A pause.
“What happened?”
“With Carter.”
“Shit,” she mutters. “How bad?”
“Noah showed up at the hospital the other day with a file folder on him,” I say, and Whitney lets out a long sigh. “I had it here and Carter slept over. He saw his entire criminal history just lying on my coffee table, like that’s what I choose to read before bed or something.”
“Hang on, hang on!” Whitney interrupts. “Slept over?Did you fuck him? Oh, don’t look at me like that, sir. Are you afraid of women being sexually active?”
I slap my hand onto my face. Normally, I’d find this all funny, but my heart is racing and I feel horrible for that look I put on Carter’s face.
“No, I was just drunk, so he slept on the couch,” I grumble. “Shit, Whit. How bad does this look?”
“I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” she says. “If you explain the truth of it, I’m sure he’ll understand. Noah sticks his nose in our business more than he should. Remember Pete? Noah would pull him over every time he saw his car on the road and give him a hard time. He’s a fucking pest.”
“I shouldn’t have taken it. I should have just told Noah to get fucked.”
“I mean, he did break a guy’s nose when he barely knew you,” Whit counters. “We’re women. There is nothing wrong with a little background check. If someone’s going to murder us, it’s going to be a man. Statistics are even higher if that man has a violent past or if he’s romantically involved with us.”
Okay, that’s true, but I still hated that expression on his face. He looked at me like he expected more of me. Like I was the one person who didn’t stare at him like he was some violent fiend who can’t stop hitting people for fun. Like I was the one person who finally understood him. Or, like he was disappointed in himself for being someone who scared me enough to have those papers in my home. That one hurts even worse.
“I have to go.”
Because he’s not. He doesn’t scare me.
“Okay, text me.”
I hang up and immediately dial Carter.
He answers quickly. “Hello?”
“Carter.”
“Red.”
“Can you come back here?”
He pauses for a second. “Is something wrong?”
I run my hand through my hair. “Are you too far? Just…quickly. Can you swing back around?”
“Arden, what happened?”
“Nothing, I just…If you don’t have somewhere to be. Please.”
“I’ll be five minutes.”
I’m waiting on the curb when his G-Wagon pulls up. He gets out of the car and walks around it quickly, dark glasses on his face, brow furrowed in concern.
“Arden—?” He pulls the sunglasses off his nose to gauge what’s wrong.
I launch myself at him. I wrap my arms around his neck and hug him in a very real, very vulnerable way. It’s the only thing that feels like the right thing to do. Carter freezes completely for a moment, stunned by the initiation of contact, but after a breath, he winds his arms around my back and squeezes me gently to his chest.
“I know you’re a good person,” I say quietly, my voice trembling. “Noah does that for any guy me and the girls get involved with. I didn’t see anything in there that scared me, and I don’t think you’re the same person you were when you were younger. Okay?”
His hands still on my back.
