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“Well, no shit,” Brian said as he fell into the client chair. “And what’s with these questions about your books and a chick named Trish? Is this what your lady meant about you not being you?”
I dragged my free hand through my hair a couple times before leaning forward and meeting his stare. “Brian, I know what Riss said, but I need to talk to you. I mean, really talk to you.”
He held his arms out to the sides. “Baby, I’m a vault.”
The corners of my mouth twitched into a smirk. “I know.”
With a ragged breath, I sat back and told Brian everything. Every memory I’d woken up with and the ones my friends and family were telling me now. How the false ones all twisted to connect to my supposed real life and the glaring one thatdidn’t.
“What in the blessed shit?” he asked when I finished.
I lifted my hand and let it slap down onto my thigh.
“This is legit? Like, I’m not stoned, you’re not playing me, legit.”
“Legit,” I confirmed with a dip of my head. “Ijustfound out Riss even worked here. I didn’t know until Brandon said something.”
Shock covered his face as he turned to look toward the hall that led to the back rooms, and then a laugh was tumbling from him. “Can’t believe your boy hasn’t beaten the shit out of you for all the things you’ve been saying about his wifey, my dude.”
“Yeah, well,” I said with a sigh. “I’m definitely pushing him to a breaking point.”
“What a trip,” he said, still all amusement. “You got a whole second chance at life and ended up thinking you had a second life.”
“Something like that.” I lifted my chin and said, “Need you to clear up things for me.”
He pressed a hand to his chest in exaggeration. “I’d be honored to.”
“Scarlet and me...is that real?”
His brows lifted. “As the air you’re breathing, Chachi. The two of you?” He held his hands up a couple feet apart before smacking them together. “Absolute magnets. Nothing could keep you apart.”
“Even her ex-boyfriend?”
He sucked in a breath through his teeth, shrugging as he did. “That was rough on you and rough on her, and it got dicey in here for a whole minute. But it worked out in the end, and watching the two of you together...fuck, man, it’s beautiful. Riss always says it’s like the two of you are in a dance, the way you seem to move together.”
I sat.
Waited.
Let his words replay again and again, hoping it would spark something, but there was only that racing of my heart whenever I thought of Scarlet now. The girl I would’ve done anything to be rid of just a few days ago because the way she consumed me had pissed me off as much as it had intrigued me.
“What do you mean it got dicey in here?” I asked, slanting my head in question.
“With Scarlet’s ex,” Brian said as if I should’ve already known. When I just continued staring at him, he asked, “Didn’t she just tell you about those first months when the two of you were figuring your shit out?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think I know about whatever happened here,” I said as I thought over my earlier conversation with Scarlet. “She said I was the last one to see him and that she’d never asked about what happened.”
“Oh, she knows,” he said assuredly. “And it definitely wasn’t the last time she saw him because that shit got way worse.”
My eyebrows drew close over my eyes, and I readjusted in my chair. Trying to find a position where my ribs weren’t screaming in pain, all while I was itching to stand. To pace.
“Explain,” I said in a low demand.
“Fucking trip, man,” he muttered to himself before scooting closer on the chair. “If I remember right, it was right after Scarlet ended things with the other guy. Then he comes storming in here, knowing exactly who you were and what had been going down between you and Scarlet. You were doing a piece, but you just stood up and met him in the middle of the shop. Let him get a hit in, and then you two went at it. Jeff and I had to pull the two of you off each other.”
My chest pitched as flashes of fights with Brandon stormed my thoughts.
Fights he swore had never happened.
