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For the first ten minutes or so, they were on the same little expressway that led into town. Only when she reached the turnoff, instead of taking the left to go to his farm, she went right, heading back in the direction of her rented house.
She wasn’t too surprised when her phone rang, but when she looked in her rearview mirror, he wasn’t there. “Hello.”
“Where are you going, detective?”
“Home!”
“Your home is with me, and it’s in the opposite direction. If you’re going back to that shack you used to rent, did I forget to tell you that the landlord’s already got a new tenant?”
Celia hung up the phone, not quite defeated but plotting his demise. She turned around at the first opportunity knowing that he’d won. She finally broke out in laughter when she saw him pulled over to the side at the turnoff she’d left him at.
They drove home in silence with him following behind her, and she slammed out of the car, fighting not to laugh and keep a stern face on. Riley jumped down from his truck and sauntered over to her. “I don’t like pushy overbearing men.” Celia put her hands on her hips and gave him a good glare.
“You lost that hand, detective.” She blinked at his answer, not quite getting it. “What?”
“You lost out on both those things because I’m both pushy and overbearing, deal with it.” It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if his behavior had anything to do with his ex, but as if reading her mind, he leaned over and into her face with their noses almost touching.
“This has nothing to do with my past. Nothing I do with you have anything to do with my life before you. Why do you think I waited so long before I fucked you? It’s because I wanted to be sure that this wasn’t a rebound situation. All those three and four-hour conversations we had on the phone was time I specifically dedicated to you because I wanted to be fair to you.”
“I spent an equal amount of time each day dealing with the shit my ex did and getting my shit together. So, don’t ever think that anything I do with you has anything to do with her or what I had with her. It’s true I wasn’t as forceful with her as I am with you, but that’s just what you bring out in me. Get it?” Celia just rolled her eyes and turned away, what could she say? He had an answer for everything.
Bobby sat in Gil and Melissa’s little house as the two men finished off a bottle of whiskey. He still couldn’t get his head around the fact that Mel was gone, and he was battling guilt over fucking the other man’s wife now that he saw how broken up the guy was at her passing.
It was some time since they’d all left high school, but he swore today was the day he finally grew up. Her death, murder, was the first that he’d ever been this close to, and he was finding it hard to grasp the situation. Still, he felt like he had to be here for Gil, it was the least he could do.
Gil was thinking in his drunken state how strange life was. Here he was reminiscing with his dead wife’s lover on the day after she was murdered. “I think since the cops don’t know anything, you should probably go through her stuff; maybe you’d find something there.”
Bobby said into the silence. It’s something he’d been thinking about ever since they left the police station. He’d pretty much put the pieces together from the questioning and knew that someone had murdered Melissa.
Since he was sure of his own innocence and was now almost certain that it hadn’t been Gil, his mind turned to who else she might’ve known that meant her harm. The only alternative was a random killer, and Briar Reef wasn’t prone to those.
His mind kept going back to the latest murder case in the town and trying to read anything in between the two, but he kept coming up short. Melissa didn’t even know either of the women involved. “I don’t have the heart to go through her stuff just yet. I wanna leave things the way they are.”
Gil put the freshly opened bottle of beer to his lips and took a sip of the cold brew.
“I hear you, but it might help. And it might take any suspicion off of you if you volunteer before they ask, at least I think so.” Bobby offered.
Gil folded in on himself as a fresh wave of tears filled his eyes. He couldn’t get the face of his beautiful wife out of his mind. He regretted every harsh word he’d said to her in the last few months, most of which had to do with the man sitting across from him now.
