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“ W ant some company?”

Kai was sitting in the coffeeshop, working on his lunch of a sandwich and iced tea. He’d been deep in thought about the investigation, not hearing Henry approach his table.

“Sure, have a seat,” Kai offered.

He liked Henry. The guy seemed to have a genuine and honest vibe, and he cared a great deal about Lulu. If Kai’s relationship with her was going to have any sort of future, it would be a good idea to get along with her close friends.

There were things he didn’t know about Henry, of course. The man had already hinted about them, but Kai wasn’t the type to dig deeply into personal and delicate issues unless he was invited.

“Thanks, I didn’t want to walk over there.” Henry nodded toward the corner of the coffeeshop. “Lisa is here, and I don’t want to get into it with her.”

Kai glanced in the direction Henry indicated. Lisa was an attractive woman, chatting animatedly with two other female friends. So far, it didn’t seem like she’d noticed that Henry was here. Where Kai was seated was blocked by several other tables, but if she looked in their direction…

She’d probably see them.

“Are you going to ask me questions about it?”

Henry appeared amused that Kai hadn’t jumped on the subject. Did he get those sorts of questions all the time? That had to get old after a while.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

Henry was openly laughing now.

“I admire your cool demeanor. Most people want to ferret out any possible secret that I might have. They simply must have every awful detail, or they won’t be able to sleep or eat.”

That sounded like hell.

“What do you do when they’re like that?”

“I give them what they think they want.”

“Which is?”

“All the details. Every grisly one. When their face turns green, and they look like they might puke, I know I’ve done my job well.”

“My mom always said to be careful what you wish for. You might get it.”

“Your mom sounds like a wise woman.”

“She is. Are you close to your parents?”

Kai immediately wished he hadn’t asked that question. He’d thought it might be a safe conversational route, but he’d miscalculated.

“They blame themselves for what happened to me, even though I tell them every time I see them that it wasn’t their fault. It was a family friend that they trusted who kidnapped me. It’s hard to be truly close with them when they’ve put up that wall of emotion.”

“Damn, I’m truly sorry,” Kai apologized. “I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.”

“It’s not so much sore as sad. I know they love me more than anything, but since it happened, I think they’ve kept a certain distance. I think they’re afraid to love me too much in case they lose me again.”

“I guess they could have gone one of two ways,” Henry continued. “Either take a step back or become helicopter parents. Honestly, I think I got the best of the two options.”

“I’m sorry that it happened to you.”

“I see why Lulu trusts you. She has an instinct about people. She can be around them a short time, talk to them a bit, and she just knows in her gut whether they’re good people or bad. I don’t know how she does it, but she does. I think she gets it from her mom. Presley is amazing with people. Everyone loves her, just like Lulu. She draws others to her, and they want to be in her orbit. She’s like a magnet.”

“I hope that Lulu trusts me. I trust her, too.”

“She’s pretty fucking amazing, isn’t she?” Henry said with a wide smile. “She’s just a kickass human being. The best. She’s like a sister to me, though. I’m not trying to get into her pants or anything like that. We’re not that way.”

“I appreciate that. And I appreciate the friendship that you and Chase have extended to me.”

“You have to go with the flow with Lulu. Like I said, she attracts people into her life, so you need to get ready for that. There will always be friends around her. And I’ll always be there for her. No matter what. Even if she ends up hating my guts, I’ll be there for her. She deserves the best.”

“It sounds like she has a true friend in you.”

“I hope so.” Henry took a sip of his coffee, his gaze resting on Kai as if sizing him up a bit. “I’ll tell you more about what happened if you want me to.”

“I’m so sorry something like that happened to you,” Kai said earnestly. “How old were you?”

“Eight. My parents let me walk down to a friend’s house. Just four doors down. Not even to the end of the block. I didn’t make it there. A family friend was driving down the street and stopped to talk to me. I walked toward the car, and next thing I knew I was pulled in. It all happened so fast. I was confused at first because they’d always seemed so nice, but then I got scared because they wouldn’t take me home. They kept saying I was home.”

“You don’t have to talk about this,” Kai said. “It’s honestly none of my business. I don’t want you to have nightmares for a week because you told me about it.”

Henry smiled sadly and shook his head.

“I have nightmares all the time. Telling you about it won’t change that.”

“You still don’t have to tell me.”

“How about I just say that I escaped,” Henry finally replied, his gaze looking somewhere over Kai’s shoulder. “But I care too much about Lisa to throw all my emotional shit on her. She doesn’t deserve that in her life.”

“If she cares?—”

“Stop,” Henry interjected. “I know that she cares, she’s told me so. I care, too. But care isn’t enough. Sure, in the beginning it’s great, but eventually the real world starts to intrude, and suddenly you start to resent one another. You wish the other person would change, and we all know where that leads. Love dies, and maybe…if you’re lucky…pity comes after. If it’s not pity, then it’s hatred. I don’t want Lisa to hate me down the road. If that makes me a coward, I can live with that.”

“There is no way after what you’ve been through that anyone could call you a coward,” Kai said. “Clearly, you’ve faced the worst and come out the other side.”

