AllFreeNovel
Share Us
* * *
I wakeon his couch with the sun high and alcohol pounding in my head like an alarm that can’t be turned off.
I groan into my hands as I sit up. “Fuck.”
“You hit it pretty hard,” Liam says from the kitchen. “I haven’t seen you like that since college.”
“What time is it?”
We both glance at the clock behind him. It’s nearly ten.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Even if things need to end with Kate, I don’t want to end them like this—with her thinking I cheated.
I rise. Jesus, my whole body hurts. “Thanks for letting me stay.”
“I figured if I didn’t, I’d be helping you dispose of Kate’s body all morning. This seemed easier.”
I lean against his kitchen counter while my head swims. “Man, if she was pissed before, she’s on fire right now and Kate doesn’t do shit halfway. She saw me with Suzanne, and I didn’t come home. I’ll be lucky if my house is still standing.”
“Yeah?” asks Liam, raising a brow as he sips his coffee. “Gee, she kind of sounds like she might care about you, albeit in a completely fucked up,Katesort of way. So maybe you should talk to her.”
Maybe I should.
Liam drops me off at the bar to get my bike. I don’t even go inside but simply fly out of the parking lot, heading for the cabin.
Her car isn’t there. My heart beats faster, and I take the steps two at a time to make sure she hasn’t moved out—I wouldn’t blame her if she had.
Her belongings are scattered across her room, but the bed is still made. It never occurred to me until this moment that she might have slept somewhere else last night too.
I storm out of the house and get back on my bike, looking for her car as I ride through town, though I don’t know why. Do I actuallywanta public fight with her about where we both spent the night? I guess even that would be better than discovering she went to see her dealer.
I spy her car beside the diner on Main Street, but my relief is short-lived.Since when does she eat breakfast out?She doesn’t even like breakfast.
If she’s in here with a guy, wearing last night’s clothes, our public fight is gonna be a lot worse than I’d thought it would be. I take two steps off my bike, then do a double take at her car and the one beside it: a brand-new Audi A5 convertible.
The exact car Jeremy bought himself while refusing to pay a dime of child support to Lucie.
I can’t fucking believe she’s out with him again.
40
KATE
Jeremy is waiting in the corner booth where he has a view of the entire restaurant, so he’ll know if anyone is listening to us.
I’ve let his calls go to voicemail ever since lunch last week. When my phone rang this morning, there was a pathetic part of me—the same pathetic part that once prayed I’d hear from Caleb—that wanted it to be Beck, as if there’s anything he could say at this point to fix things. He slept with Suzanne, which is a step lower than evenI’vegone during our brief fling.
But it was Jeremy and that itwasn’tBeck felt like the final nail in the coffin, somehow.
The only reasonnotto hear Jeremy out was basic human decency, something no one seems to have a surplus of at the moment, and I never pretended to have it in the first place. I needed to hold this meeting no matter what, to protect myself. And if means I also get to spend a few minutes believing in a world where Lucie loses instead of me, that’s okay too.
The waitress delivers my coffee and his eggs. I wait until she’s out of hearing distance before I speak. “Okay, so tell me the plan again,” I say, my voice distant, empty.
“It’s pretty fucking simple,” he says. “Are you sure you made it through Wharton?”
“Are you sure you need me to get you cocaine?” I retort.
“Fine,” he says with a beleaguered sigh. “You get ahold of the cocaine, and make sure it’s not some trivial amount either. I’m talking like at least a gram.”
