The morning of Valentine’s Day when he approached me at the Emporium, Neil had been wasted. He wasn’t handling seeing me again so well, especially not with Calvin around at the same time. He’d been drinking and said a lot of things he later regretted.
He’d followed Brigg in his car when he overheard me asking for a ride to Calvin’s precinct. He told me that he had intended on giving me a bit more of his mind. It was only when Brigg didn’t go to the precinct, Neil said something inside him sobered up. He didn’t know what was happening but could only think to tell Calvin where I was being driven.
If he hadn’t been drunk when he shot Brigg and saved my head from being blown to pieces, she’d likely be deader than a doornail.
And Neil didn’t want me back, which was more than fine by me. He was angry, bitter, violent, and in need of help—but what mattered was that Neil was innocent.
Calvin and Quinn told me I hadn’t been alone in the belief that he’d been involved, but it didn’t make me feel better. Neil had once been someone I cared for—and then to believe him able to commit such horror….
All I could do was apologize and hope… someday he’d find his own happy ending.
“THIS ONEis nice,” Max said. He turned his laptop on the table toward me to point at an apartment for rent. “It has a fireplace. That’s pretty fancy.”
It had been about two weeks. I was still living at Pop’s, but not having my own place was making me climb the walls, so Max had come over on our joint Monday off to help with my new humble abode search.
I frowned. “No laundry in building.”
“You’re making this impossible,” he said, turning the computer back to him. “Laundry in building, walk-up, no ground floor apartment—there’s nothing listed at the price you want.”
“My old place was rent-controlled,” I protested.
“Look at something outside of the Village.”
“It has to be walking distance to the Emporium.”
Max growled. “Dude, just get a cot and move in there, then.”
“I’m almost at that point—don’t joke.”
“I thought you loved your dad?”
“I do! But you try being thirty-three and needy for your guy, only to be cockblocked by your charming father at every turn. I can’t be thrown up against the fridge and properly manhandled when my dad is constantly a room away.”
“Please stop, this is too much information,” Max begged.
“Well, now you understand how important this apartment is.”
Max grumbled something under his breath but turned his laptop back and started clicking away again.
“Thanks for helping me,” I added.
“Yeah, yeah. You know I love you, even if you’re a pain.”
“Now you’re going to make me blush.”
A bark on the stairs indicated that Pop and Maggie were back from their outing.
I glanced up when the front door opened. “Hey, Dad.”
“Hey you two,” he called cheerfully while taking Maggie’s leash off. “Kiddo, Calvin is downstairs. He asked me to send you outside.”
I perked up. “He doesn’t want to come in?”
Pop shrugged, busying himself with his winter clothes.
“Er—all right.” I stood. “I’ll be right back, Max.”
“No problem. I’ll just be here, searching for an apartment that exists only in your deepest fantasies.”
