On weekdays, Tae tended to get up early. Today she got up extra early because she and Jenny had a bunch of work to do. There was the upcoming Lake Days for Adrenaline HQ, plus four other events for different clients as well. Typically, they used video to chat, but today Jenny signed on with audio only.
“You know I don’t care what you’re wearing,” Tae said. “This isn’t a classroom.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Well, now I’ve got to see.”
Jenny paused. “I’ll go on video if you open yesterday’s snail mail.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
Jenny laughed. “Because you would’ve called me about the package I sent you.”
Tae ran outside, gathered the mail that she’d indeed forgotten to get. She had a stack of bills and a box. She made her way back to her office. “I’m back.”
Suddenly Jenny appeared in the Zoom chat. Wearing a unicorn onesie, hood up, a rainbow horn attached.
Tae burst out laughing.
“Hey, don’t mock it until you try it.”
“Not happening.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.” Jenny turned in a circle to give Tae the full effect. The onesie material was black and dotted with a zillion little colorful rainbows and had a fluffy tail.
“I’m not even sorry,” Jenny said. “It’s baggy enough to hide my trouble areas and the material is light and airy.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Jenny smiled. “That’s the beauty of this. You don’t have to. Open the box.”
Tae opened the box and looked at a matching unicorn onesie.
“I’ll wait,” Jenny said.
Tae shook her head but stood up and stripped off her sundress and stepped into the onesie. When she zipped it up, she looked at a laughing Jenny. “Can we get to work now?”
“Soon as you say you love it.”
Tae sat back down, the material kind of floating softly around her, not restricting or bunching. “Okay, maybe I love it.”
“You’re welcome.”
Tae laughed. “Thank you.”
They then spent the next two hours working, just two regular unicorns, getting through their to-do list. They’d just disconnected when Tae’s phone buzzed an incoming call from an unknown number. Normally, she wouldn’t answer, but something compelled her to anyway, and she was glad she did because it turned out to be Mr. Schwartz.
“I promised to let you know if I talked to my son,” he said. “Scott just called. He said he and AJ haven’t spoken in years, except that one time two years ago when they ran into each other at a coffee shop in south shore. AJ had apparently just retired from the military, and they spoke only for a few moments. Scott asked about his daughter because it’d been well known back in school that he’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant. AJ said his daughter, named Tae, was a grown-up now, and how time flew by. That was it. Scott said he had no idea how to get a hold of him now, or even if he stayed in the Tahoe area.”
“But . . .” Tae’s mind was whirling. “AJ grew up around Tahoe?”
“Sounds that way. I’m sorry I don’t have more to share,” he said, then paused. “I wish you the best, Tae.”
She felt more confused now than ever. “I really appreciate the call, thank you.” She disconnected and leaned back in her chair to stare at her ceiling.
It’d been weeks since she’d . . . commandeered her birth certificate from her mom’s closet. Two weeks to be exact, during which time she could have, should have, talked to her mom.
So why hadn’t she?
Because the longer she waited, the harder it became. That was her excuse, and it was a poor one at that and she knew it. The truth was, she was afraid to rock her and her mom’s little boat for two. Afraid of change. Afraid to know that maybe her mom had kept secrets of her own.
Tae had received her 23andMe kit and had already sent it back, but she hadn’t heard anything more. Social media had been a fat waste of time, she could find nothing of AJ Strickland or Andy Jameson. She needed another angle.
And she thought maybe she’d figured one out.
Yearbooks. She needed to see the yearbooks from the years her mom had gone to high school. Needed to see if there was any Andy Jameson registered around the same time, and if it was the same man as in the few pics she’d seen of her dad. After that, she could only hope there’d be some other clues as well.
To that end, she grabbed her keys and ten minutes later found herself in front of the town’s high school—her old stomping grounds. Just standing there had her skin feeling itchy, and her stomach in her toes. She didn’t belong here, she’d never belonged here. She’d actually hated this place. Hated that she’d not fit in as she was, and then when she experimented with who she was, she hadn’t fit in then either. Nothing had ever worked, and she shuddered at the memories.
Is the truth worth it?
