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His brow forms a V. “I’m not giving you my keys.”
He doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t have to.
“You’re drunk, Izzy,” he tells me. He can’t know that. Vodka doesn’t smell.
“What is it?” I demand. I feel faint. I feel my pulse in my ears. It could be the music. “What did you give me?”
“Nothing. Go home and sleep it off,” he tells me. Then he laughs and swings his door wide open. “Or better yet, come inside.”
I stand on my tippy-toes and point my finger in his face. “I will fucking murder you.”
“Whoa,” he says, holding his palms up. Everyone is watching now. I know what they’re thinking. Lover’s quarrel. But Tyler is not my lover. Their eyes make me angry. “I HATE YOU,” I scream. I direct all of my bitterness at him. It’s real, too. This is his fault. Grant is supposed to be with me. He fucked up. Now I’m alone. Now I’ll always be alone. I momentarily forget my mission. I forget Grant’s text. I’m fueled by anger.
Tyler sighs long and slow. “It was just a little PCP.”
“PCP? Why?” I close my eyes. I feel myself sway. I might cry. I hate myself. I feel him grip my forearm. “It’s just a bump. It wasn’t for you. It was for me. Anyway, I didn’t think you’d smoke it. And I sure as shit didn’t think you’d get wasted and…get high…you never smoke anymore…” I don’t open my eyes when he speaks. He drags me down the hall. I half go willingly, half drag my feet.
“I hate you Tyler. I FUCKING HATE YOU.”
“Someone’s had a long day,” he says mockingly. “Off to bed you go.”
“I don’t neeeeed to go to bed.” I can hear the slur in my speech. “Grant loves me. He wants ME. I have to go there.”
“Trust me, you don’t want lover boy to see you like this. He’s not that kind of guy.”
I feel rage. Burning hot rage. “You don’t know what kind of guy he is!”
His grip tightens. It hurts. I jerk away. He lets me go. “I know he’s married like the last one.”
My heart sinks. “Josh.”
“Yeah, Izzy. Josh. Josh isn’t dead.”
I swallow hard. He’s knocked the wind out of me. I sink to the floor.
He eyes me with pity and a bit of something else. “I don’t know why you lied,” he says quietly. “And quite frankly, I don’t care. But you need help.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Josie
Physical pain you can block out. Emotional pain is harder to drown. It always finds its way to the surface. I feel the needle tear through my scalp. One stitch, two stitches. Three. I wince. I shouldn’t have acted like nothing happened. I should have told him the truth. I forgot the details. Grant always remembers details.
“Oh, stop being a baby,” he says, pulling. “I numbed you up.”
I think it’s just another of his lies. I feel every tug, every pinch. I feel everything. I stuff it down.
“Why wouldn’t you listen, Josie? Why do you have to make everything hard?”
The gun sits on the table. He found it. First, the text on his phone. Before that, the location log on mine.
“Why did you bring her into this?”
“I wanted answers.” Also, I knew she would come. I wanted her to come. I don’t tell him this though.
“After everything I’ve done for you… after everything I've done for this family. For the church, for my career. Everything. And look at you. You insist on making a mockery of me. You want to make me the bad guy. That was June’s problem, too. She was always so nosy, always sticking her head where it didn’t belong.”
Relax. If he were going to kill me, he certainly wouldn't go through the trouble of stitching me up.
