“Hey,” I bark at him. “Don’t talk to her like that. Be a miserable bastard to me all you want, but she’s just trying to do her job.”
“If you want to tell me how to run my business, you’re going to have to buy into it,” he tells me, pulling out a desk drawer and rifling through the shit inside.
The receptionist from before walks into the office only a few minutes later, carrying a stack of papers, carefully dropping them onto Nash’s desk, and I shoot her an apologetic smile. “Thanks for those, darlin’.”
I sift through the papers while we settle things, making sure he didn’t have her bring me some nonsense that won’t get the girls out of their contracts, then I head out of his office without bothering with the pleasantries of saying goodbye.You have a better chance at winning the lottery than having a nice conversation with Nash Montgomery.
I really fuckin’ hate that guy.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sophia
I watch as Eric’s fingers drum against the steering wheel in time with the music playing from the truck’s speakers. In the last fifteen minutes alone, his playlist has moved from country, to a mix of hip hop and R&B, to heavy metal music. He knows the words and melody to every song. There doesn’t seem to be anything that he won’t listen to. Always loud. Too loud.
I reach forward and turn the volume knob, sending away the thrumming music. “Eric.”
He reaches for my hand, still on the knob, and pulls it to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to the back of it. Warmth spreads through me as he brings our now interlocked hands to rest on his lap. “What’s up, Sugar?”
“I keep thinking about Ethan.” He curls his lip in mock disgust, throwing a quiet laugh behind it, and I use our joined hands to smack his thigh. “I’m being serious. It just seemed like any other night for you. I need to know if he was the first…you know.”
“No he wasn’t.”
I swallow. “Who else?”
“One of my foster parents. His wife had already croaked, or I would have done her, too.”
My hand tightens in his. I force my breathing to stay steady, hoping that my heart will get the memo and follow suit. “Why?”
“Sometimes bad people slip through the cracks,” he shrugs. “Lloyd and Maeve Madden didn’t like noise. Noise like laughing, or playing, or talking. God forbid someone got a cough.” He chuckles, but there’s no humor in it. “They had this room they kept those metal dog kennels in. Six of ‘em. Three lined up on one side, another three on the other side.”
Eric’s hand slips from mine to grip onto the steering wheel and his fingers flex over the smooth leather before tightening around it, his knuckles turning white. It’s like he was afraid that he would hurt me if he held on; or maybe he’s afraid of the vulnerability. His eyes stare ahead at the road.
I know what he’s about to say. I know exactly where this is going, but I try to shove the thought away; I try to tell myself that there’s no way that it could be what I think it is.
There’s no way that someone would do that to a child.
My stomach tightens, making my heart still in my chest while he speaks.
“I got pretty good at avoiding ‘em,” he continues. The cords in his arms flex as his grip pulses against the wheel. His voice quiets while he speaks; just a little, just enough to tell me that he isn’t okay. "The other kids got hauled back there and locked up if they made too much noise. Three, four days at a time, depending how pissed Lloyd and Maeve were. They’d come back out so damn hungry, they’d eat and drink until they hurled. That was the only house I ever got placed in that was completely—”
“Quiet,” I breathe.
He nods. “Thirty years ago, and it’s still the worst thing I’ve ever seen, heard or smelled.”
He wassevenyears old.
He wasn’t even a whole person yet.
My eyes burn, my chest so tight that it screams in pain while I stare at him; the microscopic droop in his brow, theway that he pulls just a touch of his lower lip between his teeth, like he’s chewing on it.
“I got out of there and ran to a neighbor’s house to ask ‘em for help,” he continues. The pulse in his neck races, and the movement in his chest becomes sharp, ragged while he relives the memory that I unwittingly dragged him back into. “A bunch of cops showed up a couple hours later and took us all out of there. I had thought I was doing the right thing going across the street, but the Maddens got back after I ran and no one would tell them where I went, so they…” He clears his throat as the words fade away, the muscles at the back of his jaw flexing as he takes a long, harsh breath, and I’m almost certain that I can physically feel my heart cracking in two.
With one hand over my mouth, I try to choke back the sob that wants to force its way out of me along with my lunch, and I can feel hot tears spill down my cheeks. I reach with my other hand to the back of his neck and squeeze. “Eric…”
“Myleaving costthem. So when they let him out, as soon as I learned how to shoot, I flew back there and emptied a magazine into Lloyd’s ugly fucking face. And I never felt bad about that one, either.” He finally looks at me. “Some people just deserve to die, Sugar. Some people are just evil.”
“Stop the truck,” is all that I can manage to say, the words barely clawing their way past my lips.
