Page 131 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
I break the kiss, bury my head in his neck, and bawl like a baby.
He lets me.
He rolls to his back and takes me with him, pinning me against his body with his strong arms around me, keeping me together when I would otherwise shatter into a million little pieces and die. I cry on his chest until the sun sets and a big glowing moon rises over the mountains, and then I cry some more, until eventually my eyes are swollen, my voice is hoarse, and I’m completely spent.
“For the Queen Bitch, you’re surprisingly weepy,” muses Parker, lovingly stroking my back.
I sniffle. “I’m not the Queen Bitch anymore. I’m just a lowly office clerk with a crappy hairdo and a fat, bad-tempered cat.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Your cat seemed pretty accommodating to me. He didn’t even bat an eye when I broke in through the patio door.”
“You bribed him with food, didn’t you?”
Against my temple, I feel Parker’s smile. “I might have given him a treat or two to keep him quiet.”
We lie in silence for a few minutes, just breathing. The shadows on the wall are long and soft. Outside, a cricket starts to sing.
Inside my chest, a small, tender flower unfurls her petals to the morning sun.
I say quietly, “I can’t believe you’re here.”
Parker’s arms tighten around me. He kisses the top of my head.
“I’m so sorry, Parker. For all of it.”
“So am I.”
Tentatively, I ask, “How’s Tabby? And Darcy? Are they angry with me?”
“Darcy’s fine; she misses you like hell, but she’s been distracted lately with a new project.” His voice warms. “She and a certain insane German chef are collaborating on a cookbook. Among other things.”
“Other things? Is that your roundabout way of saying she and Kai are dating?”
“‘Dating’ is one way to put it. Another is ‘screwing like rabbits every chance they get.’ I accidentally walked in on the two of them in the stock room at Xengu.” He chuckles. “I’ll need extensive hypnotherapy to get those images erased from my mind. I had to throw out four crates of artichokes, two dozen boxes of strawberries and an entire pallet of escarole that had been crushed in their…enthusiasm.”
I smile, missing Darcy so hard it’s a physical lump in my stomach. “And Tabby?”
Caressing my hair, Parker sighs, a sound layered with emotion. “She’s a tough nut, that one. Her loyalty to you is remarkable. Connor’s convinced she’s a lesbian.”
“She’s not. And who’s Connor?”
“My friend and security guy; he’s the one who tried to hack into your email. He’s got a huge haterection for Tabby, but she won’t give him the time of day. He’s been trying to get her to come to work for him, but he won’t admit she’s smarter than he is, which is her one condition for accepting the job. Last I heard, he’d offered her seven figures a year in salary, but she still turned him down. Apparently she told him that unless he said the words, ‘You are superior to me in intellect, class, and fashion sense,’ he could find another world-class hacker. So far he’s refused, but I think he’s getting desperate; he’s got a big client who was recently infiltrated by some radical Russian group, and the client is threatening to sue Connor unless he tracks the source and assists police with prosecution. Which, apparently, he can’t do without Tabby’s help. So she’s got him by the proverbial balls.”
We share another silence as I digest what he’s told me.
Then, more somberly, he says, “I visited your mother.”
I haven’t spoken to my mother at all in the months I’ve been gone. There’s a distinct difference between forgiving and forgetting, and though I’ve let go of my anger at her for her part in the tragedy of Parker and Isabel, I haven’t yet wanted to try to reach out.
Truth be told, I don’t want to talk to her about what happened. I don’t want to know if she’d discovered what Bill Maxwell did with his rigged card came, if the hatred she displayed toward him that day in her kitchen went beyond what she’d said.
Knowing wouldn’t change anything, anyway. The past is fixed in stone; we can’t carve new endings to old stories, no matter how desperately we might want to.
When I don’t respond, Parker inhales and then exhales. My head rises and falls with his breath. “She told me about all the letters you sent after I left. I never received any of them, of course.”
I whisper, “Your father.”
Parker’s voice turns bitter. “He didn’t even bother to deny it. The day I called him, he was drunk at two o’clock in the afternoon, raving about the country having a black President. I won’t be speaking to him again.”
