Maxwell

 

The taste of her made my lips tingle as I pulled out of the driveway of the hotel. The impression of her body was like a wall of heat molded to my own, like a second skin. It pressed against me, curled around me, and beckoned me back to her. It called out to me, desperate and needy and reminding me of my own need.

 

God, I wanted her.

 

I shouldn’t have kissed her like that before leaving. It had left me with a difficult and uncomfortable hard-on in my jeans, not to mention a sizable distraction. Not exactly how I wanted to go to get my answers, but I’d have to deal with it just the same.

 

Adjusting myself in my seat, I pulled out into traffic and focused on dealing with the idiot drivers on the road. It helped take my mind off Nicole a little bit, allowing me to focus on the things to come. Things that needed a lot more attention than I’d been giving them.

 

Sometimes it was hard to remember I was here to do something when Nicole was around. She had a way of taking up so much space in my mind that I forgot what I was here for. Now that she was tucked safely away from harm in a decent little hotel far enough away from me, I could finally focus on what was going on.

 

It hadn’t taken much for me to consider that the reason people were pointing fingers was because Spin had been set up. The top tier of the Lions had probably been working covertly to reduce a long list of names as to who was responsible for that little fuck up. I wasn’t sure how my name ended up at the top of the list, but I was willing to bet it had more to do with a popularity contest than it did with any sort of evidence.

 

Martin was picky and a prick when it came to who he did and didn’t like and some thing or another got me on his shit list. Unfortunately, Martin was also in good with Spin. Up until a few days ago, I’d thought the same thing of myself, but it was becoming abundantly clear that things were shifting. Somehow, I’d landed myself in hot water without even realizing it was happening.

 

I never would have imagined Spin would be convinced I was a traitor.

 

Now, I had to figure out how to clear my good name before the Lions decided it was better to get rid of a potential rat than to find the real one. I had a couple of options, though none of them were great nor likely to guarantee success, but at least they gave me a shot.

 

If I could get my hands on the list of names Martin and his goonies had collected, there was a chance I could see something they didn’t. Maybe I’d find a name that seemed out of place or a guy who had been acting suspicious lately. There was a chance Martin and the others had been doing the same thing, but I doubted it. Like I said, it was about popularity for them, not reason. I could have been an upstanding, polo wearing, model citizen and they still would have pointed the finger at me if they decided they didn’t like me.

 

In fact, if I’d been something along those lines, I probably would have been the only one on their list.

 

Unfortunately, there was no way to get access to that list. Chances were they didn’t even have the names written down, just clustered in their little brains as they struggled to make connections that didn’t exist. Getting ahold of that list would involve getting one of Martin’s guys to spill their guts about it. And I didn’t think I could make that happen right now. Not because I had any qualms with torturing those bastards, especially after they tried to rape Nicole and kill us both. Didn’t really inspire a lot of comradery on my part. But I couldn’t do that while Nicole was here. I felt as though we were really making progress, heading towards something that might be more than a one-night stand or a desperate run for our lives, but if she started to think I was the kind of guy who would torture someone to get what he wanted…well, I didn’t think we’d last long after that.

 

No, I definitely needed to tread lightly if I wanted to keep her in my life. And I found I did. When I first met Nicole, only a few short days ago, I had thought it was pure lust driving me forward—as it usually was. I was sure all I had to do was quench that thirst to have her body, just fuck her good and hard once and be done with it, but I found it hadn’t helped at all. If anything, I felt as though it made me want her more. I thought about her constantly, her body driving me to madness, but it was more than that. I craved her like a drug, but I also felt something I didn’t admit to lightly: connection. There was something about her that almost felt like it just fit naturally with me. Some sort of piece of her that really belonged to me, and the only way to get it back was to have her at my side.

 

It sounded ridiculous even to me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling just the same. She’d come to mean so much to me in such a short amount of time and I was so possessive of her that I worried slightly what it would be like a week from now, a month, a year. And I never thought that far ahead, mostly because I never considered any woman being in my life that long.

 

But Nicole was different. And not just because our first few encounters were filled with her saying no to me, though that certainly upped the ante.

 

Forcefully shoving thoughts of her from my mind yet again, which was a hell of a lot harder than it should have been, I made a right turn and pulled onto an old street that looked so unused it could have been some back alley somewhere. I hadn’t been out this way before, but I had the address memorized, just in case.

