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I saw the silent question in his green eyes at my confession.You read them?
Yes. Every one.
“It took me a couple of days to realize it, but…” I reached into my back pocket and pulled free one of the earliest letters I’d stolen from the box. The one where Unrequited—I still hadn’t learned her name—had confessed her undying love for the love ofmylife.
I couldn’t be sure the unknown girl in the photo I’d found was Unrequited, or just a coincidence, but I must have studied the youthful curves and angles of her smiling face a thousand times to force her identity from my subconscious.
I handed the letter to Rowdy, whose gaze still hadn’t left mine. “The handwriting and signature are the same.”
Rowdy took the note but didn’t look at it as he ignored the curious looks from his boys and pocketed it immediately. I pursed my lips but said nothing.
Despite Joren being hellbent on blaming me for everything, the cracks in their friendship had started long before I entered their lives. They’d been standing on shaky ground ever since Rowdy fucked Jada.
It had taken me a couple of days to figure that out too.
That the girl Unrequited had been jealous of was Jada. And that boy Rowdy had betrayed had been Joren.
His best friend.
I sucked in a breath as the final note of Unrequited’s twisted symphony slammed into me with all the intensity of a freight train.
“It was never about me,” I voiced quietly.
“What wasn’t?” Roc asked with a confused frown.
“The letters, sending me here…it was never about me.” Unrequited’s last letter suddenly made so much more sense. “It was about you…both of you…or…the three of you.”
I was just the unwitting missile sent from afar to make it all collapse from underneath them.
But why?
What did I have to do with three people I’d never met and a wrong that had occurred before I was even born…
You’ve been lied to.
Find the Pride of Kings.
Find out who you really are.
“Three?” Roc asked as the words from Unrequited’s first letter seemed to echo through me. “Who else is—” His words were cut off when the door to the workshop opened, followed by the sound of heels clicking on the polished concrete.
I kept my face blank as I watched the answer to Roc’s question slowly approach. Her expensive perfume drifted toward us in a cloud, the unique scent reaching us before she did, and her beautiful face as carefully guarded as my own. My belly flip-flopped when I searched her features for any other similarities.
“Do you want to tell him?” I asked her when she finally reached our circle and looped her arm through Joren’s. “Or should I?”
I didn’t bother explaining my meaning. The chances she hadn’t been eavesdropping were slim to none.
Jada’s painted lips spread in a practiced smile. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean,” she lied. “I just came to collect my husband. A friend from out of town is visiting, and we have dinner plans. I’m afraid whatever this is,” she said with a slow sweep of our grim faces, “will have to wait. Ciao.”
Without another word, she herded Joren toward the door, and a moment later, they were gone.
“Man,” Roc said, watching them go and running his hand over the waves in his close-cut in agitation. “I don’t know what the fuck all of this is about, but keeping it a hundred, I’m cool on it.” He looked at Rowdy. “You said you wanted to be the one to handle her, so you got it.” He slapped hands with Rowdy, and they gave each other dap and a snap before Roc walked off, mumbling incoherently. “I got enough damn problems. He just gon’ pull a gun on me? His boy? The fuck I look like playing detective anyway?”
I snorted and shook my head as I watched him go. I turned to Rowdy and started to speak when he cleared his throat, his green gaze sliding to Golden, who I hadn’t realized was still standing there.
One moment, Golden was staring off like he was deep in thought, and the next, he was spinning on his heel and following after Roc, Joren, and Jada without a word.
Ooookay.
