Busted (Barnes Brothers #3) (33 page)

Ressa came to awareness to feel Trey’s mouth on her back.

She was in a bed. With Trey. A moment of pure, insane happiness washed over her. She’d spent the entire night with him . . .

But then her brain kicked in, and she remembered the way the day had played out.

Trey sighed and shifted his body up, resting his chin on her shoulder.

“You’re thinking hard and I haven’t even had coffee,” he said. “This could be a major problem in our relationship, Ressa.”

With a lump in her throat, she wiggled over onto her back and stared up at him. “If only that was the biggest problem we had.”

Lifting a hand, she pressed it against his cheek. “I never did tell you everything,” she said quietly. “And I think I need to.”

For a moment, Trey just studied her and then he nodded. “Give me a minute,” he said, bending down to brush his lips over her cheek.

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 dinner and he had his hand on my back, was whispering in my ear about how much better the night could be if I’d give him one of those little extras Scott had suggested. That was when the cop showed up—he’d been following us. Listening.”

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. Hannah, a few others and me—we just kind of watched from the sidelines, had to talk to the cops a few times. But Kiara, two other girls . . . and Scott—the guy who’d started hooking some of the girls out, they were all arrested and charged. Scott was the only one who went to trial and he ended up copping a plea bargain before it ended. He’ll be getting out of jail soon. He got hit hard because of all the evidence they found of him blackmailing people. Kiara and the others, they were given a deal—six months and
probation if they testified against Scott. They all took it. The other two straightened up. Kiara . . . I swear, she can’t find herself for nothing.”

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

“Maybe not . . . Hannah’s death is.”

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
.”

My fault—

Trying to silence that voice, she twisted in Trey’s arms, sitting with her back against his chest. Part of her wanted to move away, but the rest of her, it needed this. He still held her.

“It was six years ago . . . almost to the day. Next Saturday, as a matter of fact.”

*   *   *

Trey tensed, unable to stop it. Next Saturday—it was the anniversary of the worst day of his life.

Ressa looked at him, her eyes bruised. “What happened six years ago?” he asked, focusing on her and not the past.

“She got in trouble.” Ressa sighed, the sound tired and strained, like the things she was telling him just wore down on her. “I was at home when she called. It was probably around eleven. She’d been out with Christo—she told me she’d been
working
—that’s what she called it. And this guy . . . she was ranting about how he messed everything up and made Christo mad at her. There was a fight and the cops were called and Christo acted like it was her fault . . . It took me forever to figure out what she was talking about. But she’d tried to . . .”

She stopped, closing one hand into a fist. A moment later, she surged off his lap and he watched as she went over to her clothes. They lay in a tangle and his heart broke a little as she fought with them.

He went to his closet and grabbed the first thing that came to hand. “Here,” he said, kneeling in front of her.

She went still as he settled the black cotton on her shoulders, tucking her arms into the sleeves like she was a child. “I don’t know why you have to be so wonderful,” she said softly. “I just . . . I don’t get it. Why are some men like Christo and others like you?”

Uncomfortable with the way she was watching him, Trey shrugged. “I don’t know this Christo jerk, but if he’s the kind of slug I think he is, he doesn’t sound like much of a man.”

“No.” Ressa shook her head. “He’s really not.”

She reached up and closed a hand around his wrist and Trey sank down on the floor in front of her.

“She made money by sleeping with other men,” she said softly. “Sometimes they knew they’d be paying her. Sometimes . . .”

She looked away. “Sometimes they didn’t. Christo was a dealer. She got drugs from him, would slip it into a guy’s drink. He’d forget her—and everything else—by the time he woke up. That night, it didn’t go the way they planned. Christo hit her. He’d hit her before and she always went back to him. This time it was because she’d fucked up the
job
.”

She smoothed her hands back over her hair and locked them at the base of her neck, staring at nothing. “The
job
—
she picks up men, drugs them, steals from them and it’s a
job
. This time, the guy she tried to pick up in this bar hadn’t been into her. Christo said she must have fucked up—fucked up. Yeah, that covers it.” She bit her lip, her gaze skittering off to the side before she looked back at him. “They looked for marks who looked like they had it pretty good. Nice cars, nice clothes . . .”

Trey’s gut started to churn.

Fuck
.

“This guy, she’d given him something and he’d been drinking, but he wasn’t going for it. Christo was determined, though. He was in trouble himself, owed people some money and I guess this guy looked like he was doing pretty well and each time Kiara tried to find somebody else there, he’d push her back to this one guy. Then the guy up and leaves the bar . . . there was some kind of fight, though. She took off and Christo caught up with her at their place. Hurt her pretty bad. She . . .” Ressa’s voice tripped. “She came to me. My cousin came to me, all battered and bloody and bruised. She had some stranger’s credit cards, his cash. She told me she just needed to stay there that night—she’d pay me. She offered to
pay
me. The idiot. Then . . .”

The words came out hard, flinty. “Christo showed up at my door. Banging on it, yelling at me. I told Kiara to never tell that son of a bitch where I lived, but she’d done it anyway. He kept banging . . . I called the cops. Kiara saw me do it and she hit me. There I am, trying to report somebody who’d beat her, somebody who was practically trying to knock my door down while a little baby slept in the bedroom upstairs and Kiara
hit
me. I almost hit her back. But . . .”