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“Nah!” He cackles and withdraws. “I’ll kill you another way.”
He hits my head.
31
CLAYTON
It’s eighty-five degrees outside. Even my running-addict brother almost gave me a raincheck. But here we are, pounding the streets of Newport for the sake of fitness and venting out—the latter is just for me.
“I envy them,” Rob remarks as we pass a café.
“Sweat and fried muscles are what we need, brother. Not iced coffee.”
“Iced coffee would taste fucking great right now,” Rob laments. But we move on. “So, what have you decided?”
“Status quo,” I deadpan. My trust issue is a hard habit to break, and dismally, it was a habit that broke me. “I accused her of killing her unborn child. I believed Donovan Fletcher instead of her. I’ll never get her back, Rob. It’s over.”
Rob speeds up. I must admit my brother seems to run faster as he ages—or it must be his ‘cheetah’ wife that has kept him elevating his game.
“Don’t tell me that! You haven’t even tried,” my brother replies. “I’ve been there, Clay. I’m sure you remember. I lost trust in Amber-Rose at one stage.”
We’ve both had a fair share of betrayals and embarrassment. Trust doesn’t come easy for us Hartleys. Now I realize our cautiousness can also serve as our downfall.
Rob wipes beads of sweat off his forehead. “But when you’re meant to be, if you dig deep enough, you’ll find a way to leap over whatever is burning under your feet. You and Isabelle can’t just end here.”
I fling my head up toward the heavens, forming an image of what could’ve been. “I looked her in the eye, Rob—as I’d wanted to. There’s no way anyone could lie like that. What’s killing me, though, is the fact that I might just be the worst asshole she’s ever known. Fletcher may have done bad things to her, but he wouldn’t have broken her heart. Because it’s evil’s work. I’m not evil—well, I hope I’m not—”
“You’re not evil, Clay!”
“But look at what I was capable of. I hurt her. Bad.”
“We’d been blinded and fooled,” Rob pants as we make the last turn before going back to our HQ. “It wasn’t your fault that you dug into her past. It was your right. Yes, your judgment was skewed—hell,wegot it wrong. Blake and I never saw it coming. You hit a wall, but—”
“I don’t even know if I want her to forgive me.”
“Well, that’syourproblem then. Do you want her? Or do you want to punish yourself?”
“Both.”
“It’s an ‘or’ question, Clay. You can’t choose both.”
Out of the blue, I feel something, someone, coming toward us at speed.
“Jesus! Blake!” I didn’t know he could run like that—in his suit and perfectly-polished loafers too.
“Clay, something’s wrong,” Blake pants.
“What? What?”
“I just got a call from my friend in Anchorage—my detective friend. He’s with Raffi.”
“Raffi?”
“He came alone to the station.”
My already increased heart rate blows off the charts. “How?”
“Apparently, he was borrowing her mother’s phone. He wandered off to look for better cell reception while Isabelle was in the bathroom. It turned out the local cell tower was under maintenance, so he kept going. He wanted to call his friend, and Matty.”
