Razed (Barnes Brothers #2)(93)
“I guess I should tell you what’s going on,” she said, her voice subdued.
The shift of emotion in her eyes, on her voice was enough to cool the heated pulse of his blood. Cool, not erase. He shifted on the couch, braced his back against the arm as he watched her face. “I wouldn’t object,” he said. Please. I’m going out of my mind.
*
She watched his face the entire time she spoke, waited for some sign that she’d messed up, leaving him for this.
But when she finished, he just looked down for a minute, then he shifted his gaze upward, a faint smile on his face.
“As much as I hate you not being here, I gotta say . . .” He blew out a breath. “I’m proud of you. This all has to suck, but if you’re going to cut those chains you talked about, you’re doing it in fine style.”
Something warm and sweet shifted in her heart.
I’m proud of you.
How sappy was it, that it made her feel so warm inside to hear that?
She was a grown woman. She shouldn’t need anybody’s approval.
And she didn’t.
But hearing those words meant something. It touched something deep inside and for a moment, she couldn’t even speak around the ache in her heart.
Clearing her throat, she waited until she thought she might be able to talk without her voice wobbling. Then she said, “Yeah. Well. Part of me feels like it’s years too late, but it’s something. I don’t know if he’ll do time, but regardless, this trial is going to happen, and it’s going to happen really close to the primary.”
“The primary?”
She licked her lips and then met his eyes. “My stepbrother is running for the state senate in Kentucky, Zane.”
He was silent a moment, processing that. “Damn. Hopefully this will hurt his platform, huh?”
“Yeah.” She chuckled and shifted on the bed, rolling onto her back, holding the phone in her hand. With her free one, she reached up, touched his cheek. “I miss you.”
“I miss you.” His lids drooped low. “Come home. Soon. I know you have things to do, but once you can . . . come home.”
Chapter Nineteen
She left Lexington with about as much fanfare as before—telling nobody.
On her way to Louisville International Airport, she put in one last call to Paul, told him her flight number, when she’d land.
“You’re sure I’m okay to go?”
“I’ve told you a hundred times,” he said, his voice patient. “You’re fine to leave. We’ll call you when we need you.”
“I know . . . I just . . .”
“You’re not running away,” he said gently. “You’ve got a life, one that’s not here. You can make trips back and forth if we need you to and when it’s time, you’ll come back. It’s not time yet.”
“Yeah.” She eyed the signs ahead of her and nodded. “Yeah. Listen . . . I . . . uh. Maybe it’s time for me to take control of that life. A little more on my own. Ah, I mean . . .”
“I’ll get started on transferring the funds over into your name.”
She didn’t even have to say it. He just knew.
“You were the first friend I had, Paul. I don’t know if I ever told you that, but you were. You don’t know what it meant to me.”
His voice, when he spoke, was husky. “Sweetheart, you were, and still are, one of the sweetest, bravest young women I’ve ever known. It’s been an honor to be your friend.” Then he cleared his throat. “You let me know if there’s anything you need. J. P. and I are always here when you need us.”
She hung up before she started to blubber.
She had enough things on her mind that she couldn’t handle the emotional storm of a crying jag.
It would be hours still before she was in Tucson, but between then and now, she had a lot of stuff to think through.
Some decisions to make.
*
She had to linger in baggage pickup even though when she’d left, she’d only had a carry-on. The shopping trip in Lexington had left her with more clothes than she usually bought in a year.
For the first time, though, she didn’t let herself feel any guilt.
Not at the suitcase, not at the nice clothes inside.
Her father had been a man who’d made himself out of nothing.
When he died, he’d left that money to her.
It wasn’t money that made people into conscienceless monsters.
People without conscience just did conscienceless things—and if they had money, they’d use it to cover those sins up.
Living like the little cretin her mother had accused her of being right before she’d left the Vissing household for the last time hadn’t solved or fixed anything.
As far as her mother was concerned, Keelie considered it both poetic justice and irony to donate some of the money toward things Katherine Vissing Price would loathe. She’d done it before—it had been a small thing, really. But it had brought Keelie so much satisfaction. When she’d become Zach’s partner, giving him the money to help expand and upgrade the shop. Other things . . . the rape crisis center. Splurging on sparkling rhinestone boots or funding a group of high-schoolers to go to a workshop in Washington, DC.