 

The houses along this block were grimy and run down, not necessarily condemned but close enough to it that the current residents were likely just waiting on a notice. They were mostly squatters from the looks of it, but that didn’t much matter to me. I’d grown up in neighborhoods just as bad if not worse, and a piece of shit house didn’t mean much one way or the other in my book. Something could look like crap from the outside and be a palace inside, but even palaces on the outside could be crumbling if you weren’t paying attention. Or worse, if you were only paying attention to the superficial stuff.

 

A couple of my foster parents had been like that. They’d dress us up like little dolls in pretty clothes and then forget the little things, like feeding us and making sure we had school supplies. After all, those things didn’t reflect on them. Well, not until someone like a social worker started paying attention. But they were usually so swamped that we fell by the wayside, slipped through the cracks. I knew a lot of kids were saved and helped and turned out all right in the end, but I never seemed to be one of them. I couldn’t say what it was about me that made people just shrug their shoulders and write me off, but it was part of the reason I’d joined the Lions in the first place.

 

Now, the same people I’d learned to trust because they were the family I never had were doing the same thing as all those foster families and social workers: writing me off.

 

I wasn’t about to stand for that, not in the slightest. First, I’d try to clear my name and do things right and proper. I wasn’t above forgiving people, sweeping things under the rug or bridge or whatever, but I wasn’t about to take it lying down either. If they wouldn’t get in line with what I thought I deserved, there’d be hell to pay and I’d be the devil they were all afraid of.

 

Because that was why they picked me in the end. Fear. They knew I was as volatile and dangerous as my record claimed and this was the only way any of them would dare cross me. I was about to teach them a lesson they wouldn’t forget.

 

When I came to the last house on the block just to the right of a dead end street that looked like it might be where people’s lives also ended, I pulled the car to a stop along the sidewalk. The house itself was just as old and ratty as the rest, but the lawn was green and there was a scraggly flower bed, trying to keep its blossoms perky despite the heat and lack of rain. The colors were a mixture of pinks, blues, and purples, though I had no idea what kinds of flowers they were. If I took a closer look at the house, I could see the shingles were new-ish, or at least redone, the paint not nearly as flaky as the others, just painted in that off-white, grayish-green color to look like the other decaying houses, and the weeds stopped just short of the little square piece of property. At first glance, I’d thought the house was just like all the others, but now that I was taking in the details I saw the little differences.

 

Someone cared about this house and took care of it as a result. It looked like they did it with limited means, but the effort spoke volumes to me. I could understand effort. I understood it all the more in a place where you had little to work with.

 

I waited a long time in the car, thinking things over.

 

Going after Martin’s boys for information on who they had on their list and why wasn’t a good idea. At least not with Nicole around, and they made it pretty clear I couldn’t leave her alone. But this? I wasn’t sure how good of an idea this was either.

 

With a heavy sigh, I finally popped open my door and slid out. Lately, I’d been leaving my jacket rolled up in the backseat, out of view. Since my own family was after me, I couldn’t risk being seen in their leathers. All someone would have to tell them was that they’d seen some guy with a jacket that matched theirs and bam, caught. But today was different. I wanted this guy to know who I was and who I belonged to. It increased my chances of survival about tenfold, so I’d risk it this time.

 

Shrugging the jacket on, ignoring the blazing California sun, I slammed my car door and began the short trek to the front door. When I got there, I raised my hand to knock, fist clenched, but I didn’t even get the chance to knock once. The door opened wide and in the frame stood a man a good three inches taller than me, his shoulders the width of the frame, his hair a short, buzzed gray color, and his eyes narrowed and startlingly blue. There was a snake tattoo twisting up a medieval-looking sword on his right bicep and he was holding a shotgun aimed directly at my chest.

 

Hell of a welcome.

 

“Who the fuck are you and what do you want?” he barked in a deep voice that sounded like it bubbled up from a well somewhere in hell.

 

I paused for a fraction of a second before I said, “I’m Maxwell and I need to know what you know.”

 

The man’s eyes narrowed even farther until they were barely even open at all, yet it was enough for him to examine me it would seem, because for a long, tense moment all he did was stare. Finally, after I had half decided that this burly man was just going to shoot me, he lowered the shotgun. “Get in. I don’t do business on my porch.”

 

Again, I paused for a fraction of a second. Just long enough to think, Or you want me inside so you can claim self-defense when you shoot me and call the police. But whether that was the case or not, I had to risk it, so I stepped across the threshold like I wasn’t nervous.

