Devil You Know(Lost Boys Book 1)(32)

Anton walked to the sink, but stopped to kiss my head. “Morning.”

“What’s going on here?”

Mom stopped draining the bacon and offered only one word in reply. “Life.”

“But…”

“I’ll take over, Rosalie,” Anton offered and took the tongs from her. She walked to me and took my hands into hers. “Your father is gone. Forty years I shared with him and I could allow my pain to consume me. I could fall into despair and stop functioning, but I have all of you and together we can heal by leaning on each other. Love isn’t selfish, so I will mourn the loss of my husband, but I will cook bacon and eggs for my children because that’s life.”

“I love you.”

Mom hugged me hard. “I love you too.”

“Breakfast is ready,” Anton said.

And so we ate breakfast with two empty chairs at our table, but life went on and we went on with it.





I never thought I’d find the sight of the old neighborhood welcoming, but I did. We’d just rung in 2017. It had been a long time since I went away and still it all looked very much the same. I bought the gym I used to visit regularly as a kid. Anton had brokered the deal for me, said I needed an investment property. It was good thinking because there was an apartment just above the gym. After dropping off the stuff I’d packed up in my car at the apartment—the moving truck was due tomorrow—I drove to Thea’s. The ride was bittersweet. Our reunion   wasn’t going to be the one we had wanted as kids, but I was home and she was the first person I wanted to see.

I pulled up across the street from her apartment. It took me a little while to work up the nerve to climb out of the car. I’d been in war, I had killed, and yet the idea of seeing the girl I loved had me shaking a little. It took me longer than I would ever admit to get out of the car. Before I started across the street, I saw her walking down the sidewalk. It was her hair I saw first, still as wild as it had been when we were kids. She was smiling, a smile I knew by heart—how it changed the lines of her face and brightened her eyes because I had memorized her picture. So caught up in seeing her again, it took me a little longer to realize she wasn’t alone. A man walked with her, her smile that had seen me through so many dark places, a smile I claimed as mine, wanted all to myself, was directed at him.

He held the door for her and they disappeared into her building. There were any number of scenarios to explain what I had just seen, but seeing her with someone else made me feel homicidal…contrary of me because I had been the one who let her go. I climbed back into my car. We’d have our reunion  , just not today.





Actuary science is a fascinating field and one that has helped guide my decisions in both my professional and personal life. Everything we do has an impact, the challenge is finding the balance between action and risk. For instance, that’s your third glass of wine, which inhibits your senses and increases your risk of injury.” He flashed me a smile with dimples. “Good thing for you that I’m here to see you home.”

If he didn’t have dimples, I might have stabbed him in the heart with my steak knife. He could assess the risk of his death with that action. I had been introduced to Derrick Glass, my risk-conscious date, by Kimber and I could see her pulling a joke on me with this set up, but Ryder had encouraged the match too.

Derrick and I had drinks the other night and on first impression he had a toe curl factor. Dirty blond hair cut short around his handsome face, a tall, muscular build clothed in tailored clothes, and he had those dimples. Drinks lasted a few hours and yes he tended to talk about his line of work a lot, and insurance was a very dry subject, but he was so cute I didn’t mind. We had decided to try dinner and perhaps it was because we were past that awkward introduction stage, but there was something about Derrick Glass that I just couldn’t put my finger on. Under his impeccable manners and elegant dress, I suspected there was something darker. Dad had always said I had an uncanny ability at reading people. Gut instinct, just like him.

I also discovered this evening that he didn’t shy away from offering his opinion, but it didn’t feel like an opinion. It felt like a pleasantly issued command.

The waitress arrived with the dessert tray.

“We’re not interested in dessert.” Derrick hadn’t even asked me if I wanted dessert.

“I want dessert.” I may have shouted that.

“Dessert on top of three glasses of wine? You’re thirty-one, but you’re never too young to start thinking about diabetes and other weight related diseases.”

My jaw dropped and I knew how that looked because the waitress’s jaw dropped as well. I was thirty-one, five foot five and a hundred and fifteen pounds. I still had the metabolism of a teenage boy. I ate what I wanted and got away with it. I never exercised because I found it all to be just too much work. Would I get away with my eating habits forever? No, but while I had this super power of eating whatever I wanted and not putting on a pound I planned to enjoy it.