Page 36 of Playing With Forever

The woman who’s coming to mean a great deal to me.

Then Phil.

Again, respect, but now’s not the time to be stubborn.

I picked up my phone and went to my text thread with Evan: I promise I won’t go see Diane.

His cold response was immediate: Appreciated.

Damn.

I rubbed my temples.

Just damn.

CHAPTER TEN

“I’d ask you how your talk with Josie went, but your face says not good.”

I wasn’t sure what my face said, but I was positive my conversation with Josie went to shit the second I saw Phil in her office, his body language tense and Josie looking ready to roll out and rush to Diane’s side.

“One could say I fucked it,” I admitted.

“How’d you do that?”

“Told her she wasn’t going to the Havarth house.”

Echo whistled, confirming I didn’t just fuck up I did it royally.

Not that I needed his confirmation, but I had it all the same.

“Kent, Sanders, gear up,” Lucas Meyers said on his way past our huddle. “We’re rolling out in ten.”

No sooner had Lucas finished, my pager sounded, as did Echo’s.

“To be continued,” Echo muttered.

Ten minutes later, we were in a police SUV, Echo behind the wheel, and as a team, we rolled out.

It was never-ending.

Unrelenting.

Unyielding.

Drugs never stopped—not being smuggled in, manufactured in our neighborhoods, or being sold and bought.

Addiction—the never-ending cycle of heartbreak and madness.

Greed that led to total devastation.

It had been thirty years since I found Selene dead. Thirty-four years since my family was torn apart by the lies, stealing, and broken promises. Yet, I could still hear the fights between my parents. I could still hear the excuses my father made for Selene, my mother’s demands she go to rehab, my sister screaming. I could still see the track marks on her arms, then ankles. I could still see the scabs and sunken-in eyes. My pretty sister, reduced to a shell of her former self until there was nothing she wouldn’t do to get high—nothing left but a rotting corpse on a dirty mattress with the needle still stuck in her arm.

A wasted life all for a fix.

That fix supplied by some greedy motherfucker who remorselessly made money off the misery of others.

Never fucking ending.