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"Why didn't you contact your bank then and there, Junie?" Asher asked.
"I couldn't," she replied, fresh tears falling from her eyes. "D'you know how betrayed and embarrassed I felt? I was supposed to be better than this. Sane Junie, with her head just where it was supposed to be. I was never the one to fall back on impulse and do such momentously stupid things."
Reed got up from his seat and walked toward Juniper. I almost thought he'd confess then and there that this was his walk of shame.
Instead, he took her hand, sat down on the couch, and gently pulled her down to him like a babe until she was nestled in his arms like a bird, scared but safe.
"We're going to figure out a way to get you out of this. Tell me something. What about your bank? Has anyone contacted you about this?"
"The fraud department investigator, Thomas Ryan, has been scratching the bottom of the barrel trying to contact me. They've left voicemails and emails," she replied, her eyes downcast in shame. "But I've been avoiding all of them. I feel like an absolute failure."
"But you're not," I spoke up, my tone warm. "Look, Juniper. I get why you're hurt. This was your best friend, and you felt like you were old enough not to do something this silly. But—and forgive me for being blunt here—what you're actually doing right now is sillier."
A hush fell over the room. Asher looked at me like he wanted to smack my face with a soup ladle, and Reed's expression was the equivalent of his setting a grenade up my ass. But I said what I said.
I wasn't like the two of them, and I couldn't beat around the bush with pretty words.
"You're right," Juniper replied, surprising me with her ability to handle the truth.
The girl knew how to dish it out and take it too. Rare. But then, she was all kinds of unusual. We'd already accepted that.
"I know I can't keep carrying on like this. I know I must talk to him and figure out how to clear my debts."
"We're going to find a way to trace the items sent to you back to the person who actually bought them."
"Wouldn't that mean needing a statement from him? I don't have the resources to hire a private investigator, guys."
Asher was in the middle of taking a swig of his ice-cold beer when suddenly, his throat seemed to forget how to swallow. The beer went down the wrong pipe and shot right out of his nostrils like a malfunctioning fountain.
He coughed so hard that I thought his lungs might come flying out of his mouth.
Tears streamed down his face, but to our relief, Juniper found the whole thing hilarious and started laughing uncontrollably.
It was a real snot-nosed comedy show—and it helped our girl calm down.
"Don't worry," Reed finally said, stroking her hair. "Listen. Why don't you crash here tonight? No funny business. You can take the bedroom.
“We've got some work to finish around the place. But you look like you could use being in a place full of people and not by yourself."
Juniper looked up at him hopefully. "You sure?"
"Positive."
* * *
Noneof us got a wink of sleep that night. Reed was up making calls and frantically sending messages back and forth.
Asher brooded and cursed everyone in the world, possibly also an alien planet that he kept calling "fuckingtithell".
And I debated on the possibility of visiting Hunter's mansion and doing a sting that would involve my returning with his dick preserved in ice.
If myMamicould hear my thoughts right now, she'd be more scandalized than a nun watchingMagic Mikeon repeat.
Morning came, and the peace between Leia and our Skipper vanished into thin air. It was something about her not wanting to go to school and him telling her she couldn't stay home because she had a bunch of exams coming up. All in all, it amounted to her storming out of the apartment after calling him an ass wipe.
He sulked around until Juniper woke up and came to the kitchen in an oversized shirt and a pair of short shorts.
I'd seen Juniper look beautiful all the time, but never was she as pretty as right now, with her hair falling in messy waves over her face and her eyes and cheeks flushed with the remnants of sleep.
