seeing as he murdered my sister, I said nothing.
He mistook my silence and continued on. “What do I need to say to you to convince you to drop this and let the police handle it?”
That was when I snapped.
About everything.
“I know Slater is dangerous, Garrett, he killed my sister! And the police aren’t handling shit. The case is closed. Not that there ever was a case or an investigation. Just Slater’s statement that Analise had been acting erratic since Grace was born. He didn’t come straight out and say it, but it was implied Analise took her own life. The police thinking they were doing right by my grieving parents filed Analisa’s death as an accidental drowning. Which is total bullshit. My sister didn’t decide to take a swim, fully clothed.”
Garrett’s face softened a smidge before he gently said, “Mellie.”
If he meant to say more, I didn’t let him continue.
“I swear to all things holy if you ask me if my sister killed herself, I’m gonna lose my shit,” I warned.
“You know me better than that, baby,” he returned softly and looked like he immediately regretted the slip up.
For my part, hearing Garrett call me baby was the equivalent to being run over by a Mack truck—and not just one but a whole convoy of them.
“I don’t know you. I don’t know a damn thing about this Garrett. No, actually, I do. I know he doesn’t want anything to do with me, my fucked-up life, or my fucked-up priorities. I know he told me to never contact him again. I know I don’t exist for him.”
“Mellie—”
“Don’t. Don’t say anything. I don’t know why you’re here butting into my life when you made it crystal clear you never wanted to see or speak to me again. I don’t know why, and I don’t fucking care. I just want you to leave.”
“Give me a day to look into—”
“No. Way.”
My refusal was met with a scowl, but more—the whole vibe of the room changed. The man standing in front of me was not my Garrett. Not the boy I grew up with, not the teenager I fell in love with, not the man I wanted to spend my life with. I’d never seen this Garrett, not even in the years since he’d broken off our engagement and he’d turned cold.
This new version of him was more than a little scary.
He became even scarier when acidly he bit out, “I wasn’t asking, Melissa.”
My anger ratcheted up to an all-new high. I felt my hands start to shake and I knew what was coming next—the dreaded tears of frustration. The kind you couldn’t stop because the rage was so overwhelming it needed to leak out some way or it would explode and tear you apart.
“Fuck. Off.” I hated that my voice cracked. I hated that my words barely came out above a whisper. I hated that Garrett Davis was standing in my apartment.
I just plain hated him.
“Mel—”
His phone rang in his pocket, cutting off whatever the next irritating thing he was going to say next. But before I could tell him to shove his phone up his ass on the way out the door he was stabbing angrily at the screen.
Then the next thing I knew he answered, “Hey, KK, you’re on speaker.”
“Oh-kay,” a woman’s voice came over the line. “Can you talk?”
My eyes went to the floor as insane, irrational jealousy washed over me. So much of it I was afraid those threatening tears would spill over and roll down my cheeks.
“Yeah, whatcha’ got?”
“Something felt off, so I did some more digging,” she weirdly announced.
“What’d you find?” Garrett asked.
“Slater Boone’s a dick!” this KK person hissed. “Like a major one. He’s also in debt to his eyeballs, not because he doesn’t make decent money. He’s also collected on a fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy from his dead—”
“Kira,” Garrett snapped. “You’re on speaker.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Melissa can hear you.”
“Melissa Rivers?” she breathed and she sounded in pain.
That jealousy turned ugly. Acid burned in my gut as I lifted my eyes to find Garrett staring at me.
“You should leave so you can talk to her in private.” No sooner did the suggestion leave my mouth than Garrett’s eyes narrowed on me.
“I don’t need privacy to speak to Kira. I was reminding her she was on speaker phone because the woman has a faulty filter. Before she said something that would hurt your feelings, I wanted to stop her.”
“My filter’s not faulty,” Kira denied. “It works just fine. It’s not my fault all you men have sensitivity issues.”