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“But she didn’t want the cops?”
“She said she’d been drinking. And that they didn’tget her.”
Got you.This voice isn’t Jacob’s. It’s the voice of a man whose name I don’t know, and whose name I’ll never know. Whose features have blurred except for a pair of cold, gray eyes. It was dark. I didn’t have long to look.
Got you.My cheek shoved against a cold brick wall. A hard grip on the back of my neck. My hand pressed to the skin at my hip. Blood seeping between my fingers.
Got you.I’m going to be sick. Cold sweat. Too hot in the car. My teeth lock together.
“Gabriel?”
From the way she says it, Elise has been trying to get my attention for some time. Another mile marker looms out of the dark. Four miles. That’s how long.
“Do you think she needs the hospital?” I’m hanging on to shreds of our conversation. There’s just enough left to plant me firmly in the present.
Another flash of her eyes in the rearview mirror. “No, I don’t think so. You can take us back to my apartment.”
No. Not where I can’t see you.“Do you have a spare bedroom I don’t know about?”
“No.” Elise doesn’t sound defensive. She sounds tired.
“If I’m remembering correctly, you have ovens. And stand mixers. Not so much an extra bed.”
“Lydia can sleep in my bed.”
“Where will you sleep?”
“The couch.”
“No, you won’t.” I’ve seen Elise’s couch, albeit briefly. It’s a piece of shit. “You’ll stay with me tonight.”
“Okay.”
“If Lydia wakes up in the middle of the night and decides she wants to file a police report or go to the hospital, you’re not taking her there in a fucking Uber. I have enough room. I have clothes she can—”
“I saidokay.We’ll stay with you.”
“Good.”You’ll be where I can see you.I allow myself another look at her in the rearview mirror. Elise looks down at her sister. “I thought you’d put up more of a fight.”
“I don’t have a car. You’re right. I shouldn’t take her to the hospital or the police station with some stranger driving an Uber.” I can’t see Elise shrug, but I feel her resignation and her relief. “It’s not a good idea to knock on my parents’ door with her looking like this.”
“No, it’s not.” I’ve been breathing in sugar cookies and buttercream frosting for too damn long. There’s no way that prick Bettencourt will gracefully accept that his sixteen-year-old daughter was out drinking. Maybe by sunrise I won’t care anymore, but if we take her there now? If he answers the door?
I’ll keep up appearances. That’s what I have to do to finalize my entry into the consortium. But it won’t be easy. It would be much easier to slip up.
“Anyway.” Elise’s voice is like cream and sugar. It’s everything I’ve been denying myself and everything I’m going to keep denying myself, goddamn it. “You have a big house. And…”
The wait ticks up to three seconds. Five. Ten. “And what?”
“And you already did your worst. There’s nothing you can say to hurt me more.”
My shirt feels like steel wool on my skin. “Elise.”
“Honestly, I don’t know why you’re doing this.” She’s taking special care not to wake up her sister. “You were done with me. Youhollowed me out.Why even answer the phone?”
“Because it was the right thing to do.”
“You couldn’t have known that.”
