Page 129 of Rhodes

“You already know the answer to that.”

My mouth goes dry.

Vin's face comes back exactly wrong for this moment. Not the man who had Dad executed in a dirty warehouse, or the one who lied to Ridge for years and moved all of us around like pieces on a board.

He's thirty-five again, sitting beside me on the back steps with a socket wrench, showing me why I keep stripping bolts. He's wrapping my thumb against my fist before teaching me to throw a punch and showing up because Dad is working, Ridge is at college, and everybody else has somewhere they're supposed to be.

Then the other man comes back, the one who upended our family.

"How?"

"No."

“What the fuck, Reeves?”

"You don't need that," he says matter-of-factly, then finishes the rest of his beer. He drops it in the carrier and pulls out another, opening it with a twist.

"Don't tell me what I need."

His jaw flexes. "You asked if I did it. I answered. I'm not putting the rest in your head. Fucking leave it alone, Rhodes.”

I stand and walk to the end of the porch, because sitting beside him doesn't work anymore. "Does Ridge know?"

“I told him after I did it.”

I turn around, but I don’t say a thing. I keep my eyes on him until he finishes one goddamned complete thought.

"Yeah. He knew after, and we agreed it didn't need to go outside of that room."

I laugh once because apparently that's what comes out.

"So the two of you sat there while Ridge told the rest of us Vin died alone in some rented room of natural causes, like none of you knew anything more than we did."

Reeves looks down at the bottle. “Yep. It was for the best for everyone involved.”

"Jesus Christ."

I go down one step, then come right back because there is nowhere to go without actually leaving.

"You decided what I could handle."

His expression changes, but he doesn't answer that.

"I loved him."

"I know."

"He killed Dad."

"I know that, too."

"Then quit sitting there like one of those cancels out the other."

"I'm not. You're doing that."

I put both hands on the wrought-iron rail and stare out through the gate.

"I wanted to hate him," I say. "Would've been easier, but I never could. It was all so fucking complicated, everything that's happened in the last three years."