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“Picking up a basketball game with people who can beat us!” Kill grins. “That will be fun, right? People who don’t know your moves inside and out?”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Liam rolls his eyes. “You don’t know all my moves.”
“Yes I do!”
“Do you think Lola will come with us?” Timothy pipes in, asking the question we were all somehow afraid to ask.
“That’s going to be up to her,” I answer softly.
A silence falls across the room. This was definitely a strange night. Definitely something we knew would come eventually, but didn’t expect so soon. In the back of our minds we always knew that, someday, Carty was going to change his mind. We were going to have to face the music eventually.
But there he is, sulking on the sofa. I’m not sure if he doesn’t hear us, or if he is simply pretending we don’t exist.
“We will just have to ask her,” I suggest. “Now that she has the book deal, I imagine she’s got a lot of work to do. She offered to do interviews, too, so we wouldn’t have to. But that’s going to mean a lot of time, a lot of dedication…”
“I wouldn’t mind doing an interview,” Liam shrugs. “I’ve got a lot to say. People don’t even know. I got some deep thoughts.”
“You don’t have any deep thoughts,” Kill sighs dramatically. “You have just been alone for so long you don’t know what thoughts are anymore. Give me a break.”
“Hey, where is Lola, anyway?” Liam asks.
I glance toward the bathroom. “In there.”
“Wow, she’s been in there really long time,” Timothy observes.
Shrugging, I walk over to the sofa and sit next to Carty.
“Are you okay?” I ask him in a low voice.
He holds his drink up in his fingers, turning it halfway as he stares into its depths.
“Thanks for everything you did,” he says in a low voice.
“I didn’t do anything,” I shrug. “Lola arranged this whole thing. Or Nance did, maybe. Didn’t have anything to do with me.”
He glances at me sidelong. “No… I mean everything. Thank you for everything,” he reiterates. “You’ve got to believe me that I thought I was doing the right thing for us. For all of us.”
“Oh, that…” My voice trails off.
I am not entirely sure what to say to him. The truth is, we all believed he was right. Though we didn’t know the extent of the plan—that we would be dropping off the face of the earth entirely—we knew that Carty needed to be protected. We knew that Whitney was bad news. And we knew, overall, that money was the least important thing about us. As long as we were together, money could come and go.
“You know we would do anything for you,” I sigh. “There was never any question.”
“I’m a very lucky man,” he scowls, staring at his drink.
Somehow, I don’t think he believes it. But he is. We all are. Even though Whitney made an appearance to remind us of how dangerous outsiders can be, she’s just one person. She didn’t break us.
The bathroom door opens and we all turn around automatically, smiling as Lola’s shadow fills the door. But when she comes into the room, her expression is nothing for us to smile about.
“Are you okay?” Liam asks automatically.
She walks over to the marble-topped table in the middle of the room and drops an armful of plastic wands onto it. They clatter and slide, falling in a messy pile.
“That’s every one they had at the gift shop,” she explains.
“What are you talking about?” I ask as I walk over. My heart freezes in my chest when I see what they are. I pick one up and stare at it. It’s a pregnancy test, one of about three dozen. Every single one has a tiny little plus mark on it, or a double line.
“Did you… take all of these?” Kill asks her gently.
