Brett narrowed his eyes at Alisha as he walked Regan to the elevator, praying his sister would keep her mouth shut. No such luck.
Alisha called out from behind them. “Bye, Regan. See you in another twelve years, you heartless bitch!”
As soon as the elevator doors closed, Brett spun around. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
She jumped off the couch. “Me? What the hell is wrong with you? No sex is so phenomenal you should reopen your heart to what that betraying twat did to this family!”
“Oh my God, Alisha. I know you’re mad. I was mad, too. But—”
“Was? Jesus, Brett. Do you not remember what you were like after she left? Do you not remember how she left? No note. No phone calls. The only reason we didn’t launch a statewide search was because half of her clothes and both suitcases were gone. We called her—no exaggeration—a hundred times that first week. What kind of person doesn’t answer calls from their worried husband for a week? She didn’t return calls from me or Mom either. Then she breaks up with you via a letter? How heartless and spineless can one person be?”
Alisha stood with her hands on her hips, watching him as he paced back and forth. Grabbing the slacks that Regan must have laid across the back of the couch, he slid them on and then grabbed his shirt. He had clean clothes in his office, one emergency suit just in case, but he sure would have liked to start his day with a shower, preferably with Regan in his arms.
“I remember everything, trust me. But... fuck me, I love her.” Brett sat on the couch and put his head in his hands. “I still love her and she loves me.”
“She loves you? She told you that?”
He sighed. “Yes, she said it, but it’s more than that. I know her. I’d know if she meant it or not.”
Alisha plopped down on the couch beside him. “So, what? Is she moving here? Are you getting back together?”
“No, of course not.” Brett had no idea what the future held for them, if anything at all. All he knew is that it had felt good to sleep with her in his arms last night, and it had felt very good to have her under him, her legs wrapped around his waist again. They fit together, but where her head was today was as much of a mystery to him as where her head was twelve years ago. He’d thought he had known her then and look what happened. He couldn’t assume he knew her now.
“Then why spend the night with her? Isn’t this going to break your heart?”
He turned toward his sister. “My heart’s already broken. It’s never been whole. I love her, and even though it will kill me to watch her board that plane this afternoon, I’d rather have one night with her in my arms than never have felt this feeling again. She completes me, always has, and without her I’m not whole.”
Alisha put her head back on the sofa. “Your self-preservation skills suck, you know?”
“I know. And I love you for trying to protect me from myself. But you need to give me this. I have maybe four hours before she’s at the airport and then gone again, probably forever. I want to spend what time I have left with her, even if it’s at the damned mayor’s office. I need her to endorse Munro coming here, and then I’ll say goodbye on my terms.”
Alisha sat up and smacked him lightly on the back of the head. “Can I yell at you afterward?”
“No. Yes. Hell, ask me then.” Brett got up and grabbed his watch, slipping it on his wrist. He snatched the cufflinks off the table and stuffed them in his pocket. If he hurried, he’d be only twenty minutes behind Regan and could still get that shower in. He knew it didn’t make sense, but deep in his soul he knew he needed to take every minute he could get with her before she left. Anything less would leave him feeling angry and empty.
Alisha grabbed her coat and walked with him to the elevator. “Can I yell at her afterward?”
He frowned. “I’d prefer you don’t, but you have your own unresolved relationship with Regan, so as long as you aren’t yelling at her on my behalf, I guess I can’t stop you.”
The elevator arrived, and they stepped inside. Alisha nodded. “Fair enough.”
Glancing at his sister, Brett wondered aloud, “If Roberto were to show up one day and ask you out to coffee, would you go?”
“Hell no,” she snarled. “I wouldn’t spit on him if he were on fire. What the hell are you thinking?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. There was a time you loved him, right?”
Alisha sighed. “Yeah, but our love was never like yours and Regan’s. Honestly, if she hadn’t ghosted like she had, I bet you’d have had a love affair like Mom and Dad, or Evelyn and Carter. Kills me to admit that.” Alisha pulled her keys out of her purse as the elevator doors opened.