 

The inside of the house was startling and more noticeable than the front by a longshot. The walls were a deep wood color that matched the floor, glossy and swirling with the natural grain of the tree. It made the interior darker than it might normally be, but beautiful. There were throw rugs that were old-looking, but intricately woven into ringed geometric patterns that brought a little bit of muted color into the place. There were several pictures framed and hanging on the wall or set on tabletops—also a glossy wood colored very similarly to the house, but with a deeper red to them—but they seemed like they were almost generic pictures. Like the kinds of pictures that came with the frames when you bought them, rather than pictures of your own family.

 

The exception was one lone picture of a large, burly man with buzzed hair and a large arm around a pretty young girl with blazing red hair. She was grinning at the camera, but his eyes were set on her, lost in her.

 

I looked away from the image. I wasn’t here to delve into this man’s soul, just pick his brain.

 

“Take a seat,” he told me gruffly, indicating a seat of leather chairs and a matching couch that took up all the space in his small living room. There was a table there, too, subtler than the rest of the furniture and lighter. It looked like it had a flowing vine covered design burned into the surface and I thought I saw an engraving on it, but couldn’t linger long enough on it to know for sure what it said or who it was by.

 

I chose to sit off to the side of the couch, letting my arm rest on its side. He took a seat opposite me, across the coffee table in a large stuffed chair.

 

“Now, you want to tell me what Spin wants? Or should I just send a message saying no now?”

 

I tensed, but didn’t let my nervousness show on my face. Or, at least, I tried not to. I was in a precarious position with this man, because he had a love-hate relationship with the Lions. Mostly because he used to be one of them. “Spin doesn’t know I’m here.”

 

He seemed genuinely surprised by my answer, a single silver brow lifting curiously. “All right. I’ll bite. What are you doing here, then?”

 

“I’m looking for a man named Ruins,” I told him thinly.

 

“Well, you managed to get that part right at least. You found him. Now what do you plan on doing with him?”

 

I cleared my throat. “Five months ago, Spin bought some illegal weapons from a supplier out of the area. It wasn’t unusual, but it went sour. Spin got caught. He went to prison. He’s still there and he’s not too happy about it.”

 

Ruins looked unimpressed with my story and merely sat back farther into his chair, as though I’d lost some of that initial interest I’d had to barter with. “I thought you said you weren’t here for Spin.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

“Sure sounds like it.”

 

I narrowed my eyes at him. I knew I had to be careful about all of this, but I didn’t have a lot of patience these days and the drive down here probably didn’t help. Taking a steadying breath, I cleared my throat and continued. “Spin’s in prison, but I’m the one in trouble. The boys think I’ve got something to do with it and I’m not in the mood for their shit. The only way to get through to Spin is to find out who really set him up.”

 

Ruins contemplated my response, examining me closely. For a long time, he was silent and I worried I’d wasted this trip for nothing. I was beginning to think he wasn’t going to be any help at all, and with my already shortened temper, I decided I was tired of wasting my time. Especially with Nicole at the hotel, hot and bothered and waiting for me. I shoved the thought aside, but still couldn’t stop myself from jerking abruptly to my feet.

 

“If you’re just going to sit there and waste my time, I’m out. I’ve got better things to do with myself than wait for you to quit posturing.”

 

I turned to leave then, and halfway to the door I heard him call out for me.

 

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help.”

 

Counting several beats in my head, just so he didn’t think I was quickly giving in to whatever he said, I finally left the door and walked back to the living room where he was sitting. I stood for a bit, just so I could look into his strangely pale eyes and let him know I meant business. This was my life we were talking so casually about, but more than that, I’d dragged someone else unwittingly into this and now both of our lives were on the line. Maybe that didn’t mean anything to him, but I took that responsibility seriously. If it were just me I would have said screw you to this Ruins guy and been on my merry way. I didn’t need him to give me intel—not really, not when I could surely and without conscience beat it out of one of Martin’s stupid, meat-headed boys—and I wasn’t interested in playing cheap shot posturing games over it.

 

But things were different with Nicole being involved. It meant I had to play things a little bit safer, and that was the only reason I was still here, listening.

 

Finally, I took my seat again. “What do you know?”

 

Ruins straightened slightly only to lean forward, placing both of his elbows on his knees. He looked at me with sharp eyes and the corner of his mouth kicked up in a grin. “You know I used to be a Lion, right?”

