I shook my head. Of course. I should have known. Maybe Cole did genuinely care for my well-being, but not at the cost of my father being murdered.
“Please, Lilly,” he said. “I don’t want you going back out there. It’s dangerous.”
Really. Really? Cole was going to talk to me like that?
“You think I don’t know that?” I said. “You think I’m some damsel in distress who just came to mooch off of you? You’re out of your damn mind.”
“No, I don’t,” Cole said, raising his hands. “You’re a grown woman, obviously. You know what you’re doing. But your father will be hunting for you. And you knew when you came with us that we were going to ask for information.”
“And maybe I changed my mind,” I said, although I knew that was just petty. “Maybe I just don’t want to take part in this continued feud between your two clubs, since it has only resulted in more deaths.”
“OK, look, let’s take a breath,” Cole said.
He did just that. I watched him in silence. My anger was rising, and it was becoming more and more difficult to contain.
“I asked you last night to tell me everything you know,” he said. “And in return, I would get you to wherever you wanted to go. I know you want to escape your father’s clutches. I know that you feel suffocated by him. I’ll make sure that you escape Southern California before anything happens. Before we so much as get within a mile of your father, you’ll be on a plane to Texas, Florida, New York, whatever. But I’m only going to do it if you tell me more about your father.”
“So you can kill him.”
Cole gulped but never took his eyes off of me.
“Yes.”
At least he finally admitted to it.
“And you’re convinced there’s no other way you can take care of the problem?” I said. “You can’t throw him in jail? You can’t ‘escort him’ to Mexico or something?”
“I don’t mean this in a mean way, but Lilly, you know the answer to that.”
I did.
But still…
Killing my father? Maybe I wouldn’t be the one pulling the trigger, but I’d be the one putting Cole in a spot to pull the trigger.
“I’m not telling you anything else,” I said. “Fix my phone so I can leave.”
Cole exhaled loudly, looked down at the ground, and then looked back at me, his eyes growing stronger by the minute.
“I’ll tell you how to fix your phone when you leave,” he said. “In the meantime, I need you to pack up and get ready. You’ve got one hour to leave. If you need help—”
“Oh, fuck off,” I said. “I don’t need an hour. I need a minute.”
I stood up and stormed over to my bag, hurriedly putting things back together. This was stupid, and I knew it. I’d left half my stuff at the entrance to the neighborhood when I got on Cole’s bike. I didn’t have a functioning phone. I didn’t have the money to get a plane ticket out of LAX or any other nearby airport.
I’d literally be a homeless girl, having to rely either on truck drivers to hitchhike with or sheer dumb luck to get me out of Southern California. I wasn’t so much walking out of a bad situation as I was walking into the worst possible one.
But at least I’d have agency. At least I’d have freedom. At least I’d have options.
I got all my shit together and stopped at the front door.
“It’s too bad, Cole,” I said. “You seemed like a nice guy.”
Cole gritted his teeth and groaned.
“You’ll need to make sure the chip clicks into place when you put it back. Will probably need some help reattaching the casing.”
“Seriously? Asshole.”
And with that, I stormed out of Cole’s place.
I’d already left one overbearing man. I didn’t need another.
Even if Cole seemed like he had a lot of attractive qualities to him.
