AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He was angry – I could tell that much by his expression. I half expected him to hit me. Or throw me off his porch. Or curse me out, at the very least.
Instead, he just shook his head.
“Go home, Fiona,” he said, and started to close the door.
I jammed my foot inside before he could shut it.
“That’s it?!” I shouted. “That’s all you’ve got to fucking say?!”
“What do you want from me?” he asked wearily.
“Oh, I don’t know – why don’t you keep bitching about how you’re so much better than me because I lied to you, and how much you hate me because I took everything from you!”
“I’m not better than you, Fiona,” he said quietly. “I’ve done way worse things than what you did last night, and for a lot shittier reasons. And you’re right – it wasn’t your fault I lost everything; it was mine. Lou outplayed me and outsmarted me, just like you said.”
I pulled my foot out of the door. I was shocked out of my mind. I hadn’t expected this.
“I don’t hate you, either,” he continued. “I understand why you did it, and I can’t fault you for that.”
My eyes welled up with tears.
“Jack…” I whispered tenderly.
Whether he meant to or not, he’d set me up perfectly for the knock-out punch.
“But I was in love with you,” he said. “I trusted you… and you hurt me worse than anybody else in my entire fucking life.”
All the air went out of my lungs, and the jagged pieces of my heart broke into smaller ones.
“Go back to LA, Fiona,” he said. “And don’t come back here again.”
He shut the door in my face.
The deadbolt locking was the loneliest, most final sound I’d ever heard.
10
Isat in my car and cried in his driveway for a good five minutes, it hurt so bad. All my pride had gone out the window; I didn’t care if he saw me. All I could feel was the pain.
I finally pulled myself together, drove out of his neighborhood, and headed out of town.
But I had to stop twice more on the side of the road – once to cry again, and once to make a phone call.
Eddie Deacon’s voice answered on the other end of the line. “I thought I might be hearing from you.”
“I want what you took from my motel room,” I snarled. “And I want the information you promised me.”
“You’re leaving town?”
“What do you expect me to do after last night?”
There was a pause. “Meet me at the Mariposa Way exit – it’s about 30 miles south of Richards. Take a right – there’s a dirt road half a mile off the interstate with a bunch of huge boulders. I’ll be behind those.”
Then he hung up.
11
Eddie had described the spot perfectly: a desert path surrounded by a dozen ten-foot-high boulders, perfectly sheltered from prying eyes and passing traffic on the highway.
