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"Uh, sure." I hesitate for a second after she walks over and lowers herself down. This is my place, for fuck's sake. Get it together, Monroe.
When we're both seated, I open my mouth, but Lilly holds up a hand, and my jaw snaps shut.
"I apologize for ambushing you this late and unannounced. However, I didn't think you would've agreed to meet if I had called ahead."
"Probably not," I snort.
She smirks, and some of the tension melts away. Her personality makes you want to be her friend—cue, I feel like an idiot. I'm King MonroeTurner.
We sit in silence after that, and I wish I had one of my blades to keep my hands busy.
"I've known about you for quite some time," she says carefully.
Her tentative deliverance of the bombshell doesn't do anything to diminish the shock; the craving for my knife is forgotten.
"WHAT?" I squeak and choke on my saliva.
My vision blurs, and Lilly jumps up, filling one of the discarded glasses in the sink with water. She holds it out to me. "Small sips."
I drink half the glass before I can form words. "How long?"
She levels me with a look that tells me this is not going to be good. "Since the day your father disappeared—again."
My eyes widen to the point that I think they will bulge out of their sockets and land in my lap any second. "How?" My question is barely audible.
Lilly reaches into the pocket of her leather jacket and withdraws a piece of paper. She holds it out to me, and I'm not sure what to do. She nods, and I take the note from her.
Unfolding it, it reveals three words in handwriting I would recognize anywhere. My gaze flies to hers. I glance back down at my name written in my father's easily recognizable chicken scratch:
Kingsley Monroe Turner.
"It was chaos. I was bleeding heavily and barely coherent. I thought I had dreamed the whole thing until I found the note, days later, among my belongings in the hospital. Everyone was busy checking on Rhys. Gray had tucked it into my pants right before he disappeared."
"Why?" It seems my vocabulary has been reduced to one-word questions.
"His precise words were, 'No one betrays me. Our paths will cross again, but until they do...take care of her.'"
"Betrays?" He had used the same word when he talked about his past. Who betrayed him?
She pauses and waits for me to look at her. "I assume you know where your father was all those years? With whom."
Slashing my mouth, I nod. "I found out after my mother's funeral."
"I see." Lilly stares at the wall opposite us. "I don't remember everything from that day. What we were able to figure out was that your father was cut off from the money. He had nothing left. We assume that was why he hadendeditthe way he did before he ran."
I think over her words.Things slowly fall into place. My father may have been the one to bring Lilly to that house, but he wasn't the only one there. His words echo in my ears:I learned my lesson when the person I blindly followed betrayed me.
"He took the shot?" A fact that was never publicly released.
Lilly nods. "Yes. He saved Rhys's life. Ended the standoff."
Neither of usspeaks after that. Lilly flips her thumb against her other four fingers, and I fidget with the hem of my uniform.
I don't look at her. "I didn't know he had faked his death until over a decade later. He showed up a week after my mother's funeral." I laugh, humorless, the earlier tension creeping its way back into my body as I remember the day. "I had just finished my shift and was walking to Mom's beat-up Honda in the parking lot. He was leaning against it, and—" I break off. "When I realized who he was, I punched him. Then I broke down in his arms." My shoulders slump, the shame of having taken comfort in his arms—after what he did—chokes the words I should say to her. Apologize for him.
A hand touches my knee, and my head jerks up. "He is your father. We can't control how we feel, no matter what our head tells us."
She never asked for my side of the events, yet I continue anyway. "He gave me my Jeep during his second visit. My car—Mom's car—had broken down completely. "'Unfixable,' the mechanic said," I imitate the guy's condescending tone with a sneer. The loser was one of the regulars at The Pole—a friend of a friend, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to get in. His knowledge of where I worked gave him a false sense of superiority, one I wanted to carve out with my knife more than my next breath.