She didn’t know. What she did know was that she’d promised herself after graduation to never look at this school again, and she’d kept that promise. She had only a very few happy memories here, and her gut told her that wasn’t going to change.
But she had lots of questions and zero answers. The idea of her dad being a known troublemaker was something her mom had never mentioned. Was it true? She intended to find out. She intended to find out everything. And with that resolve, she lifted her chin, channeled her inner badass, and strolled up the stairs to the high school’s front doors.
School was out for summer, but the doors were unlocked, and a woman sat behind the front reception counter.
Mrs. Yorkshire.
She wasn’t small like her name might imply, but she was territorial. Back in the day, she could pack more mean into her formidable frame than anyone Tae knew.
The woman’s sharp eyes narrowed in displeasure at the sight of Tae. “Ms. Holmes.”
Nope. Nothing had changed. Even the woman’s hair hadn’t dared to gray. “Mrs. Yorkshire. Nice to see you again.”
The woman gave a short cackle. “I see your lying skills are still intact.”
Do not squirm. Do not engage. Do not show weakness.
“Never thought I’d see the day where you crossed our threshold again,” Mrs. Yorkshire said.
And don’t take the bait either! “I’m here about a student.”
“Is your child enrolled in our fall schedule?”
Holy crap. Was she actually old enough to have a high school–age kid? Since her mom had her when she was fifteen and had been thirty when Tae started her years here, she supposed the answer was yes, she was old enough. Yiiikes. “I’m here about a past student. I was hoping to look through some of the old yearbooks.”
“The library’s locked.”
“But you’ve got a key, right?”
“I do.”
Tae waited a beat, but the old woman wasn’t budging. She did her best to swallow her pride but couldn’t get it all down. “Please?”
Mrs. Yorkshire’s eyebrows raised at that. “The last time I left you alone in the library was during detention, where you hacked into the computers and changed my picture to a Yorkshire dog. A very old dog.”
Yep. Guilty as charged. She grimaced. “That was a long time ago. And I’m . . .” She worked at swallowing the last remnants of that pride she was currently choking on. “Sorry.”
Mrs. Yorkshire gave a tight smile. “In order for an unauthorized adult to be on campus, we’d need a copy of your driver’s license, a security deposit for the key to the library, and you’d need to be chaperoned while in the library—which can only occur during official school hours.”
“But that’s not until September,” Tae said.
“Correct.”
She stared at the woman. “Seriously?”
“Those are the rules, Ms. Holmes.”
“All I need is five minutes.”
Mrs. Yorkshire smiled without showing teeth and lifted her bony-ass shoulders, like what are you going to do?
Oh, for God’s sake. Tae turned and strode back to the front double doors, shoving them open, practically running by the time she reached the top step—where she collided with a brick wall.
The wall turned out to be Riggs, who wrapped his arms around her, absorbing her forward motion, keeping them both upright.
“You,” she said.
“In the flesh.” He pulled back, leaving his hands on her shoulders, and gave her a slow once-over. “Cute.”
She looked down at herself and nearly screamed. She was still in the unicorn onesie. And Mrs. Yorkshire hadn’t so much as blinked an eye. She closed her eyes, but she could still feel Riggs’s amusement.
Mrs. Yorkshire, who’d come to the door, probably to see what the commotion was, gasped like an eighteenth-century schoolmarm at the sight of them locked together. Recovering quickly, she smiled brightly at Riggs. “Well, look at you. How lovely to see you again, dear.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tae muttered.
Riggs, still holding on to her, pressed—actually more like smothered—Tae’s face into his chest so she couldn’t talk. But her nose worked just fine and he smelled . . . damn. Amazing.
“Lovely to see you too,” he said. “And how is it you haven’t aged a single minute?”
“Oh, aren’t you the one,” Mrs. Yorkshire said, all verklempt. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Tae tried to lift her head, but Riggs was holding her in place, so all she managed to do was eat some of his shirt.
“Yes,” he said. “You most certainly can help me, but first I need a quick moment with Ms. Holmes, if you don’t mind.”
She must have complied because Tae heard the doors shut again. Shoving free of Riggs, she blew her hair out of her face. “Are you following me?”
