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“No,” he whispered as he read my expression. He knew it then that I was the one telling the truth.
“If you think I’m just going to let this go, think again,” he said coldly as he made his way back to the hotel. “It’s always going to be you and me against the world, Red. Always. You need to remember that.”
I stayed quiet, knowing he didn’t even believe his own words anymore.
“Ray Tyco.”
I fumbled with the cord and went completely blank as I contemplated hanging up.
After a bout of silence, he tried again. “Hello?”
“Ray, it’s me, Taylor Ellison. You…gave me your card.” I looked around the motel lobby nervously, knowing Laz was in a sleep coma after being up for several days.
“I remember you, Harvard.”
“You said—”
“I know what I said.”
“I’m ready to leave. I-I need to leave.”
I heard glasses clink and assumed he was in a fancy restaurant surrounded by other wealthy diners as he spoke in a hushed tone.
“I’ll come for you.”
“No,” I pushed out loudly. “Don’t do that. I’ll come to you. I just need to know where I’m going.”
“Tell me something, Taylor. Do you still want Harvard?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
“Then that’s where you are going.” Tears slid down my face as I did my best to keep it together. Last night, I had watched my mother tear Amber apart for spilling bleach on our twenty year old carpet. I’d prayed for the first time in my life for her death.
“Taylor?” He was now surrounded by silence as I tried to keep the shakiness out of my voice.
“Please, just tell me where to go.”
Salvation from my situation came at a price I never thought I could afford. Days seemed endless without Laz, who had only attempted to mend fences with me once. It only reaffirmed what I already knew. His new life as the kingpin had taken the place of our life, the one we were supposed to have.
I’d decided the night of my eighteenth birthday to see him one last time. I was going to wait until the last minute to break it to Amber, who I was sure would never forgive me, but decided against that confrontation altogether. She would cry and beg me to stay, and I couldn’t afford to back out at the last minute for my sanity alone. On the day I left Dyer, I replaced the books in my backpack with clothes and attended one last day of school. I walked the shorter distance from the school to the motel without bothering to look around at the outdated buildings and the bone-dry landscape. I waited until nightfall in front of the motel door and was just about to give up and head for Memphis when he pulled up. He shut his car door, stuffing his hands in his pockets as I stood slowly, trying to assess his mood. His face gave nothing away.
“I’m leaving.”
“No you aren’t,” he snapped as he approached the door.
“Laz, I just came to say goodbye. I got a really prestigious scholarship to this prep school, and I’ve taken it.”
It was another lie. Something I was getting entirely too good at. The truth was, I was leaving to run to a man I’d had one conversation with, who promised the same thing Laz had failed to deliver: freedom from Dyer, from my mother, from the hell on earth I’d been living in for the past seventeen years.
Laz dug his nails into my arm and pulled me inside the room.
“You think you can just fucking leave me? You think I’ll let you?”
“You made your decision, so I made mine,” I snapped. “You lied to me. We were never in this together. For all I know, you used my feelings for you to get me to help you rob my dad!”
It was if I had slapped him. Hurt in his deep blue eyes, he shook his head in disbelief.
“The only fucking thing I have ever done is protect you, and you didn’t need to know everything. It was better that you didn’t.”
