Page 105 of Don't Bet On It
My lips twitched. “You’re going to bury them in the desert?”
“Will they be alive or dead when you do the burying?” Rex asked. He seemed interested despite himself.
Olivia didn’t scoff and say that was a dumb question. Instead, she jabbed a finger at her brother. “You know how it works. They’ll be almost dead so they won’t have the strength to crawl out of their shallow graves but still alive so they suffer.”
Zach gave his beloved some serious side-eye. “Just how much thought have you put into this?”
“Olivia and I used to daydream quite a bit about going after the people who made fun of us,” Tallulah admitted as she toyed with her apron. “Unfortunately, we had a few tense years there where we didn’t have a lot of friends. That part of our lives didn’t last long.”
“Oh, that’s not true,” Olivia countered. “I had a very awkward puberty.”
“So awkward,” Rex agreed, his smile something straight out of the Annoying Big Brother’s Playbook. “So very, very awkward.”
Zach’s lips curved, but when he caught Olivia glaring at him, he blanked his expression. “I thought you were always beautiful, baby.”
That was very clearly a lie because Rex’s eyebrows almost flew off into space. “We used to laugh at her.”
“I never laughed at my wife,” Zach shot back, warning in his tone.
“She wasn’t your wife then. That would’ve been illegal. She was your best friend’s goofy little sister … and we totally laughed at her.”
Zach looked pained as he regarded Olivia. “You don’t believe him, do you?”
Olivia, for once, didn’t look as if she cared what her husband was saying. “Let’s talk about Sharon,” she barked. “What are we going to do with her?”
“You sound a little bloodthirsty,” Candy noted, speaking for the first time.
Olivia gave her a “so what” look. “And?”
“And it’s almost as if you have a personal grudge against this woman,” Candy pressed.
“I do have a personal grudge against her.” Olivia acted as if Candy was responding in idiotic fashion. “I didn’t realize what was happening when I was in third grade and I heard my parents talking about people coming for Tallulah. I figured out that it was because of Sharon, though.”
My heart seized as I glanced over at Tallulah. Would she want this discussion happening out in the open like this? To my surprise, she didn’t look bothered in the least. She appeared no different than normal.
“My parents didn’t want to explain things to me,” Olivia continued. “They just … didn’t think that I could handle it at that age. I get it now—I really do because I’m about to have my own kid—but I didn’t get it then, and I was really angry at the things that were happening.”
Olivia wet her lips. “I just wanted to know that Tallulah was okay, but my parents were always talking in hushed voices. That freaked me out, and the only thing I knew at the time was that Sharon was to blame.”
Tallulah reached over and rubbed Olivia’s shoulder to offer her comfort. Even though Tallulah had gone through so much, it was wonderful that she still worried about how her trauma affected Olivia.
“I hate Sharon,” Olivia explained. “I’ve always hated her. As I got older, I realized what was going on, and I hated her more. If she’s working with Ryder, I want there to be some repercussions on the matter.”
“That seems like a fair wish,” Candy said. “How do we make that happen?”
“We need to know what they’re up to.” Zach’s eyes landed on me, and I braced myself. “Your father might be the only one who can tell us.”
“He might not know,” I hedged.
Zach nodded in understanding. “You’re in a weird place. I get it. If you don’t want to be involved?—”
I cut him off. “If my father is up to no good, I want to stop him. I just… I can’t see him going out on a limb for Ryder. That’s not who he is. He’s too selfish.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Rex volunteered. “Can you go to him, sit him down, explain he’s been seen with Ryder, and ask him what’s going on?”
I’d already resigned myself to this course of action. It wasn’t what I wanted but what we all needed. “I can do that,” I confirmed and sighed. “Do you want me to go now?” I gestured around. “I have work.”
“I can get someone to cover for you,” Ruby offered. “We need to get an idea of what we’re dealing with, and you’re our best shot of getting that information.”
