Page 21 of Mr. Kelly

“Relax, Romeo. He doesn’t have her. I made sure of that. She’s square with Surly and can now move freely. She said she was going home.”

My stomach turns because, by the looks of things, she meant Atlanta just like she’d said last night. I grip my phone harder than I should. I don’t know what the fuck happened.

“What? How?”

“I don’t know. She texted me saying she had the money to pay Surly but didn’t think he’d take it like a gentleman. I saw it in time to get there right before he tried to keep her. That dumbass upcharged a three-thousand-dollar loan to ten thousand. I told him to keep four thousand and be happy I didn’t kill him. Myguys took her outside, and when I joined them, she hugged me, thanked me for saving her, and gave me a bag with ten k in it.”

“Where in the hell did she get that much money?”

“She said give this back to the Kellys. It's ten because she kept one thousand for expenses so she could go home.”

My head hurts, and I sit on the functioning part of the couch. There aren’t many ways she could have gotten that much money, and each option doesn’t sit well with me.

“Fifteen thousand. That’s roughly how much money I have in the safe in the penthouse.”

I know she went to do yoga, but there is no way she magically found the safe by accident.

“Well, I have ten of that fifteen staring at me right now. I saw some of the security footage for last night. Good job. I knew you could do it.”

He’s congratulating me for fucking a woman who’s in the wind. A woman who seems to have paid off her boyfriend’s debt with my money. It doesn’t sound like River, but I really don’t know much about her.

“She stole from me?”

Andrea is quiet for a moment as he thinks. “I doubt it. Thieves don’t call the victim’s best friend and give back most of the money. Something is amiss, but you’d need to figure that out. You don’t want me to investigate because the guilty party would die. I’m just saying.”

I hang up while I try to think through it, but my fucked-up emotions make everything cloudy. I married a liar, so what are the odds that I fell into lust with another one? Every time I think of all the ways to absolve her of this, my mind keeps going back to one fact.

I gave her my code.

Chapter Eleven

FOUR MONTHS LATER

River

How canI miss him so completely and we’d only just begun to know each other intimately? I returned home half expecting he’d reach out at some point. In my fantasies, he’d show up and tell me how empty his life has been without me, but that hasn’t happened. Worse, I haven’t gotten a phone call, text, or email. My outlook changes from day to day. Some days, I’m okay with it. Others, I’m livid. On rare occasions, I see it as a one-night stand. Yet I still want more.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, hot and bothered from a dream I’ve had about him, while others I’m upset because he told me all the things I feared to hear from him. Today is one of the bad days. I stayed in bed until one and dared to venture out of my childhood room to make toast.

“So, if I had some brie, roasted pears, and ummmm…chutney, what wine would I drink with that?”

My dad is trying to keep me on my toes with wine questions. I’ve picked up a few jobs as a bartender, but nothing like the oneI had for Theodore. The environment and pay were much higher scale.

“Why would you have chutney with the things you just listed?”

He shrugs and throws me one of his megawatt smiles. “People are weird. Your mom ate all kinds of weird combos when pregnant,” he supplies like that helps.

“Then the wine selection shouldn’t matter.”

“Except that pregnant women can have one glass a day, right?”

“No clue?”

“Aren’t you supposed to know.” He puts down his crossword puzzle to give me a proper side eye.

Sighing, I walk over to his recliner and climb in his lap like I’m five years old again. He releases a boisterous laugh and huffs and puffs like I’m much too heavy to be held by him.

“My legs! My legs! Help me, Moria!”

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