“It’ll heal. I got released this morning, but you were sleeping. I’ve been at the station all day getting my ass chewed by the lieutenant.” He brushed the hair back from my face. “I nearly missed you. They’re getting ready to send you home. I came as soon as I could.”
“Why?” I asked.
“What do you mean, why? Because I wanted to see you.” Reece’s shoulders sagged. “And I wanted to give you these.” He opened his jacket. His right arm was bound tight to his chest and wrapped in a blue sling. His hand spilled over with purple thistles. “I thought you might like them.”
I smiled behind the bouquet. “That’s not what I meant. Not, why did you come.” I liked to think I knew why he was there. “Why did you get your ass chewed?”
“Oh, that,” he said, dismissing it with a wave of his good arm. “I’m in a little hot water for interfering with a homicide case that I shouldn’t have been involved in. But I wouldn’t have done anything differently, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Wait, I don’t understand. You’re in trouble for protecting me?” I sat up, the monitors jumping in response to my heart rate. “That’s ridiculous! They told you to follow me, and I wasn’t guilty—”
“Calm down, it’s okay.” He glanced at the monitors and pressed me back to the mattress with a firm hand to my shoulder. Then drew it down to trace a finger over the naked skin where his pendant used to be. His touch was tender and sweet. “Do you remember when you asked me why I was following you?”
I nodded, his finger tracing slow patterns over my heart.
“I never followed you because I had to, or because I thought you did anything wrong. I did it because I care about you.”
He shifted, reaching behind his head to unclasp his pendant. When his hand found mine, the silky metal chain, warm from his body, spilled into it. He threaded our fingers together. He felt different. Peaceful.
I leaned forward and let him fasten the thistle around my neck.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you . . .” His eyes flicked nervously to mine. “. . . About the ads.”
“What about them?” I asked, ready to tell him the truth.
“Before this all started . . . before TJ started writing the ads . . . what were you looking for? In the personals, I mean.” I’d never heard Reece stammer before, never heard him sound unsure of himself. A twinge of jealousy leeched through our joined hands. He wasn’t asking me about my father. My cheeks warmed.
“I’m not sure really,” I said, thinking back to the way Friday mornings felt before TJ’s first ad. “But I think maybe I’ve found it.”
He leaned in slowly, tilting his head to brush his lips against mine. Every rule, every shred of hesitation I’d felt before, dissolved away. I wanted him, every part of him, and we could mess with outcome later.
Reece grinned and pulled back too quickly. “Oh yeah? And what about the no touching thing?”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him in. “It was a shitty rule anyway.”
His mouth moved to my chin and kissed a slow trail down. “What are you going to do now?” I asked.
“Make out with you.” His voice was a deep purr and it tickled my neck.
“That’s not what I meant.” What I meant to ask was where he would be and when I would see him again, but it was hard to concentrate. The beeping of the monitors picked up speed and the screen flashed with irregular peaks. I tugged his jacket and slid over, making room in the bed.
As if reading my mind, he said, “I can’t stay.” But his kiss said otherwise. He eased down into the bed, careful of his sling and my tubes, though neither one of us wanted to be careful. “I have to get back to the station. I’m getting transferred.”
“Transferred?” I pushed him back so I could see his face, hoping I didn’t sound as clingy as I felt. “To where? Summer break already started.”
He shrugged carelessly, preoccupied with my lips. “Nicholson’s making me go to summer school. Says I’ve got to make up all the classes I’ve missed.” More kisses. “We sort of made a deal.”
“A deal?” I raised an eyebrow and pulled away, leery of any deal Nicholson proposed.
Reece gave my lips another longing glance and sighed. “They expunged the assault and battery charge, but now I’ve got the whole obstruction of justice thing to worry about. I agreed to stay on as a narc. One year in exchange for dropping the charges.”
Summer school, transfers, a whole year apart. He grabbed my chin in his unbound hand and leaned in for one deep lasting kiss. It felt like a good-bye and the pulse monitor beeped erratically.
“Now get some rest,” he ordered, planting a final peck on my head as he left.
Not likely, I thought, still prickling with adrenaline and wondering when I’d see him again. He was halfway out of the room and my insides dropped like I was falling.
“Reece!” I called out. He paused at the door. I hardly noticed the differences in the two sides of him anymore. He was whole and I was complete when I was with him. Somehow, we balanced. “In case I don’t see you, thanks for . . .” The best kiss of my life, defending my honor, making me feel beautiful for one night of my life, giving me a reason to stay and fight. I settled for “. . . everything.”
His wicked smile stretched wide across his face. “Oh, you’ll definitely see me again. That’s the other part of the deal. Nicholson can make me go to summer school—” He bit his lip, giving me a top-down look that made me warm all over. “But I get to pick my tutor.”
Epilogue
The trailer was dark when I woke Friday morning. I took out the photo of my father from under my mattress. I hadn’t yet come to terms with the man my father was, or the lives he’d destroyed. But I accepted that he was part of me, and that he’d loved me once. That neither his name nor his gift would ever define me. I was independent of anything my father might have been or had become. Independent of what my mother expected or wanted me to be. I wasn’t nearly. I was enough.
The window air conditioner droned too loudly in the cramped space, like the static thoughts inside my head. Still numb, from my skin to the deep solitary places inside myself, I slumped into a formless secondhand T-shirt and my frayed sneakers, scraped out a few dollars of Mom’s cookie cash, and headed out into the glare of an otherwise gray day. It would take time before my world felt sunny and whole again. It would take time before I would feel at all.
Jeremy hadn’t called, and I hadn’t seen Anh since the cemetery. I’d been out of the hospital almost a week, and there’d been no sign of Reece. Mom had the decency not to say “I told you so.” But when I left the house that morning, I knew she was thinking it.
It was a poor substitute for Reece, but ironically, there I was, the bells on the door ringing as I crossed the threshold of the Bui Mart, Mom’s tip money clenched in my hand.
I took a deep breath and stepped inside. There was no music, just the hum of the freezers and the churn of the slushie machines. Bao didn’t look up, barely acknowledging me with a dip of his head. The counter was empty.
I could forget it, I thought. Leave without my newspaper and never come back. But more than forgetting, I wanted everything to be like it was. Once the details of the case became widely known, Anh’s family made it clear that I should have gone to the police from the beginning. That maybe, if I had, Anh never would have been abducted in the first place. They blamed me. For the deaths. For Anh’s suffering. For everything. Somehow, even though I had gone to the police after the second clue, even though I’d proven my innocence, she’d won the scholarship, and we’d all managed to survive, I was still the bad guy. I’d learned the hard way that sometimes, when people are hurting, they just need someone to blame.