“Of course not. Someone decided it was a great idea to expand Adrenaline HQ’s client base to include at-risk youth, so I’m here dropping off forms.”
“It was a great idea,” she said.
“I just said so, didn’t I?”
She stared at him for signs of sarcasm, but there were none, so she took a deep breath and looked at his black eye, which was fading to a nice yellow and green. “Sticking with your running-into-a-door story?”
“Actually, it was a ro-sham-bo gone wrong.”
“Uh-huh.”
He touched the very small scar above her eye, left over from the convenience store incident on his first night in town. Then he looked into her eyes, smile gone. “You okay?”
“It hasn’t hurt since that first night.”
“I don’t mean the injury. Are you okay?”
How did he always do that? How did he know to ask? No one ever knew, and there was a good reason for that. She’d gotten really good at putting on a brave face, her armor as her mom called it, so good that even she believed it most of the time. “I’m fine. Or I’ll be fine as soon as you’re out of my way. I’ve got some research to do in the library.”
Riggs lifted his hands from her and stepped back, and she turned to the front doors again, gathering her courage.
“I could help you get what you need,” Riggs said.
“You know I used to go here too, right?”
He gave her a small smile. “From what I could tell, you cut class more than you were in it.”
True story.
“Let me help, Tae.”
“I don’t need, nor will I ever need, your help.” Determined to get her answers even if she had to beg, she reached for the double handles and tugged.
The doors had been locked. She set her head to the steel.
“Problem?” Riggs asked.
“You mean other than my life sucks and I’m wearing a unicorn onesie?”
He chuckled, and she knocked her head to the door a few times until a warm mouth brushed her ear. “Move aside a second, Rebel. Or is it Ms. Unicorn now?” Without waiting for a response, Riggs gave her a nudge and then knocked. “Mrs. Yorkshire?”
The doors immediately opened. Riggs sent Tae a smile that luckily for his own life didn’t have an ounce of smugness to it. Then he looked at Mrs. Yorkshire. “Can we come in?”
“Of course, dear.” She called to someone over her shoulder. “Look who’s here, you remember Riggs Copeland . . .”
The other woman had been an aide when Tae had been in high school but had apparently worked her way up to the office. Tae had long ago forgotten her name, but the woman’s face creased in a smile. “Of course I remember Riggs. Don’t you look handsome. We’ve missed your face around here. You were always one of our favorites.”
Tae was standing there, a grown-ass woman wearing a unicorn onesie, and she was still invisible. But she supposed she wasn’t surprised in the least the ladies were falling all over themselves to let Riggs in. “Suck-up,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth.
He squeezed her hand. “You should try it,” he whispered back.
And the ridiculous thing was he was right. She could either walk out of here with her pride and nothing else, or she could let Riggs help her to get into the old yearbooks. Dammit. She gave him a nod.
He turned to the ladies. “So Tae and I have been working together with Adrenaline HQ to help some of the at-risk kids in the community, and—”
“I heard!” Mrs. Yorkshire said. “You have no idea how many kids you and your brother are helping.”
“Actually,” he said, “it was all Tae’s idea.”
The ladies both stared at her.
Not Tae. She was staring at Riggs.
“We’d love to get into the library and do some research,” he said.
Unbelievably, Mrs. Yorkshire handed him a library key. No questions asked. “Just leave it on the counter here when you’re done.”
“Wait, what about the background check and key deposit?” Tae asked.
Mrs. Yorkshire ignored her and leaned forward toward Riggs. “We’re just about to leave for the day. Could you make sure the doors lock behind you? The janitor already left, and there’s no one else. I shouldn’t be letting you in so close to end of shift, but—”
“No worries. I’ll make sure it’s locked up tighter than a drum,” Riggs promised.
Mrs. Yorkshire patted his hand. “You were always such a good boy. You overcame so much, I’m so proud of you.”
Tae went brows up, but Riggs just smiled, waved at the ladies, then turned and headed toward the library.
Tae found herself jogging to keep up with him. “Hey.”
He didn’t slow down, not until he got to the library door.
