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But then I remembered Candace bumping into him as she’d left.
That was it. It had to be. She had to have slipped the bottle into the bag.
“We were set up,” I said. Hearing my own words, they sounded so weak. Like a terrible lie. “Pull the cameras and check, please. He didn’t take that perfume.”
“We’re going to need you to step aside, ma’am.” My stomach lurched. The officer the guard had called for had arrived, an armed policeman who was watching Lucas like he was a bomb about to explode.
When I turned and looked back, I could understand why. Lucas had been backed into a corner near the door and his eyes were wide, his fists were clenched. He wasn’t thinking clearly; I could see it in his eyes — unbridled rage and fear had overtaken everything else.
“Sir, for our safety, I’m going to need you to turn around and put your hands behind your head.”
Lucas’s entire body twitched. “Fuck you.”
“Lucas, it’s okay, it’s okay, please.” I grasped onto his arms, even though the guard had told me to step back. “Look at me. Listen. You’ll be okay. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Step back, ma’am.”
“Sir, if you keep resisting, I’m authorized to use force.”
I laid my hand against Lucas’s face, physically turning his head so he had to look at me. God, he was shaking so hard. “Listen to me. It’ll be okay. I’m not leaving you. You did nothing wrong. Just...” I hated what I was about to say. I knew he’d hate it too. But we had no choice. “Just do what he says, Lucas. Please.”
His face flinched; that pained look breaking my heart. But he nodded slowly. When I finally stepped back, he closed his eyes before he turned around and put his hands behind his head.
21 - Lucas
Iknew just from lookingat him that Officer Asshole here was going to use this as an excuse to boost his pathetic little ego. When he wrenched my hands down and locked them into cuffs, he did it with enough force to tweak my shoulder. But I didn’t let on that he hurt me. In truth, I barely felt it. My adrenaline was so high, I probably wouldn’t have felt it even if he’d shot me.
Panic filled me so thickly that I couldn’t breathe, I could barely think. The only thing I could hold on to for the sake of my mental sanity was Jess: she was there, she was with me, and damn was that girl raising hell.
“This is absolutely outrageous!” she said, jabbing her finger at the fumbling guard. We’d been taken to the security office and made to wait there while the officer went to pull security cameras from the store. The guard kept mumbling something about forms and procedures, but Jess wasn’t having it. “Is the law in this country no longer innocent until proven guilty? We are being detained against our will! This is intimidation and harassment!”
Despite how absolute shitty this situation was, it still made me crack a smile. She was making that guard nervous as hell. The man kept trying to casually spin his pen between his fingers, then fumbling it, clearing his throat and making progressively weaker excuses. “You’re not being detained, ma’am, you’re free to go —”
“Not without my boyfriend, I’m not!” she snapped.
She’d never called me that before. It was probably a strange thing to latch on to, but I’d take any shred of distraction I could at this point. I was so hyped up already, all it really did was add even more adrenaline into the mix.
