Page 123 of Sinners Reunion

“No! Fuck, I suck at talking. I wouldn’t have the potential to betray your trust. But I can’t tell you whose trust I could betray. It’s not you, though. I promise.”

Kindra narrows her eyes, and her head tilts slightly to the left. She purses her lips and assesses me. “So you want to be alone with my British fiancé, and you already have a track record for going for men with British accents? Do you think I’m fucking stupid?”

Shit.

“No,” I say, shaking my head and trying to swallow around the golf-ball-sized lump that just sprouted in my throat. “I didn’t . . . I mean, that is⁠—”

A smile springs onto Kindra’s face, and she unfolds her arms to give my shoulder a playful shove. “Damn, you’re too easy. Of course you can have a chat alone with Ezra. I trust Ezra, and I trust you. If I didn’t trust both of you, it would be a different answer, but I know neither of you would do anything as foolish as fucking around behind HBK’s back.”

I don’t miss that she’s thrown out her killer name, and I’m not mad about it. She’s merely letting me know that she trusts me, but she’s also ready to go to war if I break that trust. It’s not a threat. It’s a reminder of what she’s willing to fight for.

“Thank you,” I say. “And seriously, if it would make you feel better, he has my permission to record the entire interaction and play it back for you if he so chooses. I just . . . can’t.”

“Man, this is really weighing on you, isn’t it?”

I nod. “Yeah. It really is.”

“Well, I hope that whatever it is, he helps you get it figured out.”

Me too.

I tell her to have Ezra meet me outside the nightclub, beside the dumpsters. He should head out first. I’ll follow a few minutes later so that we don’t draw suspicion from anyone. The last thing I want is for someone else to come trotting down those stairs when I’m in the middle of begging him to not get married tomorrow.

But Ezra has to stay, that much I’m sure of.

Everything hinges on what he says tonight, and if I can get him to agree, if he’ll call off the elopement, I’ll enact the part of my plan that King doesn’t know about. From there, we’ll either strengthen our foundation or send it crumbling to dust.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Josie

Something wet squishes under my shoe as I make my way into the alley. Ezra stands at the end, beneath a light beside the dumpster. When I get within fifteen feet of him, I come to a halt and shake my head.

“Nah, I can smell that hot trash juice from here. I’m not putting either of us through this,” I say. “Let’s go chat across the street. There’s a playground.”

He pulls his hands from his pockets and jogs toward me. “Thank fuck. I was merely trying to be polite and meet at the designated spot, but I couldn’t take many more whiffs of that. Atrocious doesn’t begin to cover it.”

We cross a narrow street and slide onto a bench near the swing set. Not wanting to drag this out, I get to the point. “You can’t elope with Kindra.”

His brow creases, and he slips his glasses down his nose, looking at me over the top of the frames. “How could you possibly know about that?”

That is actually a very good question that I didn’t consider until it was entirely too late.

“That isn’t important,” I say, pushing on in the face of defeat. “What’s important is that you stay with your siblings and help them make the decision that final day. When you finally meet your father⁠—”

His face relaxes. “How long have you known?”

“Known?”

“How long have you known that King is my father?”

I deflate in front of him. My lips refuse to work, so he graciously steps in.

“I’ll go first,” he says. “When we were at the Grand Canyon and he said something my father once said, that’s when I knew. I hadn’t even suspected before that moment, but it was like unlocking a door in my brain. The words he’d said had always been in my head, but I couldn’t remember his face or his voice. When he spoke to me on that ledge, it all came back to me.”

I blow out a breath, sending a tendril of red hair shooting off my forehead. “Last night. I found the box of letters. I read yours. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay, really. It was eating me up inside to harbor this alone.”