“Okay, let’s have it,” she said breathlessly. “What’s the catch? Why are you helping me?”
“It’s called basic human decency.”
“Or . . . ?”
He tsked low in his throat. “Such a suspicious thing.”
She thought about that for a second and decided he was right. She was a suspicious thing. “Look, we both know I haven’t been all that nice to you. I’ve actually been kinda snotty.”
“It’s how you show affection.”
“Funny.”
“I wasn’t going for funny,” he said. “It’s just what people who care about each other do. They help.”
She stared at him. “We . . . care about each other.” And what she really meant was . . . You care about me?
“Don’t we?” He said this in a question, as if he was just as surprised as she was, and if she hadn’t still been off-balance, she might’ve laughed at the slightly confused look on his face.
“No.” But she immediately sighed. Dammit. “Yeah.”
He smiled. “Admit it. I’m growing on you.”
She was very afraid that was true, but the simple fact was that she hated being beholden to people.
Riggs dangled the library key in front of her. “You going to tell me what we’re up to?”
“We’re not up to anything. I’m going to go through the old yearbooks.”
“Gonna need more than that.”
She reached for the key, but he held it above her head.
She narrowed her eyes. “Hand it over.”
“Sure,” he said. “Soon as you trust me with what you’re up to. And/or why you’re in that adorably sexy . . .” He cocked his head sideways to take her all in. “Unicorn onesie?”
She ignored the way her face heated. She was never going to live this down. And as for trust . . . the only person she trusted was her mom, and there was now no way she was telling her mom anything about any of this until she had answers. She wanted to make sure her dad was good and dead, or if not, that he wasn’t going to come back and try to break her mom’s heart.
“Talk to me, Tae.”
“Fine. I think my dad might be alive. Which means he’s an asshole, and I want to find out the truth before my mom gets hurt. Again.”
“Wait.” He shook his head. “Didn’t your dad die in Desert Storm?”
“Maybe. But maybe he visits a bar in south shore.”
“What?”
“At the last AHQ fundraiser, I met an older gentleman whose son used to hang out with my dad. Apparently he saw my dad in a bar a few years ago. Maybe. Or maybe he’s mistaken. It’s complicated.”
Riggs’s amusement from earlier was gone, his eyes serious as he studied her. “What does your mom think?”
She sighed. “I haven’t told her. She thinks he’s dead. So on the off chance he’s not, I need to find him and tell him to stay the hell away from us. That’s why I need to look at the old yearbooks. I need to see if there was an AJ Strickland in school when my mom was.”
“I thought your dad’s name was Andy Jameson.”
“Me too, but Mr. Schwartz seemed so sure that his name is AJ Strickland, and it rattled me.”
“Okay,” he said simply, and unlocked the library.
“You remember my dad’s name?” she asked.
“I remember everything about you.”
Tae laughed, heavy on the disbelief. In her experience, she wasn’t all that memorable to people. “Like I left any sort of lasting impression on you.”
He put his arm out to stop her from entering the library and waited until she met his gaze. “You did, Tae.”
The words, and the look in his eyes, made her insides feel squishy. And warm. And . . . nice. Pushing away from him, she crossed the threshold.
“I never spent time in here,” he said behind her. “I’m not sure where to even look.”
“They used to keep every yearbook displayed on a shelf in the back room.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I came here a lot.” She kicked herself for giving him that little reveal as she headed into the back room. “Still in the same place.” She breathed with relief at the sight of the bookshelf filled with the school’s past yearbooks. She ran her fingers along the labels, looking for the year her mom had been a freshman. “Here.”
Her fingers trembled as she pulled it from the shelf. She located her mom first. The sight of April Holmes as a teenager wasn’t completely new; Tae had seen pictures before. But the sweetly smiling fifteen-year-old staring out at the camera still choked her up a little bit. “She was pregnant in this picture.” And she’d given everything up—college, her family . . . everything. All to keep Tae.
Riggs didn’t say anything, and whether it was out of respect for her obviously overwhelming emotions or something else, she appreciated it. Because as she stared at the picture, she suddenly felt like her entire life was as out of her control, as it had been the last time she’d been in this room. Knowing from her mom’s stories about her dad that he’d been a junior when she’d been a freshman, Tae flipped a few pages to the juniors section, heart pounding.
