Forgiving Lies

13

Rachel

I FELT A body slip into bed behind me and instantly knew it wasn’t Kash. It was much too small, definitely smaller than my own . . . and the second her arms went around mine I knew exactly who it was. I patted at one of her hands and heard her sigh.

“You’re awake then?” Candice asked in a shaky voice.

“Yeah, I’m up.”

“Can’t believe it’s already here.”

“I know.” It was August nineteenth. It was a Saturday, not that the day of the week mattered; it just happened to be the day it fell on this year. The four-year anniversary of my parents’ death. I continued to stare blankly at my clock as the minutes ticked by and laughed softly. “Now, girls,” I said, imitating my mom’s voice perfectly, “how are you going to get guys to notice you if you spend all weekend in bed?”

Candice’s body shook with laughter and a happier sigh sounded behind me. “But, Rebecca, the sun isn’t even up. All the cute guys are still asleep. Go away,” Candice whined.

I mimicked throwing open the curtains, like my mom always would after Candice and I would complain. “Oh, they are?! Perfect! Then we can do the unattractive things now before they wake up.”

Candice rolled out of bed and threw the comforter off me. “Ready for the unattractive things, Rach?”

“Meet you in three!”

I jumped off the bed and went to brush my teeth, put on some deodorant, and throw on a bra. It was tradition. Whenever weekends began at my house, my mom would wake us up the same way. And even though we knew what was coming, we’d always complain about her waking us up so early on a weekend. Deep down, she knew we loved it. We’d go get breakfast completely skanked out. The only thing Mom would let us do was the essentials: put on a bra, brush teeth, and wear deodorant. Every time we’d order the same thing: hash browns, biscuits and gravy, and a ham-and-cheese omelet. We’d split all of it, and when we were done stuffing our faces, we’d go out for pedicures. My mom thought you should always look your best for guys, but girls needed to indulge every now and then, and doing it at the ass crack of dawn was her method for getting away with it. And now, every year on the anniversary, Candice and I honored that memory.

After I slid the shirt I’d slept in back on and stepped into my flip-flops, I ran into the living room at the same time Candice was coming out of her room. We grinned awkwardly at each other and she grabbed me in a big hug before we left the apartment. Bittersweet memories . . . but definitely the best way to start off this day.

TURNING OFF MY car, I wiped the tears from under my eyes and tried to catch my breath from laughing too hard. “Oh my word, Candice, I had completely forgotten about that.”

“You forgot about that?! How? Seriously, your dad was the funniest guy I knew!” She fanned at her tear-streaked face and we both got out of my car.

After breakfast and pedicures, we’d gone back to the apartment, taken showers, and gotten ready for the day. We went window-shopping at an outdoor mall called The Domain, not only because we couldn’t afford much of anything from those shops anyway but because it was another thing we’d done with my mom. She’d take us to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills just for the fun of looking at everything. We never once bought anything, just browsed. And since Rodeo Drive was a little too far to get to this year, the pricey shops at The Domain were our replacements.

Once we got our fill of browsing, we went to the movies, picked a comedy, and got the biggest tub of popcorn and three boxes. Candice and I filled the boxes with popcorn and we each sat one on our lap, placed one on the seat next to her, and put the tub of popcorn next to me. My dad always said he was the man so he got to hold the tub, but really he just wanted all the extra butter that was sitting in it; we just let him think we never figured him out. Their popcorn remained untouched, as it had every August nineteenth over the last three years, and when Candice saw my face when we went to throw the leftover popcorn away, she immediately picked back up telling funny stories about my parents and kept it up all the way home.

“You remember when he taught all of us how to slide on the hardwood like Tom Cruise?” I said as we walked to our unit.

Candice threw her head back and laughed loudly. “Oh God, we spent hours learning how to do that. We were all so bruised from falling! Didn’t you get hurt?”

“Dislocated my shoulder.”

“That’s right! I’m still really good at that. I wish we had hardwood floors in our apartment.”

I laughed and searched for the key to our door. “Yeah . . . I haven’t done that in years.” My eyebrows scrunched together when Candice began walking over to Kash and Mason’s apartment. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” She smiled knowingly at me and her eyes began watering for a completely different reason when she held her hand over her heart. “Love you, Rach. Miss them.”

She was going to leave me for Mason on a night like tonight? “Love you back,” I whispered, and walked inside, screaming when I turned to find Kash standing right there. “For real! You need a freakin’ bell on you— Oooh, it smells good in here.”