 

I folded my arms across my chest and nodded. Yes, I had known that, though there wasn’t a lot else I knew about him. He’d been a Lion long before my time, but I’d heard he’d been part of the same crew as Spin. Probably not when Spin was leader, given Spin’s relative youth and this man’s age, but they’d ridden together. Then something weird happened. Ruins left the club and Spin worked his way to the top. I didn’t know if the two things were related and, right now, I didn’t think I really cared, but there was that lingering, niggling curiosity. What had made Ruins leave?

 

“I used to be the guy they called in to do the jobs no one else wanted to do. The jobs everyone was too scared to do.”

 

Sounds familiar, I thought mildly. In fact, it sounded exactly like me. I stayed away from the drugs and the guns when I could, but if there was a shady job people were afraid of, they’d call me. The drugs I wasn’t interested in because I didn’t like what they did and I sure as hell didn’t want them on my person when the cops showed up. That was mostly because I didn’t want to end up a cop killer if I could manage it, and that was a lot harder when you ran drugs. The arms stuff I did sometimes, but only when the people we dealt with were…dangerous. The kind of deals you maybe didn’t walk away from.

 

I wasn’t afraid of dying, I just didn’t want to spend my life in prison. Spin knew as much, so he chose my tasks accordingly.

 

Part of me wondered if this guy, Ruins, had been the same way. Or was he a different breed of crazy altogether?

 

“So what happened?” I finally asked when Ruins seemed to pause, lost in thought or memories or whatever.

 

He blinked a couple of times in surprise, like he’d forgotten I was still sitting there in the room. “I got out,” he said simply, and while it sounded too boring, too uneventful, I had the feeling those three words were laced with so much more.

 

“Got out,” I repeated. “Why?”

 

“Because sometimes there are things bigger than the club and the money and whatever else you’ve got going on.” He gave me an appraising look, his eyes slipping from my face to my hand which was settled on my bicep. It was my left hand and after a moment, I realized he was staring at the ring on my finger. It was so new I forgot it was there sometimes, like I shouldn’t be wearing this, it’s just not me, but then my mind would flash to Nicole and suddenly I wasn’t so sure.

 

I cleared my throat. “Things? Like what?”

 

“Don’t you know?” He was still staring at that ring and suddenly my mind flashed back to the picture sitting on the tabletop. It was the only one that looked personal to him. It had shown me a glimpse of a beautiful young woman, someone smiling and flirty and laughing—someone he seemed to completely adore. But it was only one picture as far as I could tell and there was no sign of the woman now.

 

Had she been his reason?

 

“Look, I don’t really care who you were or are or what your reasons were,” I told him gruffly, feeling an odd sense that we were dancing around a somewhat dangerous topic. Did I want to know why he left? And did I want to know where that woman was today? Probably not, because I had the feeling if I learned anything about that, my world might shift pretty dramatically. And I wasn’t ready for any of that. “I came here because word is you’ve got intel about what goes on with the Lions. You’re supposed to have the inside scoop no one else has and I want that information.”

 

Ruins slid back into his chair again, once more examining me closely. After a moment, he shrugged his shoulders. “I know some things. Funny thing about being done and retired, people still seem to think you need to know things.”

 

“So what do you know?”

 

He dragged a hand across his face, catching tiny silvery stubble along his jaw and stretching the tan, leathery skin there. “About what went down with Spin? Not a whole hell of a lot,” he admitted hesitantly. It seemed to me there was something he didn’t want to tell me—but did want to tell me, too. He motioned towards my hand. “How long you been hitched?” he asked abruptly, switching topics so quickly that I wasn’t even sure how he’d made the leap.

 

I glanced down at the silver band. Plain, boring, but representative. “Not long,” I answered uncertainly. “Look, this doesn’t have anything to do with—”

 

“You so sure about that?”

 

I paused. “Yes. She’s not…she’s straight, all right? As far as I can tell, the biggest mistake she’s ever made was her ex-boyfriend, and no one would even know except he doesn’t take no for an answer.”

 

“And you think that makes a difference now? With these guys?”

 

I wanted to tell him, “Yes, of course it makes a fucking difference,” but I couldn’t. He was right by insinuating that this had to do with Nicole. My being in her life—even before I’d realized it had grown serious—meant I dragged her through the mud with me. At the time, I wouldn’t have cared much and probably Martin’s boys wouldn’t have cared either. But somehow I’d grown attached to her and, as a result, Martin had targeted her.

 

“If she’s in it, she’s in it,” I finally told him, gritting my teeth. “I didn’t mean to pull her down, but the only way to get her out now is to clear my name.”

