“He’s good, but not good enough?” James inquired, his own curiosity getting the better of him. At that, I did smile.
Neither of us wanted to know each other, but through circumstances outside of our own control, here we were—digging when we shouldn’t be, filling our boredom and hollow stomachs with rotted nuggets of information about the other.
“No one person is worth living for, James.” I looked at him as I said it, noting the way his focus was completely tuned into the morose sentiment as it left my lips. As a firm reminder, I tagged on, “You should know that after what your bride-to-be put you through.”
James grunted in response. “I just don’t know why she kept the ring. Of all things.”
“To remember you by?”
The slant of his eyes morphed jagged. “Well, I hope they fucking buried her with it.”
“Do you really think she’s dead?”
He shrugged. “Who fucking knows. I haven’t heard from her since, and the people she got involved with are dirty.”
“Ooo.” I wriggled my eyebrows at him. “How dirty are we talking?”
James sawed his jaw from side to side, cutting me a piercing glance. “Dirty enough that you don’t come out of it without being covered in innocent blood.”
I hummed and nodded, reminded again of the odd tapping of something at the back of my mind. It was peculiar, like a nagging itch, and I couldn’t quite find the right spot to scratch out the feeling.
“Welp. Sounds like she was a real bitch, Reyes.”
“For the last three years, the word bitch is also known as Rebecca to me.”
In that one name, that tapping in the back of my head became a full-blown sucker punch.
“What?” I gasped, snapping my head to James.
Just as I did, my bad foot caught on a rock, and my ankle rolled as I toppled forward.
“Fuck!” Pain gashed up and down my foot, thumping with a heartbeat of its own as I grit my teeth through the agony. Hands latched on either side of me, keeping me upright and giving me something to lean on.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I hissed, throwing my head back and cursing the fucking sun and hidden moon for the day that they had created in rotation.
My head was tail-spinning between the pain and the revelation James had just shot through my world, and I couldn’t keep up. What were the chances that there were two Rebecca’s who’d come from a background of undercover work for the F.B.I. and were now saddled up with the families they’d infiltrated?
Pretty fucking unlikely was my guess.
“Are you done being stubborn so I can carry you?”
My eyes cranked open, James’ face eclipsing the sunshine above me with his pompous expression. “No.”
A shaking breath sucked between my teeth as what felt like fifty goddamn nails drilled into my ankle as I tested my weight on it.
“Motherfucker!”
I let out a feral cry, ferocity vibrating my vocal cords as I realized there was no fucking way I was getting anywhere on this useless foot now.
Smug above me, James cracked half a smile.
“You just have to say please, you know.”
That half-smile blew out to both cheeks as a low growl hummed in my chest.
“You know what? I’ve changed my mind. I can starve. Just leave me here.”
A sharp curse blew beneath James’ breath, the wind carrying it away as he lifted his shaking head back to me.