I still couldn’t figure out why she’d been so evasive in discussing him. The best I could come up with was maybe he was a former boss or coworker of mine from my old firm that would make things awkward, but my boss was already married, and his boss was also married. So maybe…
Maybe that was why Hailey was hiding it from me? Because she wasn’t so much dating someone as being the secret side piece?
You said you’d keep an open mind. So stop rushing to judgments and just let it be.
Easier said than done after everything already done, though.
She finally pulled into a nice driveway to a house that looked more modern than anything else in the neighborhood, like it had been built within the last three years. There was a garage that kept hidden the contents of the owner. It looked like a man who made six but not quite high six figures a year.
“Sam’s already left the front door unlocked; he’s making some calls upstairs,” Hailey said. “He said we can go in and make ourselves at home.”
“You guys have hit it off that well, huh?”
“It’s rare that he trusts someone like this. I just consider myself lucky that I’m one of the few.”
“What, is he an FBI agent?”
Hailey didn’t respond as she swung open the door and held it for me. I stepped inside and took in the room. It had a very minimalist feel to it. I could see the pictures and paintings on the wall, but since the lights weren’t yet on, I couldn’t see their details.
“Just walk straight ahead. I need a second; the lights are always a bit finicky.”
I did as requested, coming to the entrance of the kitchen just as the lights came on. My initial reaction was right—much of this house…
Well, OK, it wasn’t built in the last three years. There were some signs, such as the positioning of the walls, that made it clear this house had been built before that. But it looked like someone had undertaken a massive renovation project, like they weren’t happy with the condition suddenly and wanted to modernize the place.
“Your boy’s got a nice place,” I said.
I wandered over to the fridge and opened it, curious for what I’d find inside.
For someone who had such an extravagant place, though, it looked very college student. A lot of beer—a lotof beer—some eggs, some protein shakes, a couple of pizza boxes, some roasted chicken, and that was it.
“You might want to work on his diet, though.”
“Well, he’s not usually here; he’s usually…out.”
The hesitation in Hailey’s voice…why?
But she said nothing else as I closed the fridge doors, chalking it up to just this guy having a busy job. After all, he was upstairs taking calls, and it was after dinner—not exactly ten in the morning on a Monday. I would say I was jealous of him having such a job, except that after everything with Corey, I needed less stress in my life.
“You can grab a beer if you want,” she said.
“No,” I said, turning. “I’m…”
Why does he have a motorcycle figure on the middle of his table?
I approached the figure carefully. It didn’t look like any special kind of bike. But the fact that someone would put a fucking motorcycle on their kitchen table…
“Melissa?”
I brushed past Hailey and retraced my steps into the hallway we’d come from. No longer barely visible outlines of rectangles and squares, I now instead saw the worst thing possible.
I saw pictures of a buff, older man, probably in his late thirties, standing with his arms crossed in a black and white photo, looking at an angle past the camera, resting on a bike. I saw a portrait of him and two others riding their bikes, going through what looked like the fires of hell, leaning forward. One of the men…
Yeah, it was him.
One of the men was Corey.
“Hailey,” I said, swallowing, nervous as hell. “Are you dating a Devil’s Patriot?”