No Andy Jameson.
She nearly staggered back a step. Her legs felt that weak. And how was it that she felt like she was losing a dad she’d never had? Why did it even matter?
She flipped to the S’s page, looking for AJ Strickland.
And found him.
AJ Strickland. He was skinny, even scrawny, long hair sticking out from a backward baseball cap, dressed in an oversize hoodie, eyes sullen and angry.
Tae pulled out her phone and accessed her photos. She stared at the shot of Andy, a young man in military dress, hair in a buzz cut, head high, eyes shining with pride, looking strong and capable.
Were they the same guy?
Mr. Schwartz had been right. It was hard to tell.
Riggs’s breath was warm on her neck. So was the hand that covered hers. “All this proves is that there was a guy named AJ Strickland who went to the same high school as your mom.”
“But why isn’t Andy Jameson in the book too?”
Riggs shook his head, watching her carefully. “Tae.”
“I know,” she said softly. “His eyes.” They were her eyes.
“There’s something else,” Riggs said. “AJ Strickland. AJ . . . short for what?”
She gasped. “Oh my God. Maybe . . . Andy Jameson?”
He nodded.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
He nodded again.
“I’ve got too many questions and zero answers.” She shook her head, not sure why she was telling him all this. “If AJ Strickland is my dad, why isn’t he on my birth certificate?” And why had it been so easy for him to tell a long-ago friend that his daughter was grown now, and yet he couldn’t be bothered to contact her? Maybe he hadn’t been ready to be a dad when he was a kid himself? Because he’s an adult now. Why not get in touch? Unless he just doesn’t care . . . Which hurt more than she wanted to admit.
“Maybe your mom could fill in some blanks—”
“No.” She was firm on this. “It would only hurt her.”
He hesitated. “Are you sure she doesn’t know?”
“Yes.”
Riggs’s silence said he wasn’t, but Tae knew her mom wouldn’t, couldn’t, be hiding all of this.
“What do you want to do?” Riggs asked.
She wanted to lose the knot in her chest. She wanted to go back in time and not have talked to Mr. Schwartz that night at the charity event. She wanted . . . hell, she wasn’t even sure. How many times had she fantasized about having her dad around? Too many to count. But she’d never mentioned it to her mom. She hadn’t wanted her to feel like she wasn’t enough, not when she’d been so much more than enough. In fact, maybe it’d been Tae who hadn’t been enough.
The bottom line was that her mom would be either devastated by all this or . . . Well. She couldn’t think about the or. Not yet. If this was really somehow true and her dad was alive and living under a different name, it would tear them all apart. Completely. She pulled out her phone, snapped a pic of AJ Strickland on the page. Then she put the yearbook back and turned to go.
“Whoa.” Riggs put a hand on her arm. “Where are you running off to?”
“To find him. I want answers.”
“Of course,” he said, not letting go. “But you don’t even know what kind of guy he is. We need more information before you go confront him, guns blazing.”
“Hey, I’ve got more tact than that.”
“Do you?”
“You know what?” She shrugged free. “Maybe me coming in hot is exactly what this situation needs.”
“We need more info,” he repeated softly.
“We?”
He just looked at her.
Oh boy. Her heart went a little squishy. “We’re not a we, Riggs.”
Gently, he nudged her unicorn hood off and she blew out a self-conscious breath. “I’m going to kill Jenny.”
“We’re a something,” he said, not letting her change the subject. “Even if you are the most stubborn, suspicious woman on the planet.”
She let out a rough laugh, dropped her head to his chest, and closed her eyes. Because he was right. They were most definitely a something.
He stroked a hand down her hair. “Still don’t trust me.”
“Don’t take it personally,” she said into his shirt. “I don’t trust anyone.”
“You can trust me, Tae.”
She lifted her head and met his gaze. “With my body? Or my heart?”
He cupped her face. “What do they each tell you?”
Her body told her “yes please!” Her brain told her to run for the hills. Neither was helpful. “They say they wish you wouldn’t push for answers you don’t really want.”