“You should have trusted me,” I whisper.
“I did trust you. I did. I just didn’t trust other people to keep their word. That’s what it all came down to in the end. It was very, very complicated. I couldn’t explain that to you or Mom and Dad back then.”
“Well, how about now? Why not explain it to me now? I just drove all the way here, little sister. I have nothing better to do, and I’d love to hear this story, I really would.” I try to keep the bite out of my voice, but it’s hard to do. Alexis slowly nods her head. She places her brush down on the lip of the easel, and comes toward me.
“Alright,” she says. “I’ll start at the beginning, then.”
******
Alexis tells me the story of a young woman going to her parents’ house, only to find herself kidnapped and sold twice over. She tells me a story of a girl who falls in love with a boy, even though she knows she shouldn’t. She tells me a story of insane DEA agents and Mexican cartel members, intent on finding and destroying her. And I begin to understand.
I don’t like it, but it starts to make sense.
By the time Alexis is done with her story, I don’t hate my sister anymore. I’m not mad at her. I’m still angry, though. After holding onto that emotion for such a long time, letting it consume me from the inside out, there’s no such thing as just letting go. It’s still with me, though I have no real focus for it anymore. I’m just angry. At the situation Alexis found herself in. At the situation I found myself in. At all of it.
Alexis tells me she loves me, and I find it easier than I thought I would to tell her the same. We’re hugging when Rebel comes to find his wife.
“God, I thought you’d be killing each other by now,” he says, leaning in the doorway. He is arrogant and cocky, and does multiple things in a day to make me want to smack him, but I understand him a little better now. And I’m glad my sister has him. “The boys will be here soon, Soph,” he tells my sister. “Better get your canvas packed up before it get trashed and someone shoves their boot through it.” I watch as he helps her pack up her paintbrushes and pots and between the two of them they carry her art equipment out of the bar. I’m handed a small wooden box filled with tiny paint-encrusted tins, cloths and jars of different fluids. I catch sight of Alexis’ canvas, carried carefully by the frame in Rebel’s hand, as we leave the bar, and the painting it bears makes the breath in my throat catch. It’s me. A young, smiling, happy version of me, from before all of this madness.
Alexis gives me a shy smile when she sees my expression. “Sorry, it’s not very good,” she whispers, biting on her lower lip.
I just shake my head. “It is, Lexi. It really is.”
Rebel’s shoulders hitch up and down as he laughs quietly. “I can’t get used to hearing that,” he says. Turning to my sister, he plants a firm kiss on the top of her head. “Lexi. It’ll never be your name.”
A part of me wants to kick him in the back of the leg for that. The possessive part that still thinks Alexis belongs to me and my parents, and not him. But I don’t because I can see the truth. She really isn’t Alexis anymore.
She is Sophia, and she does belong to Rebel. All I need to do to confirm that is to look at her and see the love pouring out of her. Alexis was the sister I lost. The woman in front of me is a different person. She is Sophia. And she is still my sister—a new sister who I will love just as much as I loved the old one.
******
I look at Cade’s leg—so much metal inside, it will take serious work to ever function properly again—and then I get on the road. Staying the night would be the smart move, but I just…I can’t. I need to go home. I need to see Zeth.
It takes me just a day and a half to arrive back in Seattle—half the time it took me to get my ass out to see Sophia. Without the apprehension of facing something unpleasant holding me back, I break countless speed limits in my haste.
When I burn back into the city, my man is exactly where I expect him to be. The gym is still empty and will be for some time yet. There’s so much work to do, refitting the place from top to bottom. Every time Zeth comes close to finishing the place off, he suddenly finds another reason to push back the opening date. The floors need replacing. A wall needs to be knocked down. A cage needs to be installed. The repairs and construction would go a hell of a lot quicker if he had more than himself and Michael working on the project, but I get the feeling time isn’t a factor here. The gym will be opened when Zeth’s good and ready and not a moment before.
He’s stripped to the waist when I enter the building, even though it’s just as freezing inside as it is outside. He has sweat pouring down his back, though—the lump hammer he swings repeatedly at a dividing wall between one side of the gym and another—I swear he only just put up that wall—reminds me of doing the very same thing myself. Only that time it was in his basement, and there was money involved. An awful lot of money.
“You’re early,” Zeth grunts out. How he’s heard my light-footed entrance over the steady swing and crash of his hammer is beyond me. He just knows…
“I did what I set out to do, and then I came home.” I place both my hands palm-down on his back, wanting to feel the twist and stretch of all that muscle as it works. Zeth tenses at the touch, stopping what he’s doing. He’s smiling when he turns around.
“You missed me, right?”