Page 78 of He Hate Me

“No.”

“But—“ I realize that I can’t catch my breath. What the hell is wrong with me? If I could only get her understand how I feel about her, I know she’d take me back. It’s not like I’m selling to drug addicts, just a bunch of spoiled rich kids. And it wasn’t even my idea to do this, it was Anton’s.

“So now we’ve lost access to the house. That should be what you’re worried about, not some little girl. If you had been guarding your shit instead of screwing her, Devin wouldn’t have had the opportunity to find your stash.”

“It was in the house the whole weekend. He could have found it any time.”

“But he didn’t get suspicious until you confronted him with those pictures. That girl is the root of all your problems. You need to let her go.” I don’t ask how he knows what happened when we got home on Sunday morning. He has access to all the security cameras plus the extra cameras and microphones he asked me to plant around the house.

“I won’t,” I tell him, and I mean it. If I’m not letting Deja separate us, I’m sure as hell not letting his asshole do it. If he won’t help me get to her, I’ll find another way. “She’s my girl, Anton. That is not fucking changing. I don’t even fucking want you to talk about her.

“If you think about it, though, he got freaked out because we were rummaging around in the basement. He must have been searching my room to see if I found something. You have control of the alarm system—you could disarm it tonight so I can go in and finish the search.”

“That’s not a good idea.”

“Whatever you want is down there.”

“Can you honestly tell me if you went there tonight you could stay away from her room?”

As much as I hate to admit it, he’s right. I can close my eyes right now and smell her skin, imagine the warmth of it chasing away the cold that’s taken over my chest since I saw that look of betrayal in her eyes. I can barely restrain myself now.

“Fine. I’ll take a look at the DVDs tonight, then.”

“What DVDs?”

“I thought I told you. I found a bunch of old DVDs hidden in the wall of the basement. The oldest ones are from ten years ago, give or take. I just got an external drive delivered today so I can see that’s on them.”

“They’re not movies?”

“I don’t know. They don’t have any labels on them just a letter and a date written on the case in magic marker. It could be financial records. It’s not nothing, though. You don’t hide family pictures in a lockbox behind a fake breaker box.”

“It’s not what I’m looking for, but you never know what might be helpful. Let me know what you find, okay.”

“Sure.”

“Do you need me to replace your stash?”

“No, I brought it with me. Told him I’d beat the shit out of him if he tried to stop me.”

Anton chuckles. “I wish I’d seen that.”

“Be glad you didn’t. You put a camera in my girl’s room I’d have to kick your ass, too.”

“Settle down, puppy. I’m glad you’re finding your balls, but don’t forget I’m the guy who’ll slice them off and make you eat them.”

“I will not forget that,” I say. I must be losing my mind. We are searching for evidence of a murder Anton committed when he was around my age. He is not to be fucked with and the most violent thing I’ve ever done is knock out the teeth of some kid who tried to mess with me in juvie. “I need a gun.”

“What’d you need a gun for?”

“You want me to keep dealing, I need a gun. Especially now that I’m living in party house. Everybody’s going to know I got this shit now, and a hundred people come through this house every weekend.”

“You know you’re not a juvenile anymore. You get jammed up with a gun and you’re going away for a while.”

“So if they steal from me, you’ll just give me more free of charge?”

“All right,” he says. “Come by tomorrow. I’ll have something for you.”

After my nerves have settled, I go down to the front door and retrieve my package. When I get back to the second floor, I see a girl at the other end of the hallway slipping through the door of the servant’s stairs that lead to the kitchen. I don’t get a good look at her except I can see she’s small and brown with a stubby ponytail sticking off the back of her head. She doesn’t look like the type of girls that usually come over, and I didn’t figure Monday at 4:00 pm was going to be hopping, but what do I know. Rourke is basically a wildcard. She could be anybody.