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I frowned uncertainly. I wasn’t sure why she was so understanding all of a sudden. “Yes, but I should have been here last night.”
She nodded and smiled, turning back to her cake before adding, “Need to make food for your dad. We’ll talk more later.”
I knew from experience that later would never come, and we would both keep bottling these feelings inside until they exploded again.
The same thing we did after Kelly died.
It was a cycle we couldn’t seem to break, but it would do for now.
I decided to text Zane after that. Just a simple text that said:We need to talk.But it took me hours to craft it. And he didn’t respond. At first, I thought he might still be asleep, but after almost an entire day with no response, I started getting annoyed and impatient. Was he punching things down in his basement again? Or was he avoiding me?
But why would he? I thought we were fine. I’d followed the rules of no strings attached sex. I left his house without calling or texting or demanding anything, so what the fuck was he playing at now?
Well,I thought, annoyed.If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain.
So, late that night, I let my mom know I would be leaving for a few hours. Then I left to go and find Zane.
And I did find him. I caught him right in the middle of destroying his whole house.
22
ZANE
The pain in my fists wasn’t anything compared to the one tearing my chest apart.
It wasn’t appeased by punching Max nor by destroying his fucking office after I was done. Not even the long drive back could quell the rage that was brewing inside me when I thought about his words.
“I know he’s dead because I know who killed him, okay?” He sighed, shaking his head and rubbing his face. “And if you let me go, I’ll tell you what I know.”
There was no fucking way I was letting him go. I could hear his secretary behind us in the doorway. She was talking to the police on the phone, probably telling them a maniac was attacking her boss. They would be here in twenty minutes.
Which left me at least nineteen minutes to whoop Max’s ass if need be.
I yanked him closer, bumping his body into the desk. I let him see the threat in my eyes. “Speak.”
His expression wavered between humiliation and anger. “It’s all your fucking fault, you know? It was one match. All you had to do was throw one match, and he would have been fine, but you couldn’t even do that fucking much.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I demanded.
“He wasn’t killed in a fucking robbery.” His eyes blazed, worth a menace. “The Bruners killed him because of you. Because of what you couldn’t do.”
“The Bruners?” I couldn’t believe it. “You made a deal with the fucking Bruners?”
The Bruners were our version of the local mafia. I knew they hung around with the local underground and made money from some of the guys there. I also knew they sometimes hired the fighters to go and do their dirty work, but I never got close enough to any of them to know for sure.
“Yeah.” He didn’t even sound ashamed of himself. “Told them you would lose the next match, and they could earn an easy million. But you just couldn’t do it, could you? Got too much pride?”
How outrageous that the fucking bastard was trying to pin this on me. “Why didn’t you tell them that I didn’t take the deal?”
He shrugged. “I thought I could convince you. Besides, you were up against Viper in that match, so I thought there was a good chance you would lose.” He smiled in an evil angry way. “But you never do, do you? You never lose. And your friend died because you just didn’t know how to give in.”
Well, the cold bastard knew just how to twist the knife.
All this time, I’d assumed Toby died in a shoot-out after a gas tank blew up and exploded. I thought he’d tried to dupe the wrong people. It was bad enough to know I wasn’t there to save him.
But no. He was killed by someone because I didn’t throw a fucking match.
All this fucking shit had killed him. The stupid fights and everything I’d gotten him involved in. All this was my fault.