He laughed low and pulled me close to whisper against my lips, “My Sour Patch.”

I growled unimpressively at him and he smiled. He knew I couldn’t stand that name, but I’m sure that’s why he continued to call me that. I would have preferred something like fiancée, but we still hadn’t told anyone in the few days since we’d been back and only talked about it during the nights we were in bed with each other. He wanted to wait until I had a ring, but a piece of jewelry didn’t make a difference to me. I just hadn’t realized how terrified I would be for Candice to find out. Well, not so much Candice as her cousin . . . and somehow I knew that if the Jenkinses knew, he would know as well. Mentally shaking off thoughts of Blake, I focused on my fiancé, who was now leading us into the kitchen.

“How has today been for you so far?”

“It’s been good, considering. Candice and I did a pretty good job of fitting a lot of our memories of them into today. What are you making?”

“Food.”

I feigned excitement. “My favorite!”

He turned to grin at me and put a dish in the oven, started the timer, and pulled me into his arms again. “I’m glad today was good for you.”

“Me too.”

Pulling a small remote out of his pocket, he pushed a button and soon the kitchen was filled with the beginning of a familiar song. My smile widened when I remembered the first time he sang it to me. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to try to take that memory of your parents from you the night I sang their song.” He curled one hand around mine and put it against his chest, and the other he wrapped around my waist as he slowly started rocking us back and forth.

My breath caught in my throat and I tried to choke out his name, but hardly any sound came out. Tears filled my eyes and I pressed my forehead against his chest next to our hands.

“So I’m gonna make our own memory, baby.”

I slowly nodded my head against his chest and a few tears fell onto his shirt when his husky voice began singing in my ear along with Brantley Gilbert. Flashes of my dad singing “I’ll Be” to my mom danced through my head for a few seconds before I let go and cherished this gift. Kash was taking my favorite memory of my parents and giving me our own version of it, and I somehow—impossibly—fell more in love with him as he sang “Fall into Me.”

“I’ll be the love song, and I’ll love you right off your feet . . . Until you fall into me.”

Even after the song was over and other songs had begun playing . . . Kash didn’t let me go, we didn’t speak, and we didn’t stop dancing. There was nothing to say; what he’d given me was beyond beautiful. It was a perfect way to end this day. And I knew if my dad were alive, Logan Hendricks would have his stamp of approval.

“Y’ALL NEED ANY help closing up?” Tina asked as she slung her purse over her shoulder.

“No, we’re good, we’re almost done anyway. Go home, I know you’re exhausted.”

“I swear, college kids are the worst. No offense, hon. But they’re rowdy and the worst tippers.”

“None taken.” I smiled wide at her and walked her over to the door so I could lock it behind her. “See you later, drive safe!”

With an awkward wave of her hand, she ran to her car and I watched as she drove off. Bryce and Kash were closing up the restaurant, and I didn’t need to be there, but I’d gotten a ride with Kash tonight and I usually waited until he was off anyway, so it didn’t bother me to help them out. He was talking to Rod about something and pointing at papers in Rod’s hand, and when he glanced up at me, he sent a wink my way without a pause in his sentence.

I walked over to Bryce and helped him put away some glasses before running to the back and grabbing another rack of glasses that had just been cleaned. When I walked back into the restaurant, Kash and Rod were both gone and Bryce was standing there waiting for me to come back. We were putting everything away when a guitar started coming through the speakers.

Figuring one of the guys had turned on the music, we thought nothing of it and I kept talking to Bryce until I heard a husky voice join in. I abruptly stopped talking and stood there with two glasses in my hands just staring at the wall that separated us from the area that held the stage. I bit my lip to contain my smile as I heard the first few lines of “Your Guardian Angel.” It didn’t matter what type of song it was; Kash could sing it. And in his deep voice? Lord, it was a treat.

He’d just started the second verse of the song by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus when I rounded the corner and leaned up against the wall to watch him. His lips curled up when he saw me enter the dim room, and other than the few times he’d look down when he was only playing the guitar, he kept his gray eyes trained on me.

I took in the words like I was hearing them for the first time, because Kash had told me last week after dancing with me in my kitchen that he would only sing me songs that meant something for us. My heart beat wildly as I felt every word go straight to my soul, and I subconsciously grabbed at my warming chest. When his words trailed off and his hand stopped strumming the guitar, I was still leaning against the wall, hoping it would keep me standing as he set the guitar down and stepped off the stage. Much like the first night he sang to me in the bar, his stride was purposeful as he made his way toward me. Only this time, I didn’t turn and run.

