Page 25 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

TWENTY-ONE

TRINITY

The ice cream shop was two miles away. Two fucking miles was not what I considered a short walk. Not at all a short anything.

But I walked it without complaint, because I needed the time out of that damn place. I needed air. I needed space.

And this was the only way I was going to get any right now.

When we finally made it to the safer part of downtown Port Wylde, I sighed in relief, spotting the sign for the business simply called Twisty Dips in the near distance.

We were close. Thank god.

"Oh, I am so ready to sit down and eat some soft serve," I groaned, stretching my arms over my head as I turned to look at Asher.

He'd been awfully silent the whole way here, only opening his mouth for a comment here and there when prompted and pushed by me.

"What's your favorite flavor, Asher? Is it still?—"

"No."

"So it's not mint chocolate chip?"

His stare was enough to melt concrete, but I wasn't about to be swayed by a glare. I'd grown up with Keehn. He could out-glare them all.

"Or was it strawberry?" I pretended to consider the options, knowing damn well he and I both knew I knew what his favorite flavor was. "Hmmm, I can't seem to remember."

He pulled his wallet out of his pants and handed me a twenty-dollar bill with a grumble. "Go get some ice cream. I'll wait here."

I'm not about to let his mood ruin mine, so with a flash of my teeth, I ditched him and hopped in line behind a few teenagers who reminded me of Liam and Keehn when they were younger.

Their harmless banter was mild entertainment until they moved out of line to meet up with another teen, and then I found myself up at the counter, staring down a middle-aged man who spent far too long staring at my tits.

"What'll it be?"

I perused the menu for a moment, much to his irritation, but since he stared down my tits, he could wait a damn minute. Assholes like him got what they deserved.

"I'll take a waffle cone with cookies and cream, and another one with cookie dough, dipped in chocolate.

" I paid the man, and instead of sticking the tip money in the jar that sat beside the man, I handed it to the girl who served me the cones about five minutes later, pleased with the smile she returned when she realized she wouldn't have to share.

I had the feeling the ones who did all the work never saw the money from that tip jar.

Unfortunately, their boss was just like every middle-aged boss man I'd had growing up. Stubborn. Perverted. Assholes.

Men were all the same at their cores.

I bounced back to Asher's side, finding him easily enough—he hadn't moved an inch in all the time I spent in the line. He eyed the cones in my hands and frowned.

"Why are there two?"

I handed him the chocolate-covered one with a grin. "One's for you, dumbass."

His brow quirked up, but he said nothing, just stared at me like I was stupid. "I didn't ask for one."

"I know." I licked my own, making a point to flex my tongue at the end. "But everyone likes ice cream. Even you, ."

"Don't call me that again," he growled, snatching the cone from my grip. Like a heathen, he took a bite out of it, like a whole ass chunk, and I winced as I thought of his poor teeth and how that must've felt on their enamel.

Terrible. Cold. Bone-itchingly cringe.

"Is it good? Did I remember it right?" I knew damn well I had, but people change. Tastes change. And I was suddenly overcome with the very real worry that in the time since I'd last seen him, this man's likes and dislikes, his preferences, might've changed, too.

He regarded me with a neutral stare as he mulled over the question. "I don't hate it," he said, which was as close to an admission of my victory as I was going to get. "Yes. You remembered right."

I could have been on cloud nine for all that I knew. All I felt was a floaty vibe straight in the center of my heart, a confidence building there that I hadn't had before.

"Of course I did," I said proudly, leading him over to a nearby park bench. When I tugged down on his hand, he sat, and I remained standing, a hand on his shoulder, my cone in the other. "How could I forget?"

"You always stole mine when I wasn't looking, when you were younger," he remembered fondly, his eyes glazing over as he recalled a shared memory. "I never got a whole cone to myself because you always had to have a taste."

"That's why you started covering them in chocolate, isn't it?" When I was younger, less cultured, I hated the chocolate coating on cones. It felt harsh against my teeth, tasted cheap. Now, though, I could appreciate it. "You sneaky shithead."

His chuckle made me braver than I had a right to be. Even though I'd tried to seduce these men, I was far from the coquettish flirt I presented as. Not when the chips were down. Not when I was sitting here in regular street clothes.

But when he looked at me fondly, like he remembered a time when things were simpler, and yearned for its return, I came undone.

I sat my ass down in his lap, tugged his hand toward me, and licked right up the side of his cone, snagging a chunk of the coating as well as the ice cream in the process.

I didn't break eye contact the whole time.

