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He shrugged. “Then I’ll spend hours with you.”
He said it so easily, as if he truly didn’t mind traipsing around after me with all my bags on his arm. Kyle used to get so pissed at how long I would take when I was shopping, but picking out makeup was serious business.
We met up with Julia again at the makeup shop. We browsed together, with Lucas keeping close behind us. He didn’t hover as close with Julia here, but he also didn’t let us out of his sight for even a moment.
Unfortunately, he had every reason to be so tense.
As we turned down another aisle, I came face to face with Danielle and Candace.
We didn’t say a word to each other, but the tension in that aisle swelled until it was practically vibrating my bones. Doing my best to ignore them, I simply went on looking for the product I wanted, even when it meant standing right beside them.
But Danielle couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
“It’s scary how lax security has gotten here,” she said, speaking to Candace with a heavy sigh. It immediately got my hackles up, and despite Julia shaking her head at me, I didn’t think I’d be able to hold back. “They let so many creeps walk around here now, it doesn’t even feel safe anymore.”
When I laughed, both of them looked at me as if they’d hadno ideaI was there at all. But I knew the tricks of their petty little game. The casual insults, the fake innocence — I hated it.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did I startle you?” I said. “I knew you were a coward, Danielle, but now you just sound paranoid.”
Her mouth gaped open at me. Maybe they had expected me to keep quiet, but if they wanted to trade insults, I wasn’t about to back down.
“Ugh, let’s go,” Danielle said, putting down the palette she’d been examining. They squeezed around us; Candace clumsily bumping into Lucas as they went. He barely even glanced at her.
“Ah, nothing like the stench of insecurity,” Julia said. She managed to get something like a laugh out of Lucas. He exhaled a bit harder than usual, but that was close enough to a chuckle for me.
We browsed a little longer before we headed to the register to pay. When we proceeded to the door and the alarm sounded as we stepped through, I didn’t think anything of it. They probably forgot to remove a tag from one of the items when they checked us out.
A security guard accompanied the employee who approached us to check our receipt. The guard lingered around us, eyeing Lucas suspiciously. The employee wanted to see inside our shopping bags next, and people were starting to stare.
“Is this all really necessary?” I said, exasperated at how long this was taking.
They’d let Julia proceed outside, and I knew she was in a rush to get home so she could get ready for work. It was taking so long that I finally waved at her to go. I’d ride home with Lucas instead. She didn’t seem particularly happy to leave us. So much for security at this place being “lax.”
“This is standard procedure, ma’am,” the security guard said. He kept one hand resting on his taser, and my palms were starting to sweat. People were looking at us like we were already guilty. I felt the stares, I heard the whispers.
Lucas had lowered his head, his thumbs hooked in his pockets, his jaw clenched so tight that a muscle in his cheek was throbbing. The employee looked through all our shopping bags, but then wanted to see inside my own personal bag — which Lucas was carrying.
“You want her purse?” Lucas said, his voice rising in frustration.
The security guard stepped closer and muttered something into his walkie-talkie, so I said quickly, “It’s fine. I don’t mind, Lucas, it’s okay.”
We had nothing to hide. It was just weird and uncomfortable, and I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. Lucas was breathing deeply, his stance growing tighter. He handed over my bag with a look of furious resignation.
My eyes widened as the employee reached into my purse and withdrew a large bottle of perfume in an elaborate glass bottle. We hadn’t paid for that. We hadn’t evenlookedat perfume.
“There has to be some kind of mistake,” I said. But the guard seized Lucas’s arm, and he jerked back instantly, throwing the guard off balance. The man stumbled, people gasped, and within seconds, he’d pulled out his taser.
“Stop! Stop, please, this is a mistake,” I said, desperately putting myself between Lucas and the guard, even with a taser aimed straight for me. He was breathing so hard, I could feel him shaking against my back.
The guard said something into his walkie-talkie again, some kind of code before he called for an “officer.”
“Is this your bag, ma’am?” the employee said.
“Of course it is,” I said. “But we didn’t —”
“I’ve been carrying her bag since we’ve been here,” Lucas said. “She had nothing to do with this, she hasn’t even touched the bag since we got in the store.”
“You didn’t steal that, Lucas!” I blurted. How the hell had this happened? A bottle of perfume didn’t just jump off the shelf!