 

“And then what?”

 

“What?”

 

He sighed and ran his hand across his face again, a nervous habit it would seem. “And then what? You clear your name, the immediate danger is over. But how long before something else goes wrong? How long before your boys cross someone else’s boys and they’re the wrong boys? How long before you get tagged for something else that may or may not be your fault?”

 

Frowning, I thought about what he was telling me. How long. Not very, if I was being honest with myself. “What are you trying to tell me?”

 

“I’m telling you that ring on your finger is going to get her into trouble every goddamn time whether it’s your fault or her fault or anyone else’s. It won’t matter because she belongs to you.”

 

His voice was low and serious and there was clear enough warning that I sat up a little straighter, a chill slipping down along my spine. She belongs to you. I enjoyed the way that sounded, fiercely so, but I also had to admit there was an undercurrent of worry that went along with that.

 

“Are you saying you’re not going to help me unless…?”

 

He nodded once, stiffly. “I need to know the next time you get into this mess, it’ll just be you.”

 

I understood then exactly what he wanted—and I knew just how little I wanted to do it. Suddenly, I was positive that whatever happened to Ruins and his leaving the Lions was directly related to the woman in the picture. Whether I wanted to think about it or not, his story paralleled my own—which made it all the more poignant that I hadn’t seen the girl around here anywhere.

 

Ruins was asking me—no, telling me—to give up Nicole for her own good, and I didn’t want to do it. But sitting here weighing whether or not he was right, as though I didn’t already know, I slowly came to the only conclusion available: I left Nicole or I walked away empty handed. He wasn’t going to talk if I didn’t agree that from now on I’d be doing this solo.

 

Finally, though there was a strange tenseness eating me up, I forced myself to nod. “Okay. I give my word. Will you tell me now?”

 

He hesitated still, which told me that what he knew didn’t sit well with him, but eventually he finally came clean about it. “Spin always had a tendency to meddle with people he wasn’t equipped to handle. That’s what happens when you think you’re the baddest monster around.” He shook his head, looking both nervous and irritated, strange as that was. “Spin was always like that. Thought playing with drugs and guns and circumnavigating cops meant he was the biggest fish in town. And maybe he was, but when you start looking at other towns, you start noticing there are big fish there, too. Much, much bigger fish.”

 

“What are you getting at?” I asked, feeling impatient.

 

“What I’m saying is that this deal went outside Nevada lines and went past Spin’s territory. He lost control and things went bad and now he’s in prison. You think it’s coincidence? Hell, maybe it’s not even coincidental you’re getting the blame for it.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Either way, Spin was probably set up, but he should have known better.”

 

I frowned. It sounded a lot like Ruins was saying this was a setup, rather than simply an arms deal gone wrong. But who had it in for the Lions like that? “You know who’s responsible?”

 

Ruins lifted his shoulder in what was probably supposed to be nonchalance, but it didn’t hold true. He looked nervous and not too keen on sharing the rest of this with me. “I don’t know who he belongs to, but…” He trailed off, his eyes darting uncertainly out the window, then back to me.

 

“But what?”

 

He leaned forward again and I had to strain to hear his voice, slipping out as barely a whisper. “All I got is a name. Cain.”

 

***

 

Ruins wouldn’t say anything more than that. I didn’t know if he actually had more information on this Cain guy—did he have his own club? Or was he something different? Working with the mob or dirty cops or what?—or if he was just too scared to say one way or the other, but eventually I just had to leave. Ruins was spooked by the mere name of Cain and I wasn’t so stupid as to not know what that name was.

 

Cain, the firstborn of Adam and Eve, originator of evil. Talk about one hell of a name. Either he had the worst kind of reputation I didn’t know about, so maybe it was something local here in California, or his parents were the worst kind of parents.

 

Even mine hadn’t named me after evil incarnate.

 

I considered what the name might mean or why it was important, who he was, what he wanted, and what Spin was doing making deals with him during the drive back to the hotel. I was thinking about other things, too. Like whether or not I should take Ruins’ advice. I didn’t want to, but a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach made me think this wasn’t going to be an option much longer. And what I was going to tell Nicole. She was waiting for me, expecting answers. Amongst other things.

