Fifteen
The trip was a long one, and it was exactly as bad as he'd worried it would be. The only thing that made him feel any better about it was knowing that he'd go home eventually. The fact that it answered some questions about Jesse's personal life didn't help as much as he might have liked it to. There's something about being afraid of being shot the entire time that makes it hard to really appreciate the value of little things like that.
Jesse let out a long, low breath, closed his eyes, and kept them closed. Evan watched him with a vague, distant feeling. They still had at least five more hours together on the airplane, and as much as Evan didn't hate his friend, together was the last place he wanted to be right now. He wanted to be alone.
No, that wasn't even true. He didn't want to be alone, he wanted to be with Dana. Which was the revelation of a lifetime, because to the Evan that Evan thought he knew, that was impossible. He didn't get attached. He could have a good time. Lately, he'd proven to himself that he could have a better time than even he knew.
But the idea that he'd be more comfortable with a woman than without one? It was absurd. It was impossible. And it was precisely that situation in which he'd found himself, to his very great surprise. Instead of figuring out what that meant, he thought about anything else.
He thought about meeting Jesse's mother. He thought about the fact that he'd been wrong his entire life about the guy. He'd always been a big mystery. How did he get into the school? What were his grades like? Who were his parents?
His parents weren't poor, though. That had been the initial assumption. He didn't talk about his family because they were low on the totem pole. Maybe the numbers in their bank account weren't as high as Colin's dad, but the ability to bring their accumulated wealth to bear on a situation couldn't be compared.
So in the end, for the eldest son of a gang family, the military is a natural choice of career. And when you're out, being a tough guy is just natural. Right up until it's time to take over, you have to be proving that you're too tough to be messed with, Evan guessed.
Then he closed his eyes, too, and tried to think happy thoughts. Thoughts about going home, and about the life he'd have there. It was, after all, only a few more months to the holiday break. Should he take Dana on vacation? He smiled. And then he fell asleep, and had pleasant dreams. Dreams that he, naturally, hoped were going to come to fruition.
But that was only because he didn't know that by then, every single one of them had been entirely derailed already. Days ago. And he couldn't have known, because he'd left his phone behind in the states.
Evan didn't waste time finding out, though. He went straight home. There had been talk of a payoff. He wasn't above taking it. If anything, he was below being paid. He was too tired, too frustrated, too ready to give up. If they'd made it sound like it was in doubt, Evan wasn't sure that he wouldn't have begged.
Which was when he found the note. He read it four times. Then he dropped it on the counter. His muscles bunched up, preparing to throw his fist hurtling through a cabinet door. His arm barely moved. He wanted to do it, but it was nothing. Just meaningless destruction.
As much as he hated himself for putting Dana into a position where leaving was the answer, and as much as he hated that she'd found out when he wasn't even there to try to smooth things over, it didn't matter. It was done now. The least he could do now was protect his security deposit.
He laid down. The plane ride was exhausting. But he'd slept the whole way, so that seemed out of the question. So instead, he stared up at the ceiling, and counted seconds. He made it ten minutes before he stopped feeling sorry for himself.
The anger flared back up. There were only two people in the world who knew about the bet. Two. One of them was lying in his bed feeling sorry for himself. Evan guessed that whatever the other was doing, it was less pathetic.
He ground his teeth together. When Evan had left a week ago, Colin had lived on his fucking couch. Which meant that wherever he was, he was probably coming back. Unless he'd found himself a new place.
Evan grabbed his phone and flipped through the missed texts. There were nearly two-dozen of them, several from Dana. He couldn't bring himself to ignore them. They read out exactly like he'd expected them to. A woman full of hurt and anger. And they'd been sent, he noticed, less than two hours after he'd walked out of the room. His anger only grew.
Colin sent a message. He'd gotten a new place. So long, thanks for letting me crash. And so on. Evan's jaw tightened. There was going to be trouble, now. He knew it, in the way that people know whether or not it's raining. And much the same way, there was little that Evan could do to stop it. He wasn't even planning to try.
The drive to the new place was short. He'd passed by the complex a hundred times. A thousand. Evan weighed his options, thinking about how he was going to get inside. He wanted to get in without alerting Colin if possible. Make it as immediate and personal as it had to be.
Evan waited five minutes for someone to come and get the door open themselves. He didn't see anyone. He didn't get any impression that someone was about to open it at any moment. As far as he could tell, nobody intended to ever use the building except for Colin.
So he closed his eyes, sucked in a breath, and waited for the frustration to pass. His teeth ground together. He'd have to press the button.
But as it turned out, he didn't need to worry. The door wasn't latched properly. He pulled in a vain attempt to bypass their security, and it came open with the greatest of ease. He looked at the door and cursed it for every moment he'd wasted trying to figure out how to get through an unlocked door, and then he stepped inside and got ready for the fight that was about to come.
He didn't plan on the fight coming to blows. He planned on screaming and maybe wrecking a coffee table. But if it came to fists, then he was more than ready.