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“We have your car in impound,” he replied. “Someone found its doors jimmied opened, and it’d been ransacked.”
“Fucking hell.” This just kept getting better and better. Whoever did this to me really went all out to be a fucking asshole. I’d have to give Joey a call and figure out who the hell I’d been hunting down. Granted, I didn’t say that to Officer Ryat. When I figured out who the hell this was, payback was happening. And I’d make it fucking brutal. I glanced up as I realized Officer Ryat was still staring at me. I shrugged. “I don’t have anything else to give you. I don’t remember shit.”
“You should get looked at for a concussion,” he said.
“Nah, he’s just always that fucking ditzy,” Roan commented. He slipped around Officer Ryat and tossed a black shirt at me. I groaned as I pulled it on.
“Got it.” Officer Ryat nodded. He took out a business card and handed it to me. “Look, I’ll write up a report because I have to, but at this point, unless you remember something, I wouldn’t expect to figure out who did this. If you do remember anything, just give me a call.”
“Will do.” I wouldn’t. This shit I’d handle on my own. As he stepped into the hall and Roan closed the door, I grabbed my wallet. I had every intention of tossing the officer’s card inside just in case. You never knew when you’d need a good connection in a different city. I paused, though, and stared at the contents of my wallet. “Huh. That’s not where I keep you.”
My driver’s license had been carelessly tossed inside. Which was odd. I was meticulous about where I kept my shit. My license was always placed inside the first slot. The last thing I needed was for it to fall out. The way it just sat free in the centerfold was unlike me.
“What?” Roan asked while he flopped down in his chair again. “You lost your mind again?”
“Maybe?” I answered honestly. “My license isn’t where I always put it.”
“Is everything else there?” The serious tone in his voice wasn’t lost on me. After all the shit I’d gone through with whoever had stabbed me, was it really a long shot to think they’d gone through my wallet? I took my time going through each section. My frown deepened with every passing minute. “What’d they take?”
“My brothers’ business cards,” I said. Why the fuck would someone take Declan, Sam, and Nolan’s business cards? I kept rifling through my shit.
“There’s some fucking weird ass people out there, man,” he muttered, but I barely heard him as I hit the last slot in my wallet. The one fucking slot I hadn’t touched in two years. I didn’t want to look, but I had to. I had to know.
Two pictures sat in the back slot—two pictures I’d actively avoided because any time I saw them, it ripped out my heart all over again. The first was one of our wedding photos taken at Waverly Farms. Just a quiet moment of me and her surrounded by pumpkins at sunset. I loved that picture. I could still feel her in my arms, the heavy blanket wrapped tight around us as I sang to her. I hadn’t even known the photographer was there, to be honest.
The second was another picture of her, bright-eyed with a big smile as she sat on our porch swing. Despite the pouring rain outside our overhang and the cold weather, she was fucking glowing. She was sunshine and all good things wrapped up into one perfect woman.
I ran my thumb over the old thing, feeling the gut punch just as hard as I did every other time I looked at them. It’d been three years since I’d seen her in person. Three years and it still fucking hurt like it was yesterday. I was barely put together—a mess of proverbial duct tape, desperate prayers, and daily mantras telling myself I could get through the fucking day. Most days I got through just fine, but some days the hurt came right back with a fucking vengeance.
And I was gearing up to make it hurt all over again. I was going home. Back to Cedar Harbor. What the hell had I been thinking? Was I ready to face Genevieve again? I wanted to say I was, but the truth was I was a weak man where she was concerned. I’d let her carve my damn heart out with a spoon all over again if that was what she wanted.
I wasn’t sure how the hell I was going to survive her.
Chapter 03
Genevieve
Give me!” I exclaimed the second Nolan came barreling through the front door of The Treehouse. I held my hands out and waited for my coffee. We’d run out of it in-store, and I was in desperate need of some. “Give me, give me, give me!”
“I… don’t have it,” he said. He hesitated. Oh, why did he hesitate? “I got distracted and sort of… forgot.”
There was only one thing on the planet that’d make him forget my coffee. My eyes narrowed as I scrutinized him.
“Nolan Callahan Byrne,” I began, “did you find another cat?”
He shushed me and waved to the office door, which was right behind me. I understood why. For the past month or so, Declan had been using the office for his business purposes. And Declan had feelings about Nolan’s cat adventures. Not that I entirely blamed him at this point. Between Wutherford, Dart, Barry, Maxwell, and Sir Remington, Nolan had a full house in his small apartment. There just wasn’t room for another.
And as Nolan’s best friend, I had somehow adopted those cats with him. So they were our cats. We had five cats living in his little apartment, which I helped him with. I had to put my foot down somewhere.
“Nolan!” My eyes widened. “You don’t have… fine, just walk out on me.”
I stared at his retreating back as he hurried out the parking lot door. Rude.
Nolan Byrne was a nerdy little force of nature when he wanted to be. Despite his tell-all Byrne blue eyes, he was the oddball in the Byrne family. Sure, he was tall like the rest of them, but it pretty much ended there. He was lanky and lean with dark hair hiding copper tones, a baby face I’d never seen a beard on, and a thick-rimmed pair of glasses straight out of a 90’s sitcom.
Oh, and the flannel shirts seemed to be a family thing too. Everyone in Cedar Harbor wore flannel in the cold seasons. The Byrnes just somehow made it a year-round thing. I had a feeling it was more a poke at Declan than anything else.
When Nolan came back in, a tiny fluffball of an orange cat flailed damn near violently in his arms. Its clear attitude problem went unnoticed by him. Nolan collected cats. A wolf who collected cats. Truly, it was endearing. He had a heart bigger than anyone I knew and filled all its empty spaces with cats.