 

She’d want to know what happened with my source. Was I cleared? Did I have what I’d been looking for? And I didn’t think I would be able to explain that I’d sort of gotten what I needed—and didn’t really get anything at all for it. Whether Ruins was useful or not was unclear. Cain, intimidating though it was, was still just a name. It didn’t tell me where to go from there and I had a feeling asking around was going to get me into a lot of trouble. Now, I was wondering if I didn’t need to go back and talk to Spin, somehow circumnavigating Martin and his goons so they couldn’t get to me before I got in to see him, to see what he was doing to get himself landed in prison.

 

How the hell was I supposed to explain all of that to Nicole? She wasn’t supposed to be a part of this and now, somehow, she was right in the middle of it all.

 

I hadn’t reached a conclusion about Nicole by the time I got back to the hotel. Other things were rolling around in my head, distracting me. Most of them were hormones reminding me she had been desperate for me to stay, her body pliant and wanting of mine when I left the hotel earlier that day. My body was telling me I needed to slide my hands over her until she cried out, while my head was trying to convince me Ruins was right and wrong.

 

It was conflicting enough that I wasn’t sure what I would do when I walked in there and saw Nicole, but as I got out of the car, I knew, at the very least, I needed to see her.

 

I used the keycard to open the door, pushing it open to get inside. Though the card worked, the door caught before I could force it. “Nicole?” The door wouldn’t open more than a crack and I saw a chain held it back. I guess I’m lucky she didn’t deadbolt it, I thought wryly. But I couldn’t blame her. She was being cautious and, right now, that was very smart of her.

 

But when she didn’t answer, I got a little nervous. I tried calling to her again. “Nicole? Open the door. It’s me, Maxwell.”

 

There was more silence coming from the room and now I was really worried. Was she gone? Had something happened to her? Did Martin and his boys somehow get ahold of her? Had she had to run? But then I heard the springs of the bed squeak and several moments later, there was a pushing against the door, forcing it closed again. I stepped back and listened. The chain slid, but the door didn’t open again. Frowning, I tried it. The door opened easily and I saw Nicole, dressed in plain jeans and a basic shirt, walk back over to the bed where it looked like she’d been waiting.

 

The place smelled faintly of pizza, which she must have settled on earlier that day when we checked in. I saw a box with several slices still sitting there, the cheese looking lukewarm and congealed. The next thing I noticed was her bag. I hadn’t expected it to be unpacked or anything, since this was only a hotel and it wasn’t like they were moving in, but there was something odd about it. Like she’d taken everything out and repacked. And the way it was sitting there beside the bed at her feet, like she was ready to bolt at any moment.

 

Suddenly, I was nervous. What had changed since I’d been gone? “I found my guy,” I told her carefully, testing out the mood in the air. Her face pinched together and she crossed her arms over her ample chest. My eyes darted down to her breasts, watching how the movement hefted them up and rounded them off, making them look even better than before—not that they needed the help.

 

This was obviously not the correct thing to do, because a second later she refolded her arms so they were on top of her tits instead of beneath them, and her face turned into more of a scowl.

 

“Where’s my phone?” she asked, though it almost sounded more like a statement.

 

I blinked. “What?”

 

“My phone,” she repeated, her voice sounding angrier and angrier by the moment. “Where is it?”

 

“I told you, you probably let it slide between the seats, or maybe you left it at the gas station.” Lies, but she didn’t know that. At least, I thought she didn’t.

 

“I didn’t even have it out at the gas station!” she yelled at me, her voice high pitched, almost like a shriek. Her eyes looked wild with something that was caught between rage and panic. Almost like she was afraid of me. “What did you do?”

 

“I…” I was about to come up with something to tell her, a lie, but her eyes were so big and she was shaking now, that I couldn’t do it. I shook my head.

 

Her voice dropped down to a whisper as she asked, “Did you take it? Did you…did you dump it?”

 

I hesitated for a fraction of a second, then in the biggest moment of stupidity I’d had in a long time, I told her the truth. “Yes. I did.”

 

She was still quiet and almost timid as she asked a simple, “Why?”

 

Running a hand through my shaggy hair, I let out a huff of breath. I didn’t know how this was going to go over, but since I’d already decided on the truth, there wasn’t much point in going back now. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? “That asshole boyfriend kept texting you. I know you said you didn’t want to talk to him anymore, that you weren’t texting him back, but you wouldn’t listen to me. He wasn’t going to back off and you were just going to get all keyed up. I didn’t want you doing something stupid like caving, so I took the temptation out of your hands.” I shrugged, like I didn’t know what else to say. “I don’t want him in your life anymore. Period.”