Playing with Fire
His throat worked, his jaw moving back and forth. Whatever he was stoned on had worked its way out of his system completely. He was clearheaded now and aware of the massive pile of shit I’d just dumped at his feet.
“I mean it,” I growled. “I threw one fight for you. I will not extend my good intentions beyond that. I will kill you if you harass her.”
“If I do this, I’ll want those videos back.” He stabbed his finger against the table.
Didn’t this schmuck know how the internet worked?
“I’m keeping the videos as a guarantee,” I said, point-blank.
“How do I know you won’t flip your shit on me?”
“A—because I’m a man of my word.” At least, I was going to be. I’d been shitty about keeping up with my promises. But that was about to change. “And B—because no part of me wants your newborn daughter to grow up with a daddy who’s in jail, even though that’s exactly where you belong. So if I walk away from here after being assured you’ll be getting a legal job, stop the dog fighting, provide for your ex, and leave me and mine alone, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
I sounded like the morality police, but the truth was, uncovering everything that went down in the last few years at the Plaza was going to drag all of us into shit, and deep down, I believed in second chances.
I didn’t trust Kade Appleton a hundred percent. But that was why I had Max. He was going to keep an eye on him. Make sure he was keeping up his end of this bargain.
Kade looked away. “Fine. Fuck.”
“I’ll expect that money in my mailbox in the next twelve hours. Oh, and, Kade?”
I stood up. He turned his head to face me reluctantly. My mouth quirked.
“I mean it. If I hear there was a dog fight with your name on it, or that you got anywhere near my people, I’m killing you, and that’s a promise I won’t break.”
Grace
West and I went for coffee every day that week. Always at the same place—the little diner on the outskirts of town, where Grams went the night he helped me.
They didn’t even have my kind of coffee. I liked cappuccino, which wasn’t on the menu. I noticed West wasn’t touching his filter coffee either. We were just bracketing our cups with our hands, talking.
We talked about everything, other than us.
About how his parents made him swear he wouldn’t fight again, and he’d agreed—and that this time, he intended not to break his word.
About my upcoming visit to Grams on Saturday. How she was adjusting well to the nursing home, even though she had her ups and downs. It had been a struggle to get her to the CT test, but Nurse Aimee called to tell me that by the end of the day, Grams was so exhausted that she went to bed at seven and woke up the next morning brand-new, singing along with Ethel in the breakfast room.
She was now being medicated, and even though it was going to take time to find the right medicine and doses that would work for her, it was a start.
I loved spending time with West. Just talking and laughing, rebuilding what had been broken that day in the cafeteria. And it wasn’t just our daily coffee that pieced my heart back together. West had made it a point to pick me up from my house for school every day—even on days our schedules weren’t aligned—and waited for me outside my lectures.
The new auditorium theater was finally ready, and we moved our final rehearsal into the massive newly built hall.
West carried my backpack and laughed at my jokes, even when they weren’t funny. When I showed up at the cafeteria, taking a seat next to Karlie, he somehow materialized out of thin air to sit beside us. He didn’t even seem to mind when all we talked about was nineties shows. He was content just spending time with me.
It was sweet.
And romantic.
It made me want to kill him.
“I want to strangle him,” I confessed to Karlie the day before A Streetcar Named Desire’s premiere. I truly did. Wholeheartedly. Which was ironic, because I got so freaked out when it was Kade Appleton who’d almost ended his life.
“You’ll need to be more specific. Even though I’m not his biggest fan, he hasn’t done anything shitty recently. Definitely nothing to inspire murdering him.” Karlie flipped through a thick textbook, highlighting the hell out of it.
I plopped down next to her on her bed, blowing a lock of hair out of my face. I was no longer wearing ball caps. Just a healthy amount of makeup. It felt extremely liberating, both for my body temperature and scalp.
“He’s actin’ like the perfect boyfriend.” I groaned.
“Yuck!” Karlie pretended to gag. “How dare he? The bastard.”
“But he is not my boyfriend. He hasn’t asked me out. We haven’t discussed our relationship ever since he got out of the hospital. We’re just … platonic.”
The word tasted like acid in my mouth. I didn’t regret the fact we’d broken up. But I didn’t understand why he insisted on spending time with me and didn’t make any move to become anything more. The ball was in his court now. He was the one who needed to figure out if he was ready for this commitment, and I made it clear to him at the hospital.
“Maybe he is treading carefully. He screwed up pretty royally when you were together,” Karlie suggested, capping her yellow marker and producing a green one. She had a highlighting system that made her textbooks look like a rainbow.
“Maybe he is just tryin’ to make it up to me. Maybe this whole thing is just him being nice to me before he finally graduates and moves away.”
It was West’s last semester before graduation. Technically, he could be out of Sheridan as soon as next month. Nothing kept him here anymore.
The thought made me break out into a cold sweat.
Karlie noticed and slammed her textbook shut, scooting over next to me, wrapping an arm over my shoulder.
“Dang, you really love him, don’t you, Shaw?”
I closed my eyes, nodding.
“I don’t know what to do, Karl,” I whispered. “I can’t move away from the Austin area. Grams is here. But watchin’ him go …” I tried to take a breath but couldn’t suck in enough air. “Watchin’ him go is going to be the end of me.”
Karlie rubbed my arm, perching her chin over my shoulder.
“Sorry, Gracie-Mae. That’s what you get for playing with fire.”