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I wiggled into the dead center, not feeling any better about taking up the whole thing, but finding myself too unmotivated to move back.
Unmotivated.
That was one of the best ways to describe how I had been since I landed back in New Jersey.
I wasn’t motivated to get back in Wanda and hit the road. Or to unpack my things. Or eat. Or get out of bed. I think it went without saying that showers and me, we weren’t on speaking terms either, despite having a beautiful one all to myself just a few feet away.
“I’m worried about you,” Raven told me, voice tight, airless.
I knew she was.
She’d done everything she could to try to lure me out of bed. When that failed, she sent her little gremlins in to try to annoy me out of bed.
You knew you were a whole new level of pathetic when young children decided you were a lost cause, got up, went to the door, turned off the light, and left you alone in your misery.
“I don’t need you to worry about me, Raves,” I told her, turning to stare up at the ceiling.
“And yet, here I am. Worried. What is going on with you? What the hell happened in Paris?”
“Paris. Qatar. Bali. Australia. The yacht.”
“Okay. We will get back to the world tour, Wasp. But what happened?” she asked. “What were you doing?”
“A job,” I admitted.
“You were on a job in Paris. And Qatar. And Bali. And Australia. And on a yacht.”
“Oh, and the jet. The jet too.”
“The jet,” Raven repeated, brows scrunching together. “Okay. We will get back to that. And the fact that I wasn’t in on any of that. Which is a problem. But I want to get to the most important thing first.”
“My bad tan lines,” I quipped, but there was no levity in my voice.
“Wasp, look at me,” Raven demanded, voice sad, hollow, drawing my gaze to her face, finding her blue eyes wide, panicked. “I am going to need a straight answer from you right now, okay?”
“I can try,” I admitted, not wanting to promise her anything I wasn’t sure I could give her. Because I was too confused about this whole situation—and my reaction to it—to give her any kind of rational explanation about it.
“Did something happen?” she asked, words heavy, hanging in the air like summer humidity, thick, hard to ignore, making breathing difficult. “Did the job go south? Do you need me to come with you to the police station?”
“The police station?”
“Did he hurt you?” she asked, point-blank, making guilt kick me in the stomach.
Of course her mind would go there. Mine likely would have too if a once lively, carefree friend suddenly took to the bed, barely eating, unable to bring themselves to do basic daily necessities.
“No. No,” I added more firmly, sitting up against the headboard.
“You can tell me if it happened. Or not tell me, but let me take you somewhere to tell someone.”
“It’s not that, Raven. But I appreciate that.”
“If it’s not that, what is it? I really don’t understand. I want to understand. This is not like you. I don’t recognize this person. And I know you inside and out. What happened?”
I took a deep breath, swiping my knotty hair out of my face, shrugging my shoulders.
“I think the con was so good that I fell for it myself.”
“I don’t understand,” Raven said, shaking her head. “What was the con? Who was the mark? What went wrong?”
“It was a sweetheart scam.”
“You make them fall in love with you.”
“Exactly.”
“To what end? For money? For access to information? What did the client want?”
“They wanted me to break his heart.”
“Oh,” Raven said, head jerking back. “That’s not a common one.”
“No,” I agreed, nodding.
“He must have really hurt someone to make them want that kind of revenge.”
“I wasn’t provided a lot of detail. Just a bottom line. And it was too good to refuse.”
“Who was the mark?”
I should have kept it to myself.
But this was Raven. I never kept anything from her for long.
“Fenway Arlington.”
“Fenway Arlington. Fenway… that sounds familiar.”
“He’s very rich. And very generous. And known for being a bit of a playboy.”
“I think I’ve heard Roman mention him. You know how men in business like that are,” she said, shrugging. “They all know each other. If by nothing else but a common friend or something like that. So you followed this Fenway guy to Paris.”
“Yeah. And he brought me to Bali and Australia. He’s a bit… impulsive.”
“Gee, that sounds like someone else I know,” Raven teased.
Impulsive.
Yeah.
That was part of the problem, wasn’t it? I hadn’t given a single step of this job nearly enough thought.
“So what happened between Paris, Bali, Australia, and you showing up on our doorstep?”
“At some point,” I started, feeling the truth like a boulder in my chest that needed to be chipped away at, made into smaller, more manageable pieces. “At some point, I stopped acting,” I admitted, wincing. “It was fun,” I admitted. “It was fun and we had a good time at the monkey sanctuary and the marketplace. And in the cave. God, the cave,” I groaned, closing my eyes, trying to force the images away, trying to focus, not let myself go back there.