“Give me a hug, twig.”
Alisha frowned and wrapped her arms around Brett. “I love you, pain in my ass. I don’t want to see you hurting.”
“I know. I love you too.”
She pulled away from his arms and opened her door. “Careful driving. It was a rough drive over. The roads are really slick.”
Brett disabled his alarm. “Okay, you too.”
As soon as she got in her rental car, Regan started up the engine and allowed it to idle, shaking as she waited for the heat to kick on.
But it wasn’t the cold making her tremble.
Adrenaline pumped through her veins, her fight-or-flight instincts receded, leaving her empty inside. Maybe she should go back upstairs and not leave Brett to face Alisha alone. Honestly, she felt like a coward, running away as her ex-sister-in-law called her names.
Not like she could blame Alisha for any of her hurt feelings.
God, what would it take to get over the guilt she carried for Brett and the rest of the family? She’d never be able to take back what she’d done, so how could she make amends?
The tears she’d successfully held back until now rushed out. Uncontrolled sobs robbed her of breath. She sat in the car, bawling, screaming—heartbroken and empty once again.
Once she was back in control of this breakdown, she wiped her nose and eyes, and pulled her phone out of her tote to check her text messages.
Tim had reached out late last night to find out how the day had gone.
She texted him back.
“The numbers are good, but there’s a lot of risk associated with them. Everything hinges on an emerging economic change coming in the next six to twenty-four months. You were right about the Graysons’ business acumen. They have everyone bought in. Based upon what I’ve seen, they will be successful, and Spring City will be prime for a Munro department store. The biggest risk is we get here too early, before they are ready for us. I meet with the mayor in the next few hours, but I don’t expect to see or hear anything I haven’t already seen.”
Punching the hotel’s address into her phone’s map app, Regan put the rental in reverse and made her way onto Fifth Street. If nothing else, she needed to complete the job they had sent here her to do. She’d be fair to Spring City, and all Brett and Derrick wanted to accomplish, as well as Munro Corporation.
The snow crews had made one pass over the roads downtown, which left plenty of snow on the ground for her to navigate. Even though she lived in Chicago, she actually hadn’t driven in inclement weather often because she lived in an apartment building a couple blocks within walking distance from her work.
The GPS told her to take a left on to Main Street, which turned into Springs Parkway, a four-lane, fifty-five miles per hour roadway one mile outside of downtown—much bigger than when she lived here twelve years ago. These roads were slightly better, but still slick, with piles of slush building between the designated lanes. A giant four-by-four truck that had been hugging her backend downtown came around her quickly, leaning on their horn as they passed.
She glanced at her speed. Forty-five miles per hour. While she might be going under the speed limit, it wasn’t excessively slow.
What an ass.
Then she noticed the plates. Texas. Of course. Didn’t desert dwellers understand that the ice and snow didn’t care how big their vehicle was?
Her phone beeped with an incoming text message. Chancing a glance away from the road, she saw the text was from Brett, and not from Tim, as she expected. With her heart in her throat, she grabbed her phone at the same time she glanced back at the road in front of her.
Without warning, the truck’s backend fishtailed, its brake lights bright as the left and then right tires bounced off the road.
Regan slammed on her brakes, sending the rental into a skid towards the edge of the roadway. She screamed as her tire hit the soft shoulder, crumbling underneath the car. The passenger side lifted as she let go of the steering wheel and covered her face. What sounded like a gunshot ricocheted around the interior, a cacophony of broken glass mixing with her screams.
The airbag deployed. The car rolled. And in seconds, it was over.
Regan choked on a bloom of powder, her head resting on the roof of the car, her chest compressed by the seatbelt. Pain pulsed through her body. Her head pounded, her chest ached, but what about her legs?
She couldn’t feel them.
Panic rose in her fuddled brain. Why couldn’t she feel her legs?
Voices sounded in the distance, but she could neither make out their words over the blood rushing in her ears and the hissing coming from the car nor turn her head or body to face them.
Just out of arm’s reach she saw her cell phone, its screen shattered.