Find Me (The Found Duet #2)(12)
Author: Laurelin Paige

It was an easy enough situation to mend with her. I hugged her as she got in her car and whispered, “I couldn’t say anything, Sissy. I’d wanted to. But I couldn’t. You kept Boyd a secret for months too. Because you had to.”

It took a few seconds, but then she softened. “You’re right. I do know. And I understand. I just wish I could have been there for you.”

“I know. Me too.”

She rode off and then I had to deal with the more difficult task—Chandler.

“Let me take you home,” he said, reaching for my waist.

I brushed him away. “Thank you. But I need to be alone right now.” I stuck my hand out to hail a cab.

Chandler moved around behind me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think the last thing you need is to be alone right now.” He wrapped his arms around me and I tensed.

I shrugged him off forcefully. “Stop it!”

A taxi pulled up and I headed toward the door. “Don’t,” I said sharply as Chandler tried to follow me. “We’re over. I meant it.”

I slid into the backseat and shut the door, but I still heard his last words before we drove away, “I don’t believe that, Gwenny.”

I slumped against the window, wishing I felt bad about Chandler. But I was too consumed with who-knew-what feelings about JC to have room for anything else.

At home, I grabbed my laptop and headed to my bed without bothering to change out of my clothes. JC had told me very little about Corinne’s death. Or nothing, rather, except that she’d died in December five and a half years ago, and that it tore him up so much that he’d had the date tattooed on his forearm. From the news, I’d learned that he’d witnessed the crime along with two other people—two other people who had since been found dead. The realization of how much danger he’d really been in made my chest ache and my stomach queasy.

No wonder he’d had to hide. Yet, even understanding that as well as I did now, I was also irrationally pissed that he hadn’t told me more, because now I was lost and left out of a very important part of his life.

I opened Google and stared at the screen wondering where to begin. After a few minutes, I typed his name into the search box and pressed enter. Instead of choosing the first result that came up, I skimmed through the headlines until I landed on one that read Who is Justin Caleb Bruzzo?

Yeah. Exactly.

I clicked on it. When the page loaded, I was struck first by a picture of JC that filled the width of the screen. He looked nearly the same, but younger, some of the familiar smile lines missing from the edges of his eyes. He wore faded jeans and a plain black T-shirt, so I could see the ink was absent from his forearm, confirming that the pic was from before Corinne’s death. But even if I didn’t have that to help date the image, it was obvious from the woman who sat at his side, her hand woven through his. She had dark skin and big eyes, tight black curls, and a large diamond on her left hand.

I hadn’t known she’d been black. It was strange to think of JC in a bi-racial relationship. I wasn’t against them. It was just that I wasn’t black. I wasn’t petite like her either. Nor was I feisty or fun like her outfit and the spark in her eyes suggested. Every difference between Corinne and me represented something else I didn’t know about JC. I’d assumed he’d preferred curvy blondes because he’d gone after me. I’d assumed he’d liked serious girls with hard-to-penetrate walls.

How could the same man who’d been engaged to a woman like this one be interested in a woman like me?

My chest pinched.

“I loved her,” he’d told me once. “Now I love you.”

It had been easier to believe when I’d been with him. Easier to believe when I wasn’t face-to-face with how happy he had been with her.

This was probably an engagement picture, I told myself. They’re designed to make the couple look happy.

The thought didn’t comfort me.

I forced my eyes away from the image and read through the article.

Justin Caleb Bruzzo is the state’s secret weapon in the trial against Ralph Mennezzo, it began, and included a link to another article that described the crime. I didn’t click on it and continued reading about the man who had the potential to put the killer in jail.

Justin Bruzzo grew up in New Hampshire, the only child of highly successful criminal lawyers, Janet and Telford Bruzzo. His childhood was spent in various private schools, and his high IQ and diligent studying allowed him to graduate early. Justin then went on to Yale where he received a double major in Economics and Piano. Telford suffered a fatal heart attack during this time, but it didn’t slow Justin down. By twenty-four, he’d finished at Yale, leaving with a joint masters in business and law.