Page 26 of Unbroken

He was on the verge, and I didn’t want to continue.

“Wait, is that why you invited Hazel to lunch? Because Valerie threatened Shelly unless you did?” Luke asked. That would have been the simpler explanation, but it wasn’t the truth. None of this was simple.

“No, Valerie texted Hazel. She spoofed our numbers and sent me a text, too. I had no idea what was happening until I got there.”

“Valerie did it?” Luke asked, disdain dripping from each word. “Blakely, I need you to tell me: did you help her kidnap my wife or not?”

“I swear, I didn’t,” I said without missing a beat. “I would never.” Glancing around the room, it was fifty-fifty on whether they believed me or not. “I got there, and she dragged me into an alley. She told me I was going to go in there and sit down at the table like everything was normal. And that was all. If I made a sound or caused a commotion, then…she had very convincing reasons why I shouldn’t.”

“Like what?” Reed asked, and I hesitated.

“Say it,” Devon said. They were the first words he’d spoken, and they made me jump.

He was still staring down at his hands, and I ground my teeth as I managed to explain, “She showed me a video of Shelly,” I ground out. “It was obvious that it had been taken that morning. Then she sent me photos of each of you. It was all she had to do.”

The back door opened as I finished my sentence, and I almost leaped from my seat.

Shelly hesitantly stepped inside.

“Zach has to use the restroom,” she said a second before Zach sprinted into the house, not glancing back for a moment as he beelined for the bathroom.

Shelly closed the door behind her and rubbed her cold handstogether as she appraised all of us still seated around the living room.

“How’s it going in here?” she asked, and I honestly didn’t know how to answer.

No one had begun yelling, and no one had called me a liar, so that was good. And they all appeared to be content with letting me finish, at least.

That was more than I could’ve asked for, so in my opinion, it was going about as well as expected.

“Fine,” Devon said in a rough voice. He’d straightened when his mom walked in and folded his arms back over his broad chest.

“Good, good,” Shelly murmured, tightening her coat around her. She looked back outside at Sadie and Piper, but Devon still stared at her.

For a moment, I imagined I could read his thoughts. He considered how close he’d come to losing his mom. How he knew she was fighting an illness with everything she had, but it was something else that nearly ended her life.

He thought about how much he loved her and how painful it would’ve been to lose her.

Zach sprinted back into the room. He wiped his hands on his jeans and cut through the center of the living room, which was the shortest route to the door. But he stopped directly in front of me.

His little blond brows furrowed, and he titled his head like he was trying to determine where I’d come from.

He’d grown so much in the past two years. Last time I saw him, he was almost five. Was that really right? He was still bleach blond and had that sweet, childish lilt to his words that made it a little difficult to understand him.

“Aunt B?” he asked.

Through warring emotions, I somehow managed to nod and say, “Hey, kid.”

His face went from confused to excited in less than a second.

“You’ve been gone forever! Dad said you went on vacation. Did you have fun? Where did you go?”

He stepped closer, and my mind worked overtime trying to figure out how to answer that.

But luckily, Josh put me out of my misery.

“Aunt B is telling us about her vacation right now. She’ll tell you after, okay? Go play with Ms. Shelly, please.”

Zach turned around to look at his dad. The kid let out an exaggerated sigh. “Okaaaay,” he said, extending the two syllables to at least five.

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