so she could nurse her emotional wounds in private, she couldn’t until she gave Kel everything she knew so that he could make this right.
Heartsick, she met Kel’s distant gaze. “What do you need from me?”
“Tell me again exactly what happened when he showed up here,” he said.
“He was bleeding. Said he’d been shot.” She swallowed hard, fighting tears. “I tried to get him to go to an ER, but he refused. So I got my first aid kit and did what I could. I told him he had two choices. He could stay and turn himself in, and I’d be there for him, or he could leave and never come back.”
Kel didn’t seem at all moved by any of this. In fact, it was like he was a robot. Zero reaction. “And he said?”
“He said he’d stay,” she whispered. “I ran down to the basement to throw the bloody towels in the washer. While I was down there, I reached to pull my phone from my pocket to text you that Brandon was here and he’d been shot. But it wasn’t there. I didn’t realize until I got back upstairs that he’d taken it.”
He held her gaze for a long beat, but said nothing.
She drew a deep breath and finished. “When I got back, he was gone. And that’s when I knew he’d probably never really considered staying and turning himself in. I think he took my phone with him, which didn’t make sense until I got a PayPal notice on my laptop that my transfer had gone through.”
“What transfer?”
She looked away, she had to. She hated the way he was looking at her almost more than she hated having to admit this part. “He transferred a large chunk of money from my account to his. He had to have used my phone to do it. And then he probably received your text and responded as me to keep you off his tail.”
He stared at her. “He took money from you.”
She nodded.
“How much?”
She closed her eyes.
“Ivy.”
“Twenty thousand,” she said quietly. “It was what I’d been saving for my down payment on the condo.”
He let out a long breath and waited until she looked at him to speak. “Did you call the authorities? Anyone?”
“I contacted PayPal to start a dispute on the transfer,” she said. “I was able to do that from my laptop.”
“Okay, but what about Brandon. Did you call the police when he showed up with a bullet hole?”
She held his gaze with difficulty. “No.”
“You do get that’s why he wouldn’t go to the ER, right? They’d have to report it.”
“You have to know that if I’d been aware that Brandon had hurt someone, I’d have been the first person to turn him in,” she said shakily.
She could see the doubt in his eyes, and her heartsick turned to anger. “I did promise I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“Doesn’t mean you meant it.”
Like a dagger to the heart that she had never meant to give him access to. “If you’re done with the interrogation, I’d really like you to leave now.”
He closed his eyes for a beat. “Ivy,” he said low and pained. Like she’d hurt him.
“I don’t understand what you want from me,” she whispered, hugging herself.
“Honesty.”
“I’ve given you that, even when it hurt and was humiliating,” she said. “But it’s not enough, is it.” She grabbed her bag and keys. “I’m tired of feeling like I’m not enough. For once, I want the person in my life to be what I need them to be.”
“And what did you need me to be?”
“It no longer matters.”
“It does,” he said, sounding very serious.
The words escaped her mouth before she could filter them. “I want someone to have my back without question.”
“I think I’ve done that.”
“Really?” she asked. “Because you think I withheld information from you, on purpose. You accused me of hiding my brother, of lying to you via text.” She held up a hand when he would have spoken. “I know. I get it. I can see how it looked to you, but you have the facts now. At least all the facts that I have. And yeah, I made a mistake, a big one. But that mistake wasn’t lying. It was believing in Brandon when I knew better. And I did know better.”
Kel blew out a breath. “He’s your brother and you wanted to believe in him.”
“It was stupid,” she said. “And I won’t do it again.” Once again. And with that, she walked out of her