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“Right. Okay.” She puts her brush down and turns to face me, the spotlight of her attention shifting in my direction. It’s seductive, that attention. I want more of it, but I’m also terrified of the way it makes me feel. Too vulnerable, too seen. “What’s wrong?”
“How do you know something’s wrong?”
“Because you’ve been avoiding me for days and I just figured you wouldn’t show up unless you had to.”
I stop myself from flinching. She’s right—it’s obvious what I’ve been doing, but I don’t like that she can see through me. I keep wondering if she’s going to find a way to con me again, but the moment I feel myself going there, I try to push back against those assumptions, try to make myself remember how it felt to be with her, how real it was, and it’s all a fucked-up mess. I could stand here looking at her all day, listen to her talk, watch her work, but I’m here for a reason. I make myself focus.
“We found your father.”
She doesn’t move. Total stillness, like a pretty creature in sight of a predator. “How?” she asks.
And it hits me.
All at once, like a kick to the chest.
She’s not surprised.
There’s no shock in her eyes.
Only fear and concern, which means—
She knew he was still in town.
I stare at her, trying to get a read on this situation, and feel at a complete loss. It doesn’t make sense. I’m positive she didn’t know where he was when she first came in—she was mad enough at the time to have turned him over without much prompting— and she hasn’t had any contact with the outside world since she’s been here. There’s no way she should know anything about her father’s location.
Unless I’m missing something.
“Gallo’s people spotted him.” I step closer, one hand pressed against the work table to steady myself. “You knew, didn’t you?”
Her mouth shuts. Her lips press into a line. I can tell she’s struggling with something. Fucking Hellie—I know her now, know her better than I ever expected I would.
And I can tell she’s trying to come up with a story.
“I can’t say.” Her voice is tiny. Like she’s embarrassed.
I close my eyes and take a steadying breath before opening them again. Another connection clicks into place. A stray problem I’d almost forgotten about. “The email.”
She touches her hair, and I know it’s true. That’s her little tell, her nervous gesture. Even though she shakes her head, I can see right through her.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
What a shitty fucking liar.
And suddenly, I can’t imagine this girl played me. It slips into focus, everything that happened on that day. Hellie can’t lie to me, she’s terrible at it, which means all that other stuff about having feelings for me, all of that was true.
There’s no way she could’ve faked it.
Con man father or not, that isn’t Hellie.
But she does know something now, something she’s been keeping from me. I steady my heart and move closer, aware that I have to be careful. She may be a bad liar, but there’s still something happening here.
“Ren told me you said something about an email. I asked you about it that day, but I was too angry to follow up, and he never mentioned it again. But you checked your email, didn’t you?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“When you were in my room, you used my desktop, didn’t you? I leave it logged in all the time because it tracks my stock portfolio and it needs a dedicated connection to keep everything up to date. You used that, didn’t you?”
“Please don’t make me say anything. Please, Erick.”
