Emily

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I didn’t call him.

I wasn’t going to call him.

I left Luke that morning and went to the salon, driving the car he’d fixed for a measly hundred bucks. Maybe he’d been generous because he didn’t need any more money. Maybe he already had plenty from moving stolen cars through the body shop business. Maybe he had wads of money stashed away, and more coming in. Maybe his brothers did, too. I didn’t know, did I? I didn’t really know Luke at all.

But I didn’t think that was true. I didn’t think Luke had a bunch of illegal money stashed away. I didn’t think he’d come home and taken over for his no-good father. I didn’t think he’d been fencing stolen cars by day while he was sleeping with me at night. We just don’t know what to fucking do, he’d said that night when the cops were parked at the end of his driveway. The only time he’d talked to me about it even a little. He’d sounded torn. Like he could go in one direction, or he could go in another.

The question was, which direction had he taken?

I worked all day at the salon on autopilot, barely registering anything around me. When I went home, Mom wasn’t home. With the big bust at Riggs Auto, she was probably working late. And I hadn’t heard from Lauren, either; she was busy with her own life. So was Dad.

I rummaged the fridge for leftovers and watched TV alone. In my mind’s eye, I pictured where Luke was right now. Option one: in jail. Option two: far away somewhere, driving his Charger, the trunk loaded with cash. It was a silly Hollywood image, but I had it anyway.

I tried to picture a third option, but every time I came up with something awful. Luke shot by cops; Luke hurt somehow; Luke dead. My silent phone was torture. If Luke was hurt or dead, no one would call me, because no one knew we were together. No one would know I cared.

We had gone wrong somewhere. Was it my fault? His? From the minute he picked me up by the side of the road I’d been in a spin, and not just because my life was a temporary mess. If I’d come home that day and told everyone that Luke was my boyfriend, if I’d let everyone in town know, like I now knew I wanted to do—would things have turned out differently? Or would everything have happened exactly the same?

I picked up my phone a thousand times. Where are you? I typed it over and over, but I never hit send. Because what if I didn’t like the answer? What if he didn’t answer at all?

I lay on the sofa as the hour got later and later. I turned off the TV, tired of pretending to watch it when there was no one to fool. I curled on my side and lay there, sick to my stomach, tears leaking onto the sofa cushion beneath my cheek.

I couldn’t do this. This was why I’d pushed all thoughts of Luke into that closed-door room for eight years—because right now everything hurt. I’d tried so hard to find a guy who wasn’t like Luke. A guy who was normal, who had a job and a regular upbringing, who wanted normal things, who wasn’t a rebel and a wanderer and probably a criminal. Because I’d always known that loving Luke would be hard, that it would come with hard decisions, and that those decisions would hurt.

I loved him anyway.

But I wouldn’t call him. Because he could ruin me.

I drifted toward sleep, and the last thought I had before I went out was that I didn’t think that Luke had run.

He could have, but I didn’t think he had. I’d bet my life on it.

And then I was gone.

I woke up to the sound of the coffee maker percolating. I rolled over on the sofa and saw that it was still dark out.

I stood and walked to the kitchen, where the light was on. Mom was there, fully dressed for work, pouring herself a cup of coffee. The clock on the stove said it was five a.m.

Mom turned and looked at me. She took in what a wreck I must have looked like. “Sweetie,” she said.

And I broke. I finally broke. “What happened?” I said, my voice cracking. “Please tell me.”

Mom sipped her coffee, watching me over the brim. In that moment she was a mom, and she was also a very good cop at the same time. She’d always been able to pull that off, being a mom and a cop at once. “You’re worried about Luke,” she said.

I stared at her.

She nodded, sipped her coffee again. “We have a lot to talk about,” she said. “Starting with the topic of Luke Riggs.”

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“The last I saw, he was fine,” Mom said.

I forced the words out. “And when was that?”

“Yesterday, in the interrogation room at the station.” She watched my face. “Someday, my girl, I’m going to find out exactly what you knew and when you knew it.”

This was the situation Luke had tried to avoid: me having to choose between Mom and him. I rubbed my fingers over my cheeks, feeling the dried-up tear tracks. “I knew that he came home and found out what his father was into,” I said. “He wouldn’t tell me anything else. That’s the truth.”

Mom watched me carefully, then sipped her coffee again. “Trying not to put you in the middle,” she said. “He really is a smart boy. I would never have guessed that Mike Riggs could have a son who was that smart. Good-looking, too.”

Was Mom complimenting him? That couldn’t be right. “Is he in jail?” I asked, because I couldn’t take not knowing anymore.

“No,” Mom said. She frowned into her coffee cup, not noticing how I sagged with relief. “In fact, he was rather wonderful.”

“Wonderful?” I couldn’t have heard right.

“Yes, I know,” Mom said. “The Riggs boys are many things, but wonderful isn’t one of them. But I’m a big enough person to admit that he sat in that interrogation room and handed me a huge chunk of my investigation. If he’s telling the truth about all of it, I’ll likely get promoted. At the very least, he made my job much, much easier.”

It sunk in, what she was saying. Luke hadn’t left, and he hadn’t been arrested. He’d told Mom everything he knew.

It could have gotten him arrested. If he ratted on the wrong people, it could have gotten him killed. It still could. And he’d done it anyway.

And he’d told Mom about him and me. He had to have said something, because she knew.

“What did he say about me?” I asked.

“You’ll have to ask him that,” Mom said. “But you know, I’m not a cop for nothing. From what he said, and from how you look right now, I think you two have known each other for longer than two weeks. Am I right?”

Oh, God. It was going to come out, all of it. Including the beginning of the story, when we were eighteen.

And that didn’t scare me anymore. Instead, I felt a quiet rush of something behind my breastbone. Excitement, maybe. And a little bit of hope.

“I’ll tell you everything,” I said to her. “I’ll tell you the whole story.” Except for the explicit sex parts. “But I’ll do it later. Right now I’m going to go clean up.”

“Yes, and I have to go to work,” Mom said. “I got in late and I’m starting early Time to put the bad guys away.” She smiled. Her marriage might break up and life might happen to her daughters, but Mom’s work had always made her happy. She was born to be a cop. She was a fucking hero.

“I love you, Mom,” I said, my voice cracking.

“I love you too, honey.” She touched my cheek. “Try not to wreck him. I meant what I said. He really is good-looking.”

“Mom.”

“I’m a cop. I have powers of observation. And if you two work it out, ask him to dinner.”