Page 35 of Playing for Keeps
“You don’t know anything,” Del said. “You always think you do, but you don’t. First, you want to tell me how I should feel about how things went down in D.C. and what I should and shouldn’t feel guilty about. And now, you’re here talking about who I should and shouldn’t sleep with. There’s no comparison to Shannen. None. At. All.”
When he was finished Del had headed out of the kitchen, but he stopped when only silence followed.
“Shannen should’ve never happened.” Those very true and still awkwardly painful words came quietly. He didn’t turn back to Lance because he didn’t want to look into a face similar to his own and talk about the worst time in his life. Not again. “And this thing with Rylan, it wasn’t supposed to happen either. But I feel like this is different, man. I can’t explain it, but it just is.”
“Then go for it,” Lance told him. “If it feels like something you should pursue, then do it. But don’t lie to yourself in the process. That’s not going to end well for either of you.”
Lance pushed past Del at that moment.
As he walked away, he told his brother, “I’ll ring the bell first from now on.”
Del didn’t respond. He knew that Lance was right. He also knew that there wasn’t much he could do about it. After locking up the house, Del headed upstairs. He wasn’t sure what Rylan’s reaction to what had just happened was going to be, but he knew that he would have to address it. Today had been a hell of a day, and each time he’d thought things were getting a little brighter a big fat monkey wrench was tossed into his plan.
She was sitting in his recliner, one leg crossed over the other, flipping pages in one of his photo albums. And she looked as if she lived there. Like they shared this room and this was part of her normal evening routine. He shook his head at how surprisingly good that thought made him feel and walked further into the room.
“Sorry about that,” he murmured and sat on the edge of his bed. “We all have keys to each other’s houses.”
Rylan let her hand rest on the album and nodded. “I know. Camy insists that she always knocks or rings the doorbell first because her eyes wouldn’t be able to stand what she might see if she didn’t.” Ryland laughed. “I’m almost glad it was Lance that decided to stop by instead of her or you might be responsible for blinding your sister.”
He was glad she could laugh about this. Come to think of it, he never really recalled seeing Rylan overly upset about anything. She had a very relaxed and confident personality, one that Del knew for certain had rubbed off on Camy. Well, at least the confident part had. Camy could still go off like a firecracker at any given moment. He wondered how she would react if he told her everything.
“Well, Lance is cool with this. I mean, his eyes certainly aren’t going to suffer. He’s seen far worse than what he walked in on,” Del told her.
“I’m sure both of you have in the line of work you used to be in. Look, Del, I know we didn’t plan for this…ah, this…thing between us. And I can totally understand if your intention was to keep it under wraps.”
“Stop,” he told her and held up a hand just in case she didn’t follow his word. “No, we didn’t plan for this. But I’m absolutely not embarrassed by it.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Before I left the DEA, I was involved with a woman,” he started.
Rylan sat back in the chair and closed the photo album slowly.
“She was a confidential informant, so I should’ve steered clear from her, but I didn’t. I also didn’t tell anyone I was seeing her. Not just because I could’ve lost my job, but because I felt uncomfortable being with a person who sold drugs, especially in my situation. But when I learned that she was selling drugs to pay for the nursing home where her mom lived, I thought differently of her.” He ran his hands down his face. “Anyway, things went south on a raid and she was killed. I blamed myself for not being able to protect her and for not being more sensitive to what she may’ve needed out of our relationship.
“That’s not what I’m doing here, Rylan. You’re right, we haven’t discussed what this is between us and I guess we should at some point. But I really need you to know that I could never be embarrassed by you.” He meant those words with everything that he was.
She sighed heavily. “That’s good to hear.”
Her words may have sounded nice, but he didn’t like how she looked when she’d said them. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she told him. “You have no idea how hard it is growing up in the shadow of a beauty pageant winning sister and a gorgeous and vivacious best friend. Sometimes I feel like I get lost between the two of them. But as I grew older, I realized that wasn’t really the case. Everybody has their own cross to bear and light to shine. Mine is in the auto mechanic business, that’s why I’m fighting so hard to keep my dad’s shop.”
Del could only stare at her for a few seconds. The woman that she’d grown into amazed him.
“Your dad’s losing the auto shop? I can’t imagine that place not being there,” he said. Up until a few days ago he may not have visited it much, but Kent Automotive was a landmark fixture on the corner of Maple and Valley Roads.
“Me either. Between there and your mom’s house, I don’t know which place I stayed at most as a child. But he and my mom are divorcing and, in the drama-filled back and forth that comes from a decades’ old relationship, the body shop has become the bone that each want to claim.”
He was a bit confused by the logic of that scenario. “Your mother never struck me as the body shop type.”
“Oh, she’s not,” Rylan continued. “She’s the money type. Her and Naomi, hence Naomi’s NBA player fiancé.”
Del nodded. He could definitely see that in Naomi’s personality, which is why none of the guys he knew had ever thought about asking her out. Naomi Kent had made it perfectly clear from around the time that she was thirteen years old that there would never be a guy in Providence that was good enough for her. Rylan was nothing like her sister or her mother, for that matter. She was unique.
“I guess we’ve both got baggage and are damaged in our own ways,” he said and stood. “There’s only one solution for that.”
He held out a hand to her. She looked at that hand and then pushed the photo album off her lap to rest in the side of the chair before she put her hand in his and stood.
