Page 17 of Love at First Rep

GARRETT: I love you guys.

7

AFTER GARRETT SHOWERED AND changed into his coziest hoodie and sweats, he spent a few minutes studying himself in the mirror.

A bit of beard burn graced the skin around his mouth from Rafe’s thick stubble, and his eyes were puffy and red from letting out some more tears under the spray of his showerhead.

For some reason, the shower was the best place to cry, whether it was because his tears literally washed away down the drain without a trace, or because his eyes didn’t burn thanks to the warm pressure of the spray. Afterward, he felt lighter and ready to face whatever the day would bring.

Garrett must have taken longer to get ready than he thought, because he breathed in the healing aroma of coffee and breakfast food as he trudged down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he stood in his living room, the hallway to his left leading to the open kitchen and family room.

When he walked into the kitchen, the sight that greeted him stopped him in his tracks.

Rafe stood over Garrett’s stove, scrambling eggs in a frying pan and dancing to a beat in his own head. He hummed and swayed his hips as a ding sounded. Rafe set down his spatula and turned away to pull a tray of bacon out of the oven.

“That coffee is for you,” Rafe said with his back to Garrett, and his gaze darted to the mug currently being filled under the single-use machine on the counter. Garrett thought Rafe hadn’t heard him enter, but twenty years hadn’t changed how difficult it was to sneak anything past him. “I heard you coming down the stairs and got it started. Breakfast is almost ready, so grab a seat.”

Another ding rang out and Rafe hustled to the toaster, pulling four slices of crisp bread from its depths. He turned off the burner for the eggs, buttered the toast and plated everything for the two of them.

Rafe set their plates at the kitchen island and grabbed each of their coffees, grinning madly. He sat and patted the stool next to him.

Garrett gaped at Rafe tearing into his breakfast, acting like everything was normal and this wasn’t blowing Garrett’s mind.

“I guess I took a lot longer than I thought,” Garrett mumbled as he sat next to Rafe. “Uh, thanks for making breakfast.”

“My pleasure.”

Garrett grabbed the cream and sugar Rafe had on the counter for him and sweetened his coffee the way he liked it.

Rafe chuckled. “I love how you still drink your coffee exactly the same as before.”

“Yeah,” Garrett croaked. He appreciated how Rafe tried to keep their conversation genial, but he couldn’t handle thinking about what else had or hadn’t changed over the years. He took a bite of his eggs and focused on the taste to ground him. If he wanted to get through this with Rafe, he’d need to stay focused. What happened earlier was a mistake he couldn’t repeat. It would break him when Rafe left him again, and he didn’t want to make it worse. He should concentrate on why Rafe showed up to begin with. “Talk to me about this drug cartel. How’d you get tangled up with them in the first place?”

Rafe looked disappointed by the subject change, but Garrett chose to ignore that. He had to.

Especially when he had his own friends to think about. The ones he could trust.

When Rafe mentioned the drug Anaviqa the day before, Garrett’s blood ran cold. It should have been statistically impossible that the drug that had Rafe barging into his life was the same drug he’d been researching for Riley and Josh.

A couple months ago, his gym friends came to him with questions about Josh’s biological parents and the accident report from the day they were killed. It turned out their accident wasn’t an accident at all. His parents were scientists that emigrated to the U.S. from China as part of a lab study to create a new weight loss drug: Anaviqa. After facing issues during testing and vocalizing their warnings about the dangers of the drug to their bosses, they were killed. Luckily, Josh survived that same car accident, but it still left scars on him. Garrett’s heart hurt thinking of all the pain Josh had been through and how he managed to still be one of the sweetest people Garrett had ever met.

Whether Rafe had come to him or not, Garrett was already part of this fight. All of his friends were getting into issues with the law these days. This past summer, Cole’s father, Stanley Durbin, died of a heart attack, and the medical examiner’s report that landed on Garrett’s desk after the autopsy showed signs of a possible overdose that contributed to his death.

As part of his due diligence, Garrett followed up on any deaths the medical examiner deemed suspicious.

He couldn’t forget the day he questioned Cole’s mom about what happened. She never confessed to slowly poisoning her husband until he had a heart attack, but Garrett inferred it as a possibility. She also gave him boatloads of evidence of the physical abuse she endured during their marriage, as well as evidence tying Stanley to racist organizations. He’d heard enough, and left Norah to live the rest of her life in peace away from that man’s evil.

After leaving with the files that day, Garrett spent a lot of time thinking about his job. The justice system wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t think it could be so bad in Cherrywood, of all places.

These kinds of coverups sounded like D.C. bullshit.

But Garrett couldn’t deny that Cherrywood seemed to be more connected to conspiracies than he ever thought.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Rafe said before taking a sip of his coffee, and Garrett had to remind himself he asked him to explain how he’d gotten involved with a drug cartel. “Hard to know where to start.”

“The beginning is usually a good spot,” Garrett said, continuing to eat the breakfast Rafe made for him.

“True.” He took a deep breath. “While I worked under the CIA umbrella, intelligence officers and medical examiners started seeing a weird pattern with returned prisoners of war and hostages. They found some anomalies in their bloodwork and traced it to this drug called Anaviqa, a failed weight loss drug. They manufactured the drug decades ago but it never hit the market. That pharmaceutical company stopped making the drug, so how did our foreign enemies get a hold of it?