When I swallowed the chunk of chocolate, neither one of us said a word for a long time. But he didn't kick me off his lap, and I didn't move, so it was like the world's tensest standoff.

"I need to come clean about something, Trinity."

I slid off his lap then, all teasing forgotten as he took his sunglasses off and turned to me with a serious stare. Whatever he was about to say was heavy. It meant no kidding around.

I shelved the light teasing jokes and got real for a second.

"I know you were listening in at the door the other night."

I didn't confirm or deny it. To do so in either direction was stupid. If I admitted it, it proved he couldn't trust me. If I lied, he'd see right through me, and then I'd lose all credibility with him. Neither option was ideal, so I chose option C: stay quiet and hear him out.

I didn't have to wait long.

"You're right about one thing: we didn't try hard enough. And it looked like we just gave up on Tank from the outside. But we have our reasons for that."

"What could possibly be a good enough reason to give up searching for your best friend?" I couldn't think of a single reason aside from confirming his death that would make me give up the search. "How can you justify that?"

"When we ran into a man using his name."

I frowned, realizing he had no idea I already met the man pretending to be my brother. "You mean the detective?"

His eyes blew wide, and he sucked in a breath in shock. "How did you know about him?"

I shrugged, remembering the party that got broken up via a bomb in Nocturna Beach's night club scene. "Let's call it a twist of fate. I've known about him since before I came here. Why else do you think I was so dead-set on staying?"

Asher wasn't done with the conversation, though. "How did you meet him?"

"He was at a party in Nocturna Beach, and I was there, too. When the place got bombed, he asked everyone questions at the scene. And he just so happened to talk to me."

Asher looked disturbed. "So he had no idea who he was talking to, did he?"

"None."

His frown deepened. "Talk about shit luck."

The atmosphere around us was tense, and not in a good way. "Why did you guys keep that a secret? Why not tell me?"

"Tell you what, Trinity? That we were letting someone run around using your brother's name and identity?

That we'd turned a stranger into an errand boy, an informant, because we had something over him?

That we lied to you, to your parents, to everyone, and let this charade go on to benefit ourselves? "

Tell me that he was dead. That you found his body. That someone who may or may not have killed him was now on your payroll.

"I don't know, Asher," I spat, hating the way tears formed in the corner of my eyes. "Why not say something? Why leave me in the dark all this time?"

"We tried to tell you to drop it," he growled, his brows furrowed as I shot up and threw the remainder of my cone in the trash. "You didn't listen."

I had no taste for ice cream anymore. It was like chewing cardboard.

All this time, I'd thought they were different from other men. That they'd come around. And yet, here they were, with a secret bigger than any I could ever come up with, and the excuse for their lies and omission was that they'd tried to tell me to let it go and I didn't?

"Who the fuck drops something like that just because someone tells them not to worry about it? He's my brother, Asher. My blood!"

"He was my best friend, too, Pretty Bird," he muttered, his words holding a razor-sharp edge. "He didn't just belong to you. He belonged to all of us, and we all hurt when he disappeared."

"But you gave up. I never did."

There it was, in black and white. Whereas they took the easy answer and ran with it, I hadn't believed for a second my brother would just walk out of our lives. He'd find a way to let us know what happened. He'd say something.

Wouldn't he?

"We gave up because he's dead, Trinity," Asher exploded, causing a bunch of curious heads to turn our way.

I hated the attention, but he didn't share the same reservations, because he continued as if he didn't even see them.

Didn't care. "We gave up because there's no way Keehn is still out there.

If you think he'd leave you, leave us, and not come back, then you don't know your brother as well as you think you do.

The Keehn I knew would have clawed his way through hell to get back to you.

He would have slaughtered an entire battlefield of people to make sure he could be there for you.

" He gripped my shoulders, his ice cream discarded on the ground. "He's gone, Trinity. Let his ghost go."

I couldn't take it. Couldn't take the look of anger and pity in his stare. I turned on my heel, and before he could stop me, I ran.

Never mind that I ran in the direction we'd come from, or that I knew he'd catch up eventually. I didn't care to escape him. I just wanted to escape the thoughts in my head now.

He was wrong. He had to be wrong. Something happened to Keehn that kept him from coming home. He wouldn't let himself be killed off like that, wouldn't leave us like that. If he were dead, his ghost would haunt us. I was sure of it.

Or maybe this whole time, I was living a lie, deluding myself in an attempt to regain control in my spiraling life. Because without my brother to keep me safe, to protect me, to shield me from our parents, my life was not my own.

And it hadn't been for a long ass time.

Was I just projecting the need for freedom onto the situation with Keehn and using it as an escape?