“With some battle scars, and I won’t inflict them on anyone else. I won’t drag them through that nightmare with me over and over. Someday, when she’s happily married to a nice nine-to-five man and has a couple of lovely kids, she might think of me for a moment and thank me. I don’t want to be the selfish asshole here. She and I will both end up disappointed.”

“I think that you’re a better man than I am,” Kai replied honestly. “Not everybody would be so selfless.”

“I am far from selfless. If I was truly a selfless person, I never would have spent time with her at all. I’d be alone all the time. I wouldn’t be friends with Lulu because far too often she has to deal with me reliving it all again. I never wanted that for her, but damn, she’s a stubborn mule. Every time I tried to kick her out of my life, she just kept coming back. That’s how amazing she is. I couldn’t ask for a better sister. Speaking of family, as her honorary brother, I need to tell you that if you hurt her, I will hunt you down like a dog and rip out your insides while you’re still alive and watching me do it.”

“Well, that’s…vivid. I’m not planning to hurt Lulu. I care about her. I can tell that she’s special.”

Although hearing Henry talk about her the way he did, only served to remind Kai just how special Lulu truly was. He’d never met anyone quite like her. For a former wild child, she was down to earth, pragmatic…and a freak in the sheets.

How lucky could a guy get?

“I felt it needed to be said. Lulu has always been there for me, and if you mess with her heart and break it, you’ll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”

“When I least expect it, expect it?”

“Pretty much.”

“I respect that,” Kai said.

He admired Henry’s loyalty. In Kai’s experience, that was hard to find these days.

“Look at all of these people here,” Henry said, his gaze roaming the room. “They’re all watching and waiting for Lulu to fail. Maybe because they’re sexist assholes, or maybe because it will amuse them that she can’t do the job. It might make them feel better about their mediocre lives or some shit like that. But they’re all watching every move she makes, just waiting for her to fall flat on her face. Well, I’m not going to let that happen. Lulu’s been there for me whenever I’ve needed her, and if she needs me to go with her without backup to catch a crazed killer? I’m in. I’ll never let her down. I hope you feel the same way.”

Kai wasn’t as convinced that the people of Harper wanted Lulu to fail. But he did think that they expected her to. They weren’t quite ready to move on from Sheriff Seth Reilly, their famous lawman. They were unsure if Lulu could truly do the job, and yes, they were watching. But were they rooting for her to crash and burn?

“I do feel the same way,” Kai replied. “But I don’t think everyone wants Lulu to fail. I think there are people that want her to do a good job and find the killer.”

“You have a hell of a lot more faith in humanity than I do.”

Henry had earned his cynicism in the human race fair and square. Far be it for Kai to lecture him about how people were usually good. That hadn’t been the man’s experience.

“Can I give you some advice that my grandpa once gave me?”

“Yes, but it’s not going to make me change my mind about Lisa. Or about these people wanting Lulu to fail.”

“Fair enough. It was pretty simple advice, and perhaps I was just in the perfect frame of mind to hear it that day. He told me that life was short, and there were no guarantees of tomorrow. We have to do whatever we can today. We can’t wait to be happy or get to a milestone, and then our life would be good. We had to try and make it that way today, and it requires a bit of optimism to pull it off.”

“Sounds like your grandfather was a wise man,” Henry replied. “But here’s the difference between you and me, Kai. I don’t expect happiness or goodness. Ever. I’m sure before everything happened, I was a happy kid, although I don’t remember much about my life then. I may have blocked it all out; I just don’t know. But today? Today is as good as it’s going to get. I’m just trying to survive the daylight hours to get to the nighttime ones. And then, in the nighttime, I’m just trying to survive until the sun comes up. It’s not a bad way to live. I don’t long for things I know I won’t have. In a way, it makes it a hell of a lot simpler.”

To Kai, it all sounded incredibly sad. However, when he looked at Henry, the man didn’t appear bothered by it at all. Right now, Henry was even smiling a bit as if enjoying the sunny afternoon. He even waved to a few people as they entered the coffee shop.

But there had to be demons, maybe lots of them, that Henry battled each day and especially at night.

“I’d like to say that if you ever need anything, day or night, you can call me,” Kai said. “If the night gets far too long, or anything like that. Hell, I love staying up all night. I know that Lulu would be your first choice, but I’d like to be friends with you, too.”

“I’m getting so popular around here,” Henry drawled, and then chuckled at his own joke. “It must be my new cologne. Seriously, don’t make the offer if you don’t want to be called.”

“I’m serious.”

“Then I’ll save your phone number,” Henry said. “Prepare to be bothered in the middle of the night with a request to go find the nearest ice cream shop.”

“It sounds like fun.”

“It won’t be, but I admire your optimism.”

If Kai was going to have a relationship with Lulu - and that’s what he wanted - Henry and her brother Chase were part of the package deal. It would be no hardship at all to have them in his life.

There was something about Lulu that drew good people towards her, and it was an attribute that he admired.

Hell, who was he kidding? It felt like he was falling in love.