“Are the five minutes up?” he asked teasingly. “Your choice. We can find a room, or you can tell me that you were wrong.”
“You guys are so cute, it’s kind of disgusting,” Kristi said as she walked past us.
Her sudden presence had me jolting back into the arm of the chair, and I wanted nothing more than to smack that triumphant smile off of Liam’s face.
“Not disgusting,” Liam’s mom said from just a few feet behind Kristi. “I love seeing my son this happy.” She grabbed my hand briefly as she walked past us, and murmured Brandon’s words from last night. “Thank you.”
“If your family keeps thanking me for being with you, I’m going to start feeling like I took you on as a charity case,” I whispered when his mom was out of the room, and bit back a scream when Liam pinched my side.
“Five minutes are up, Moon. Your choice.”
I turned my head to look at him, and leaned close enough so our noses were touching. “The banana pancakes were not nearly as good as what you do to me,” I assured him.
Liam’s face fell. “I was hoping to have a reason to find a room.”
“Ha. Sorry, but that won’t ever happen here. You can wait until later.”
AFTER SPENDING THE rest of the morning and early afternoon with his family, Liam and I headed back to my condo so I could check on Kira and Rhys. And even though I told Liam that I would be fine going in alone, he wasn’t having it. He’d already been worried last night about Rhys’s reaction to the news of my decision, but because Rhys had been okay with it, Liam didn’t trust him now . . . He said it was a guy thing.
“He’s not dangerous,” I said before we reached the door. “You need to calm down.”
I unlocked the door and walked in with Liam so close behind me that he kept making me stumble forward.
“Really?” I sighed, then looked around at the empty apartment. “Did he leave? I could’ve sworn that was his truck outside.”
I walked quickly through the living room and, when I caught sight of Rhys’s bag stuffed behind the couch, continued down the hall and into my room. He wasn’t in there or the bathroom.
“Maybe they walked somewhere,” Liam guessed as we returned to the living room, but I shook my head.
“No, I could hear music coming from Kira’s room. Maybe she knows where he went. Hey, Kira,” I called out as I opened the door, and immediately began shutting it when I saw a man’s naked ass as he drove into my sister, closely followed by their screams when they noticed me. “Oh my God, I’m so—wait! What the fuck are you two doing?” I screamed, and swung the door back open when I realized it wasn’t just some random guy Kira had probably found at the gym. It was Rhys.
Rhys and Kira both started yelling their explanations as they tried to cover themselves, but I wasn’t hearing any of the words they were saying.
“Holy shit,” Liam hissed from behind me, and wrapped his arms tightly around my waist. I just wasn’t sure if the action was meant to protect Kira and Rhys from me, or if it was meant to be reassuring to me after what I’d just seen.
“What. The fuck?” I screeched. “What are you doing—just what the fuck?”
“Come on, Kennedy,” Liam whispered, and pulled me away.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them until Liam had me out of the room and had reached around me to shut the door. He dragged me over to the couch and knelt between my knees with his hands covering my cheeks so he could force me to look at him.
“Are you okay?”
“What the fuck,” I whispered again. I didn’t know how many times I’d said it at that point . . . I only knew that I couldn’t stop saying it.
“Shit, Kennedy, say something else to me, please,” he begged. “I need to know what’s going through your mind.”
I pointed behind him toward Kira’s door. “What’s going through my mind is that I just walked in on my ex-husband fucking my twin sister! What the fuck?”
Liam’s eyes and face were a mix of panic, anger, and sorrow. None of which I could take the time to think about at that moment. “I need—” he started, but was cut off by my screaming when Rhys scrambled out of the room buttoning up his jeans.
“What the fuck were you doing with her? How long has this been going on?”
“Kennedy, please, let me explain!” he rushed out.
“Let you explain? Let you explain? She’s my fucking sister, you asshole!”
“You don’t understand, I swear—”
“Oh my God, Kennedy!” Kira cried as she ran out of the room with Rhys’s shirt on. It was inside out and backward, and I had no clue why I was so focused on those details, but I couldn’t stop staring at the shirt. “You don’t understand.”