Watching Megan storm off was too much déjà vu. But that was my mistake. I shouldn’t have taken her out on that date. She may have been way too jealous. At the same time, it was so fucking cute the way she stood up to me and spoke her mind.

Cruella, on the other hand—the girl she was so riled up over—wanted my friend by any means necessary. She was willing to go through me for my help to get there. She may have been pretty on the outside, but the girl was empty on the inside. That used to be appealing.

Now a smoking hot chick with a rack that could stop traffic and a mouth to match was driving me insane.

“That went well,” one of the wise asses at the table said.

“Leave it.”

I sat and looked up a second to get a final view of her from behind before she disappeared.

“So who is she?”

Thank fuck Tade wasn’t here.

“No one to you.”

The guy lifted his hands. “Hey, she’s in the no-target zone. I get it.”

It wasn’t a surprise to him when I didn’t respond. I was one to keep my thoughts to myself. Instead, I shoveled tasteless food in my mouth until I left. I ditched my next class and went to the gym. I wanted to pound the bag, but my knuckles were still sore. Because l covered them in gloves, no one had asked me about what happened. Instead, I bench pressed until my arms were putty.

“That was smart,” my best friend said. I opened my eyes as he stood above me. “What’s going on with you?”

“I plan to take you on for stroke seat,” I said.

My babysitting him meant I ended up on the rowing team. My high school football teammates would have gotten a laugh out of that one. Though rowing wasn’t a pussy sport. The stroke seat was the strongest guy on the crew and the one that set the pace. A coveted spot. The other hot seat was the coxswain, the guy that faced the crew and called out the orders. I was too big for that seat. As of now, I was middle crew, one spot behind Tade.

“In your dreams,” he said.

“Trust me, you’re not even remotely in my dreams.”

He laughed and I cracked a smile for the first time that day.

“Is it that brunette that keeps your right arm in good condition?”

I flipped him off from said arm.

“No, but I’ve heard you singing love songs in the shower about her friend.”

It was his turn to give me the bird.

“Let’s blow this place and go fishing.”

I nodded. That sounded like a dream. Tade knew how to be quiet and not ask a lot of questions. We could sit on his boat for hours and say nothing but still know if we needed to talk, we could.

“Sounds like a plan.”

A few hours later, after a few beers, our tongues had loosened. As we’d walked back to our dorm, we’d been laughing about when I first met him.

“I remember walking in and seeing you there. You looked ready to fight me over the bed you chose,” he said.

“Yeah, you were some rich boy who was used to getting his way.”

His eyes narrowed as we stumbled to our door. “How did you know I was rich?”

Inwardly, I groaned. I’d said something I shouldn’t. “You looked rich in your preppy clothes.”

My save worked. He smiled again. “My mother,” he said with a laugh.

Then my phone buzzed. As he tried to unlock the door, I checked my screen. All it said was tomorrow, which was probably too much if our phones were tapped. Dad was being reckless and he would bring me down with him. I sobered knowing although he said tomorrow, he meant tonight.

Tade finally got the door opened and I pointed.

“I’m going to lie down.”

He bobbed his head. “I think I should, too.”

I would sleep off the remnants of my buzz and then I would leave late in the night. I’d carry little to nothing with me in case it was the night I ended up in jail for good.

When my alarm went off, I cursed. I would love nothing more than to roll over and go back to sleep. I forced myself up and out.

The road to my house was empty. We had to be sunk. The Feds were giving us a false sense of security.

I parked in the driveway. As I hopped out, the interior of a car parked across the street lit up before going dark. The footsteps were loud in the thundering silence of the neighborhood. I waited on guard. Though I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

“Gavin.”

I turned to face him.

“Special Agent Davies.”

The man, who was around my father’s age, nodded at me. “You can still walk away from this.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d made me an offer. “Can I?”

Though I didn’t want to live the life predestined for me, that didn’t make me a rat. I also wouldn’t send my father to jail. Those hours I’d been in juvie years ago were enough for me to know he wouldn’t survive.

“You can. Just get in your car and go back to your dorm.”

“I can’t do that. Besides, I’m just here to check on my dad. There’s no law against that.”

“Gavin—”

I held up a hand. “My dad is all I have. Would you leave your dad to fend for himself?”

“That’s different.”

Shoving my hand in my pocket, I cut him off. “It isn’t. He needs me.”

I turned from the well-meaning agent.

“Do you really want to give up on a chance to work with Boeing?”

That made me stop. How did he know about that? Slowly, I turned.

He held my gaze like I should read between the words he spoke. “I know about the job opportunity. You have what it takes to make something of your life. Don’t throw it all away.”

There were a million questions to ask. Was there a listening device or a plant in my class? Was he somehow in on the offer as an incentive for me to rat out my dad and the assholes who held his life and mine hostage? In the end, the answers didn’t matter because my actions would still be the same.

“Goodnight, Agent Davies.”

