Page 26 of Mayhem

“What did he do?” I asked.

Echo’s hand tightened.

“Nichlas.”

“I know who you meant.”

She looked toward the door again, and for a second I thought she might refuse. Then her attention came back to me. “He was my boyfriend. He knew what I was doing, knew what mattered, knew what would happen if the wrong people got their hands on it. Then he got scared and handed them my ledger anyway.”

I remembered the pieces I had heard in the corridor. “And ran.”

“Of course he ran.” Her mouth twisted, but the anger underneath it was too raw to be amusement. “That’s the part he keeps dressing up. He was scared, so he chose himself. Fine. People are cowards every day. But now he wants me to believe he did it for me too.”

Something in the way she said it made me understand why she had not killed him earlier. She was still angry enough to hurt him, but there was something tangled up inside that anger. Betrayal only worked if somebody had mattered first.

“You loved him, didn’t you?”

Echo scoffed so hard it almost became a laugh. Whatever reaction I had expected, that wasn’t it. She loosened her fist in my shirt just enough to look at me properly, like I had somehow managed to disappoint her. “I could never love someone like that. He was easy, pliable, and had a dick that worked. You’d be surprised how rare that combination is.”

That made considerably more sense with the woman I had just watched drag him against a wall. There had been anger in her when Nichlas tried to explain himself, but I had mistaken the source of it. Nichlas had betrayed her, nearly gotten her killed, and disappeared somewhere he thought she could never reach him. She had come to settle an account.

I let my gaze move over her face. “Sounds like you should’ve found a better dick.”

Her mouth twitched. “I didn’t know I needed to shop around. He was convenient.”

“And apparently disappointing.”

“I said it worked.” She shifted closer, her fingers sliding higher against my shirt. “That’s not the same thing as impressive.”

I liked the distinction more than I should have. I liked everything about the way she spoke about Nichlas now that I understood what had actually existed between them.

“So all of this is because he betrayed you.”

Echo’s fingers reached the base of my throat. “He handed people something that could’ve gotten me killed, ran, and apparently thought changing schools made us even. I don’t leave accounts open.”

I caught her wrist without moving her hand away. “And here I thought you crossed the country for an ex.”

“I crossed the country because I’m persistent. Nichlas just happened to be at the end of the trip.”

That explanation seemed to better fit the Echo I had watched in the corridor, the one who had looked happier the more frightened Nichlas became. I tightened my hand around her wrist and stepped closer until the remaining space between us disappeared. “Still think you could’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble with better taste.”

“In men?”

“In dick.”

This time she actually laughed, low and brief, and the sound did something immediate to me. “You seem very invested in fixing a problem I didn’t know I had.”

“I’m generous.”

“No. You’re nosy.”

“Also true.” My hand slid from her wrist to her waist, and she let it. More than that, she moved into it, pressing closer until I could feel the heat of her through both our clothes. “But if Nichlas was the standard, you’ve been cheated.”

Her gaze stayed on mine. “That confident?”

“I’ve had time to think about it.”

“Since when?”