“Good,” Rhys said with a wink. “You girls hungry? I just finished getting everything ready about a minute before you walked in.”
“Yes!” Kira and I said in unison, and helped him carry all the dishes over to the table.
“THAT WAS SO good.” I placed a hand on my too-full stomach, and groaned. “I can’t remember the last time I ate that much.”
“Or had a home-cooked meal,” Kira added, and I agreed.
“Very true.” I looked over at Rhys and nudged him. “Did you cook while you were undercover? Or were you just still good at it when you came back?”
He laughed and shook his head once. “Definitely didn’t cook while there. I’m glad I still know how to boil water after being gone for that long.”
“Poor guy,” Kira said with an apologetic look. “You only ate takeout for four years, and then you come here and we’re too lazy to cook anything, so we force you to have more of it. Good job, us.”
“No, nothing like that. There was an older woman at the house I was in. She did all the laundry and cooked every meal except breakfast.”
“Huh,” I huffed. “Well, that’s nice, I guess.”
“No!” Rhys disagreed with a laugh. “Definitely not nice either. The way she did laundry, everything still came out dirty. She never cleaned the house with anything more than a paper towel, and would yell at us if we tried to. And her cooking? It was okay. I mean, it wasn’t horrible, but she only made three different meals. There was always a soup, but only lentil, vegetable, or cabbage. Then there would be fried chicken, enchiladas, or pasta with this red sauce that you had to choke down. And then there would be mashed potatoes, rice, or garlic bread. Everything was seasoned beyond the point of being edible, and if you’d already eaten before you got to the house, she’d still make you eat everything she gave you. So after four years of that, takeout was the most amazing thing.”
Kira and I were laughing, and I asked, “Well, why didn’t they just get someone else to cook and clean?”
“She was the leader’s mom. He cherished that woman. If you said anything negative about her, the cooking, or the house . . . it was over for you.”
“Oh my God, are you serious?” Kira asked with wide eyes.
“Very.” Rhys sighed. “You didn’t mess with that guy’s mom.”
“Apparently not,” I murmured. “Can you tell us anything about your time undercover? We’ve heard stories from Dad and Uncle Mason. But we obviously heard the stories years after anything happened.”
“Uh,” Rhys began, and his dark eyes got a faraway look. “We dealt, mostly. That was the big thing. Well, we didn’t. We were the suppliers.”
“Did you have to use?” I asked.
“Did your dad?” he shot back.
Kira and I nodded, and Rhys raised his eyebrows in confirmation.
“Not often, thank God. Getting in . . .” He trailed off. “Getting in, there was a lot I had to do that I hated—including a lot of using. But once I was in, it was easy to just act like I’d been using, and my stash would always be gone since I was handing it over to the department. There would only be a handful of times a year when they’d wait and watch you use. But there was always other stuff there was no way out of, as I’m sure you can imagine from hearing your dad’s stories.”
“Yeah,” Kira breathed. “He said he and Mason were obsessive about getting tested because of what they had to do.”
Rhys agreed, “Yep. I was lucky; but none of the test results ever stopped me from being terrified. Just never knew what could happen before the next test.”
I studied Rhys’s distant eyes for a few moments and cleared my throat. “Sorry, it wasn’t really fair of me to ask you to tell us all this. That’s probably hard for you to talk about, especially so soon. You don’t have to tell us anything else. I guess we’re just so used to hearing about the horrors of working undercover that it never seems like it’s a big deal or shocking to us. But we didn’t have to go through it. So like I said, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he insisted, but I could tell that I’d brought up things he didn’t enjoy thinking about.
“New subject?” I offered.
Rhys shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Sure.”
“What are you going to make us for dinner tomorrow?”
He laughed, and just like that, the haunted look in his dark eyes disappeared behind his smile. Rhys started listing off everything he’d bought at the store that day and things he’d been craving and wanted to make, and every now and then he’d make suggestions just to see what we thought about different meals and types of food.
The conversation over the next half hour was much lighter, and I found myself smiling along with Rhys and Kira and enjoying having him there. But I couldn’t help but notice that even though it was nice having him around, I still no felt no connection to him romantically or physically. He was attractive, that was impossible to miss. Nearly Liam’s height, but with dark messy hair and equally dark eyes; and while he was nicely built, he was much leaner than Liam.
And then I realized that not only did I not have any feelings toward Rhys, but all I could think about when I looked at him was how he wasn’t Liam.
“Who the fuck . . . stay here!” Rhys demanded suddenly, and jumped out of his chair to take off running toward the back sliding glass door.
I’d jumped at his loud words, but even if I hadn’t registered what he’d said, I don’t think I would have been able to get up just because of the shock of his sudden outburst. I turned around in time to see him slide the door open and take off running out into the grassy area behind our condo and disappear off to the side.
“What on earth?” I mumbled when his shouts reached us through the open door.
Kira and I stood at the same time and walked over to the open door, and although we could still hear him, we didn’t see him.
“Did you see someone?”
“No,” Kira answered softly, like she was still trying to grasp what had happened as well.
When another moment passed, I asked, “Do you think he has problems from being undercover that maybe the tests the department did didn’t catch?”
Kira snorted, causing my lips to curve up at the corners. “I think we would have noticed something like this before tonight if he did have a—who is that?” she quickly asked when Rhys finally rounded the corner of the building with a gangly guy stumbling behind him.
“I told you to stay at the table,” he said harshly when he got close, and my eyebrows rose at the anger in his tone.
Kira looked down at the ground, and I scoffed, “You can’t just pull that shit and expect us not to wonder what’s happening.”
Rhys’s eyes narrowed, but it was clear now that he was closer that his anger wasn’t directed at either of us—he definitely looked annoyed that we’d chosen not to listen to him, though.
“Who is this?” I asked when he got close enough with the guy in tow that Kira and I had to step away from the door.
“We’re about to find out,” he answered. “I’m guessing you won’t give me time alone with him?”