“What?” I glanced from the cop to Zayn and back again. My chest tightened. No way. Mom had never taken drugs. She was an alcoholic, not a druggie.
“It’s meth,” Zayn said quietly, like he knew I needed an explanation, and that pissed me off.
“I’m not fucking dumb,” I snapped at him with a glare. “I know what it is.”
I didn’t, but fuck if I was going to admit that. But it all came back to this. To Mom. Meth? Since when did she do meth? Confusion tormented me and I let my face fall into my palms with a groan. Was I not watching her well enough? I’d seen the beer and wine bottles, plenty of them, but never any drugs.
“I’m assuming you didn’t know about her drug use,” the cop said, breaking me from my thoughts. I looked back at him with a narrowed stare.
“What do you fucking think?” I rose to my feet, and the cop’s partner stepped in closer, his boots squeaking on the hospital’s linoleum floor.
The English cop rose, too, but he didn’t puff out his chest like his partner. He raised his palm to me, his expression soft.I didn’t trust police, and I definitely didn’t trust the nice ones. They usually wanted something.
“We’re not here to ruin your mom’s legacy, Mr. Burnett. We only want answers. I know you live at the Lakeview Trailer Park. We’ve had reports of drug buying in that area. We want to find the sellers and lock them up so this can’t happen again.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “Are you going to fix whatever you think did this, dude? Because that’s not gonna happen. We’re poor. All of us in that fucking park are poor. We’ve got no money, no future, fucking nothing.” I counted the facts off on my fingers, anger suffocating me as I spoke. My lungs seized. “You know what poor people do, cop?” I stepped in closer, and Zayn was on his feet in seconds, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and putting weight on his grip, holding me in place. “We look for ways to pretend we have a better life, even for just a little while. So, while you sit there on your high horse and tell me you want answers, the only thing you want is to throw us in jail and pat yourself on the back. We don’t need your help. We need you to stay the fuck away from us so you don’t make it worse.”
If the cops crawled all over the park, the owner would have a fit. There were only a few rules about living in that place, and one of the main ones was not bringing the cops into our gates. If Mom was the reason the boys in blue showed up, the owner would kick me and Ginny out. Ginny needed me, more than ever, and I had to step up for her. One of the guys who liked to get high around here, Cardinal, had gone missing recently. Rumor had it that he got involved with the cops and the owner got rid of him. For good. After Dutch had gone missing, too, it seemed possible.
I wasn’t risking that shit.
“I have nothing to tell you.” I firmed up my jaw and stared the English cop down. “Fucking nothin’.”
While the Englishman’s partner’s face twisted in anger, the Englishman stayed professional. He nodded seriously and fishedin his shirt pocket, pulling free a card and holding it out to me. “If you think of anything, you can always call.”
I snatched the card out of his grasp and crumpled it, throwing it against the wall. “I’d rather chop off my hand.”
The pressure of Zayn’s grip relaxed. He stepped in closer and offered the cops a polite smile. “Gentlemen, if Keaton remembers anything, we’ll call you.” His expression said otherwise. I didn’t miss the hardness to his eyes, and the cops knew when they were losing the battle.
They offered their sympathy to me about Mom’s death before they left. As soon as they were out of sight, it felt like I could breathe again. My chest expanded and my knees buckled, and I would’ve fallen to the floor if Zayn hadn’t caught me. He guided me back to the chairs and sat down beside me, the weight of his hand resting on my knee.
“Boy, talk to me. Tell Daddy what you need.”
What I needed? Fucked if I knew. My life was shitty, but it was familiar. I had Mom and Ginny and my nights were the same. Picking up Mom from the floor when she couldn’t do it herself and making sure Ginny ate dinner. My days had gotten a little different since I’d started the job at the lumber mill, but they still involved making sure Ginny got to school and Mom went to work, if she had a place to go, or reminding her to pick up her own fucking daughter.
Now...I was on my own. It was me who took care of Ginny and only me. What was I supposed to do?
“Let’s get out of here.” I didn’t care that they wanted me to identify Mom’s body and I didn’t care if they had any more questions. The bland white walls of the relatives’ room closed in on me, crushing pressure hammering down on my chest until I couldn’t breathe. The silence mocked me, ringing in my ears until my head spun.
Too much. It was all too fucking much.
“I want to leave.” I shot to my feet. Zayn was there at my side, guiding me out of the hospital as someone called my name.
He led me back to the Maserati and settled me in the passenger side, closing the door behind me like I was some damsel in fucking distress. Except, I enjoyed the attention, which was stupid. I was Moose, the trailer park’s dumb, hulking shadow who kept to the edges of Lakeview, ready to charge into action if needed.
It was nice having someone doing the caring for a change.
Shoving the thought aside, I slouched as he slid into the car and leaned over for my seat belt, buckling it and tugging to make sure it was secure. My fingers tingled at the gesture and a weird sensation climbed in my throat, but I wasn’t sure what it was because I’d never felt it before. I’d cried once tonight in front of him, so the burning behind my eyes was a warning. I jerked my face toward the window in case more broke free. I was a fucking mountain of a dude. I couldn’t cryagain. I’d never live it down.
Closing my eyes, I curled in on myself as he switched on the radio. A woman’s voice filled the cab of the Maserati, and I listened to her drone on about country music. It was boring, but also relaxing, because Zayn didn’t ask me to talk.
I didn’t want to.
At some point, I’d closed my eyes because when I woke again, the car lights lit up the Lakeview Trailer Park sign above the gate, but the L was missing, making itakeviewinstead. Frowning, I shot up straight in my seat.
“What the fuck? Why are we here?”
I hadn’t told him where I lived, but with the amount of times the cops mentioned it, he probably assumed. Panic seized the breath in my throat as he slowed.