I turned and walked inside while the man behind me sighed. I wasn’t sure what I was walking into. A raid could happen any second. I could be forced face down on the floor and cuffed like a criminal. But I couldn’t turn my back on my father. He’d done something incredibly stupid years ago. And he’d paid for it every day of his life. What Davies didn’t understand was that Dad had done everything for me. They held his life over me when I was old enough to be useful to the family. I was certain they did the same to him using me. Ratting him out would only mean getting us for sure dead. Life in prison wasn’t a cakewalk, but we’d be alive.

The door squeaked, announcing my presence. It was dark inside and I didn’t turn on any lights. Everything I did or said was being listened to, but I didn’t much feel like playing the game tonight.

I found Dad in the basement wrapping stacks of money in Saran wrap. I pointed to the ceiling when he glanced up at me. He nodded and we didn’t speak. He used his finger to indicate the money ready to go.

Silently, I took it upstairs. Though it wasn’t like I was doing anything wrong. People were allowed to have money in their house. There wasn’t a law that stated it had to be in a bank.

I made it to the garage door and opened it. The hinges weren’t rusted like the front and back door. Dad kept this one well oiled. It opened silently as I moved through the house. With no lights, only heat sensors would be able to track me here. I hoped they hadn’t thought us that much of a threat to use them.

The false bottom of dad’s older model pickup truck lay against the wall. A nightlight was plugged in that didn’t illuminate the entire space. It only allowed enough visibility so no one would trip on the tools chest and table I used for working on my Mustang, which was parked in the other slot.

As quietly as I could, I stacked the bills. The hidden space in the bed of the truck was only one stack deep, enough to fool anyone into thinking it didn’t exist during a basic inspection.

Before dawn, the half a million dollars was loaded and ready. I crashed in my old room. Though it took me a long time to fall asleep. My mind kept drifting back to Megan and the hurt expression I’d put on her face.

I covered my eyes with my forearm, hoping to block memories. At four o’clock in the morning, I had a weak moment when I wanted to call and apologize. She deserved that much. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that she wouldn’t appreciate me waking her up.

Eventually, I sank into dreams, or rather a nightmare. Megan stood waving at me with one of her huge smiles until her chest bloomed with red and shock wiped all the happiness from her face.

I woke with my heart pounding, either from the dream or from the fact that Dad stood over me. It felt like it’d been only minutes after my eyes shut. He pointed to his watch.

“You headed out?” I said, knowing I was most likely being recorded.

“The crabs don’t wait.”

There was resignation in his eyes that scared the shit out of me.

“You need me to go with you?” I said, trying to disguise my panic.

Silently, he shook his head. “Nah, I’m good.”

“I can go and blow off classes for the day.”

Again, his head swayed side to side.

“I might be old, but I’m not dead.”

What he hadn’t said was yet.

He left and everything in my being wanted to go after him. Knowing him, if I did, he would only say something incriminating to bring down hell on just himself. I had to hope that he could pull this off.

The tricky part would be getting the money out of the truck and on the boat. He’d assured me he had it covered, but wouldn’t tell me how. It was still dark yet. If he wasn’t followed, it would be a breeze. He and I both knew how unlikely that was.

I was on my feet and pounding down the stairs. Dad turned in alarm. We weren’t the touchy, share-your-feelings types. But I hugged my dad for the first time in years.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” I whispered in his ear.

It felt like he was leaving with a death sentence.

He clapped my back and said just as softly, “No matter what happens, know that I’m so proud of you.”

Then he was gone. I stood staring at the closed door and listened as the garage rose, waiting for the sounds of sirens or shouts from police. But nothing came.

An hour later, Dad hadn’t called to say all was okay. Then again, he didn’t normally. We had to act like everything was normal. So I went back to the school and onto class.

Later that day, I got a text from him saying that he’d gotten the five bushels for the market. Everything had gone as planned though we weren’t out of the water. The boss would eventually call on us again. The job Dad did was never-ending.

I pushed through Tade’s door.

“You in?”

There was a bonfire in the middle of an empty field near the school. I wanted out of my head and to stop thinking about Megan and her gorgeous curves.

He nodded. It wasn’t like there was much to do around the school. We walked over. It wasn’t too far and we passed Megan’s dorm on the way.

She wasn’t there because she stood in the field near the glow of the fire with that dude I told her wasn’t good enough for her. He stared goofily at her, annoying the hell out of me. I had the urge to punch him in the face as his eyes kept darting to her tits.

“What happened?” Tade asked out of nowhere.

He’d caught me staring at her.

“She’s not for me,” I muttered and took a swig of my drink, keeping my eyes on her.

“Then why are you staring at her?”

The plastic cup I held crushed in my hand. Foaming beer ran through my fingers and I tossed it into the nearby bin.

“When you admit you’ve got it bad for her friend, we can have sharing time,” I said before adding, “This party blows.”

The thing was if I had it bad for Megan like he implied, he was in the same boat. He’d been staring at Reagan as much as I’d been checking out Megan.

* * *

Though Megan hadn’t noticed me, all her smiles were for that asshole—or tosser, as Tade called them from his time living in England.

I walked away before I caught a murder change. Somehow I bet that would be bad for my resume. The beer soured in my gut but I went and got another.

Then I watched like the masochist I am because I couldn’t force myself to leave.