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Lo frowns at the Ray Bans.
One of the nicest things I own. Bought ‘em with my first big security paycheck.
He puts on the glasses.
“Can you see?” I wonder.
He lifts a paper. “Yeah, and wow, you look…” He eyes me. “Exactly the same.”
“Amazing, I’d bet.”
“Like a carp.”
I try not to smile. He just called me a bottom-feeder fish. Alright. “Your glasses must be smudged, man. Wipe ‘em.”
“They’re your glasses. You wipe them,” he says flatly and then takes more interest in the paper he’s reading.
I can get away without reading glasses, but it’s nice not straining my eyes. Especially when I’m sketching.
After slipping on my shittier pair of readers, I open the file folder on my lap. First thing I see is Restraining Order. My heart lurches. He’s making me stay away from Luna?
Tension grips my muscles. I’m immobile.
Almost in a daze. Glazing over the rest of the paper, my gut has sunken, imagining being forced to stay away from her. I can’t do it.
I’ve never avoided Luna. Not really. Not even when I was trying to get over her. We still sought one another out as friends. The closest I came to avoidance was leaving Luna on read when she invited me to Wawa. And it hurt doing it.
I shake out the dread and this clawing feeling. Trying to focus.
I exhale when I see two names: Donnelly, Ryan and Donnelly, Patrick. More cousins. I keep reading and realize they’re not allowed to be within twenty feet of Beckett. It’s not about me or Luna.
“They found O’Malley’s attackers,” I realize.
Lo nods. “There wasn’t enough concrete evidence to charge them, but this was as much as we could do right now.”
I shift on the beanbag. “Now what?”
Lo runs a hand across his mouth a couple times, thinking. “Now…our lawyers try to dig up some shit, but I’m going to be honest with you, Donnelly, because this is what we do now.” He motions between me and him with his finger. “We’re honest. And honestly, it’s not looking good. Colin might as well be invisible, Scottie is no longer a lead, and you have a lot of goddamn cousins.”
I nod slowly. “So it’s bad.”
That’s not new news.
But hearing Lo say it makes it worse. Because Lo, Connor, all the parents, they have connections I could only dream of. And if they can’t fix this, does that mean moving away is the only solution?
I can’t believe that.
I won’t.
“Yeah, it’s bad.” Lo reaches for his Wawa coffee. We made a pitstop before coming here, and he didn’t complain about it, so maybe we’re making a centimeter of progress here.
“I’ll figure it out,” I say with a flip of the paper.
“No, we’re figuring it out.” He motions around the table. “We’re going to go through some of the research the lawyers and PIs did and try to find a crack. Any kind of leverage to hold over your family.”
I toss aside the file folder. Leaning forward, I start sifting through papers. Most just detail past rap sheets.
I find one on my mom, and I don’t look at it long, sticking it under the pile quickly. I can feel Lo watching me.
This isn’t where I want to be. Surrounded by the things I’ve fought so hard to stay away from, but if it helps…if I can help at all, I need to make this right.
I have to.
I rub my hand against the back of my neck, my eyes glazing over a sentence about my grandmom dying in the apartment.
“What’s that?” Lo asks what I’m reading.
“Obituary. My grandmom.”
“Were you there?” His voice is still sharp, like always, so it’s hard to tell if he’s prying for intel to protect his family. That’s probably what he’s doing. Has to be. He’s already admitted not wanting to get to know me.
“No.” I shake my head. “I was seventeen when I met Farrow. He was eighteen, and once he went back to Yale, I followed him up to New Haven. So I’d been up there when she died.” I pick up another paper. “I was eighteen at the time.”
I’d already met Oscar on campus then, too.
Lo is quiet, until he says, “I didn’t realize you two met that young.”
“Yeah, we’ve been friends for a while,” I mention vaguely, trying to read a paper with faded ink.
He returns to a file but looks over at me. “Connor has been asking me questions that I don’t know the answers to. Like who’s the most influential of your family? Who would the others listen to?”
“He could call me. He has my number.”
Lo scrunches his face. “He’s practically in a hundred different meetings today. Most of them about the attack.”
So is it that Connor won’t make time for me? Or is it that Lo just wants to ask me himself? I can’t tell, but I’ve known that Connor Cobalt only gives his time to people who are important to him. I might not be high up on that list.
