Page 74 of The Big Easy & Other Lies
“Doesn’t matter.” He leaned over and tugged the laptop toward him, cutting Dr. John off and putting on something else, some instrumental piano that sounded folky. A haunting melody wound around the room, fitting for Halloween.
“Is this one of yours?”
“No. It’s some Irish guy’s stuff I found on the internet. Cool, huh?”
I nodded and leaned back in my chair to listen since I had nothing to say. Rhett had closed our conversational door. The notes poured through the speakers, soothing the sting of Rhett’s rejection.
He sighed and ran his fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp as he went. “Don’t be mad,” he said.
“I’m not.” I kept my eyes closed, still listening to the music.
“You are.”
Silence, except for the music and the light scrape of his fingernails against my scalp.
“Cam? I don’t talk about my dad because I can’t,” he said.
I opened one eye. “It’s fine, I promise. I was that way about Delphine for a long time.”But not now.Ishared.
“No, I don’t mean because it’s hard. I mean I’m not allowed to.”
I sat up and faced him. “Why?”
“My dad’s a criminal defense lawyer, the big shot kind. This summer, one of his clients got a sentence the client didn’t like.” He took a deep breath. “Death threats started showing up at our house. We found out my dad gets them all the time, but these were specific threats against us, his family. That never happened before.”
Stunned, I stared at him, my mouth working to shape words that didn’t come. What did you say to something like that? I reached out and covered his hand with mine. He held it tightly.
“I got these voicemails on my cell phone telling me to watch my back. Then one day I was coming home from band rehearsal, and someone threw a cinder block at my car’s windshield from a freeway overpass.”
I gasped.
He flashed two thumbs up. “These are for air bags. Since it was way past rush hour, I only hit the median and not another car. But it was scary because it meant someone knew my exact route and when I would be there.”
“How do you know it wasn’t random?”
He gave a short, pained laugh. “Would you take the chance that it wasn’t?”
I felt sick.
“My dad’s client had been up on federal racketeering charges or something. I don’t know. But I guess messing with my phone was some kind of wire fraud and that means the FBI gets in on it. They urged my dad to get us all out of the way until they could isolate the threat.”
“I don’t...that’s...” I shocked us both by jumping out of my chair and flinging myself at him, desperate to hug him. “I’m sorry. That’s so hard,” I whispered into his neck. He held on to me tightly.
Several long moments passed while I sat on his lap and the music wrapped us both up in a quiet, melancholy place. He kissed my temple and then trailed more kisses down my cheek toward my mouth.
“Cam?” Rhett whispered against my mouth. “There’s a little more to the story but I kind of want to make out with you instead.”
“I amtryingto comfort you, Rhett Lee Hawker. If that’s even your real name.”
He stilled.
I sat back and stared at him. “That’s not your real name?”
He shook his head. “It’s kind of close, but not exactly. Rhett is. My real name, I mean. But the rest isn’t. FBI recommendation.”
I climbed back into my own chair. “This is so weird.”
“But okay, right? It’s weird that I have a completely freakish secret life, but still totally fine. Say it’s totally fine.”