His smile grew when he got closer to me, but he didn’t pull me into his arms like he normally would. Just as I started to push myself off the wall, he spoke, his voice gruff. “I didn’t do this right the first time.” Dropping slowly to one knee, he grabbed my left hand and brought a diamond solitaire up to my ring finger. “Rachel Masters, I promise to love you and take care of you . . . no matter the cost, every day for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” I whispered, and bounced on my toes when he slid the ring onto my finger. Grabbing his face, I pulled him up and kissed him with every bit of passion in my body.

“Do you trust me to always protect you?”

Uh . . . Awkward question to follow up a proposal. I jerked back and smiled self-consciously. “Of course I do, why?”

“I just needed to make sure.”

What on earth? Before I could ask where that deep and random question came from, he hooked his arm around my neck and pulled me toward the front of the restaurant.

“Come on, let’s go home. I plan on keeping you up all night.”

Random question officially forgotten.

Kash

“THAT BETTER HAVE been a Cracker Jack ring and this better just be some sick joke you’re playing to get back at me for the honeymoon bullshit!” Mason slammed the door to my bedroom shut and began stalking back and forth.

“Did it look like a Cracker Jack ring?”

“What the fuck were you thinking?!”

That I’m in love with Rachel and I want to spend every fucking second of the rest of my life with her? I didn’t say anything, I just continued getting ready. Once my badge and gun were on my belt, I pulled a shirt on and grabbed another button-up one to put over it, leaving the buttons undone. We’d learned early on that trying to hide your gun didn’t work well if it bulged beneath your shirt.

“You’re not going to say anything?”

I sighed and faced him. “What do you want me to say?”

“That it’s a joke! That you didn’t really propose to a girl who knows nothing about you!”

“She knows me, Mase. She knows who I am. Maybe not my last name or my actual profession, but who I am as a person? She knows me.”

He looked at me like I’d lost it. Bringing his hand to his head before flinging it to the side, he shouted, “Do you even hear yourself right now?! Your. Last. Name. She doesn’t know your last name! Which means she thinks that someday she’s going to be Rachel Hendricks. Not Rachel Ryan. Didn’t you think of that? And your profession is who you are. It makes up everything that is Logan fuckin’ Ryan.”

I started walking around him and opened my door. “Whatever, I don’t need this from you right now. You’re my best friend; I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be saying congrats or something similar.”

“The hell I am! Candice isn’t even happy about this! You saw her. As soon as she saw the ring, she started screaming at Rachel and left. Rachel looked fucking crushed. She needs her best friend, and she needs a fiancé that isn’t lying to her. Don’t you understand that? You can’t do this to her. You’re going to kill her when she finds out the truth—”

“She’ll understand.”

“No, she won’t, Kash! Either tell her about who we are or break off the engagement. Today.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fine, I’ll call her and do it myself.”

I turned and swung, connecting with his jaw. “I will end you if you get in the middle of this!”

He slammed me into the hallway wall and held me there. “I love her too; I won’t let you hurt her like that! You shouldn’t have proposed until she knew everything about you and me. You should have never put her in that kind of position.” Shoving off me, he started walking away before abruptly turning back to me. “Honestly, what the hell were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t, okay? I wasn’t thinking about anything other than the fact that I love her and I know I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I got caught up in that weekend, and I could see it, Mase—God, I could see our entire freakin’ lives and I wanted it so damn bad. The last night we were there, it hit me that I was fucking terrified of not having that with her, and I asked her then. We’ve been engaged since before we came back; I just gave her the ring this weekend though. I hate lying to her; you have no idea what it’s doing to me, and you have no idea how many times I’ve almost told her everything. But I can’t do it, I need to protect her.”

“Then you shouldn’t have asked her yet.” He sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands.

“I know. But I did and I would never take that back. I love her, and I’ll always love her. I’ll tell her the truth, soon.”

“Swear?”

“Yeah.” Without another word, I walked out of the apartment and headed toward my Harley.

“Where are you going? We don’t need to leave yet.”

“Gonna go ride for a while first. I need time to think, and you sitting there looking at me like I’m the asshole I already know I am isn’t going to help me.”

I started up my baby and looked at the empty space where Rachel normally parked. I knew I needed to tell her, and I knew the way I’d gone about this had probably already fucked things up beyond repair. I just prayed that when she did find out, she would understand my reasons for keeping her in the dark.