AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He shakes his head, but buzzing in the back of my mind are his trips to the ER, that he’s oftenunconscious.
“I was never as unhinged as Zach. Doesn’t mean I’m not messed up in a different way, though.”
He turns over toward me, sliding his hands down my back, pulling me down and right into him as he hardens between us. His eyelids droop and his mouth twists up at one corner.
“Stop distracting me with sex,” I say.
He groans. “I can’t lie in bed with you and not get hard, Kate—that’s not possible.”
My body hums. How can Fabian and I burn like this? Is thisallwe have? Once this burns out, where will we be? Ugh. I hate how I find grit among the pearls.
“You don’t seem to worry about anything,” I mumble into his chest.
He starts shaking, and I push back to catch his broad grin.
“I do worry about stuff, Kate, just different shit from other people. Sometimes I can’t stop my mind from spinning.”
He pulls me back into him, kissing my forehead, and I press in, heat popping through my pelvis. But before we’re distracted, I want to make sure he understands.
“Don’t hide your drug-taking from me, Fabian. I understand the desire to push yourself.”
And maybe he’ll recognize the dangers better in his own good time. Nobody’s perfect.
“I’m not an addict.”
“I know that. I know you like to experiment.”
“Okay.” His eyes narrow. “If I do anything you don’t like, or you’re too worried, you need to tell me.”
MyI willis cut off by his mouth on mine.
17
Fabian
My handler, who’s supposedly named Jeff, frowns when I hand the bound document over the table to him.
“Paper?” he says with a raised eyebrow. “I was expecting a USB stick.”
I grin, shrugging. “Hard to hack into paper.”
He laughs as he opens the first page and skims down the contents, then looks at me. “Anything you want to flag upfront?”
“Take a look through, then we can chat.”
He nods and settles in to start reading. I check out everyone in the café one by one. I’ve already done this of course, but I’ve got time while he reads.
Out of the window, the midweek lunchtime crowd streams along the sidewalk. A man is standing shouting at a small boy who looks about ten years old. He’s gesturing at the street full of cars, and something about how he’s bent over to get right in the boy’s face makes me want to curl up and die.
I can still feel the damp floorboards under my feet and see my father lurching through the door, beer belly hanging over his pants as he leaned against the wall in the hall trying to steady himself. That goddamn belt he used to take off and wrap around his fist was always there keeping his pants in place. I watched him piss himself in that doorway once, and he beat my mother so badly that night she couldn’t speak for days. He shouted that it was all her fault even as she tried to help him. After he passed out, I tried to sort her face out, tried to persuade her to leave him. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I focus on the street again, but the father and the boy have gone.
Jeff flicks forward through the document and then back to where he was reading and looks up and says, “This is incredible.”
I take a sip of coffee. “Yeah, I was surprised by how extensive it all was—the level of the bribes, how far into the political hierarchy it went.”
He shakes his head. “No. Well, yes, that is surprising. But what I meant was, the information you’ve got is incredible. Dates, amounts, transactions, named people, you’ve tracked the money all the way through. There’s just so much detail here.” His eyes are narrowed and fixed on me. “They’re going to be delighted with this.”
I give him a small smile. “Good.”
