“I’m not leaving,” I snap.
“Yes, you are. I’m not going to ask you twice,” he says flatly, his voice firm.
“You killedBadBloodthat night, didn’t you? He was yourmarkwasn’t he?” I ask while heading for the door.
“That’s none of your business.”
I carefully grab his arm and say, “Thanks,” and notice something in his eyes I never expected to see. Sympathy.
I leave the room.
Jonathan and Viking are waiting for me at the end of the hallway. Their expressions are priceless, two grown-up men scared shitless. Jonathan shows some relief as I pass him, but I can’t say the same about Viking. Someone is going to clean toilets for a while around here.
“One more thing kiddo…” Rage calls loudly from inside the room, waiting for me to look around at him to continue. “If you really know him as much as you think you do, then I’m sure you understand that he would never leave you unsupervised and unguarded.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just be mindful of your surroundings. You’ll find a string to pull from. Let me know iforwhen you need help tugging.” He slams the door shut.
“Well, fuck me sideways! I never thought I’d live to see a thing like that. What have you done to my president?” Viking asks.
“Yeah, fuck off Viking.” I ignore him and pat Jonathan on his shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
“You owe me a date,” Jonathan reminds me, and he’s right. Even though I want to run home and keep digging, he deserves better.
“I believe you are right, what would you like to do?”
“I’m craving some pizza,” he replies, excited.
As we are walking away, I raise my arm and wave back at Viking. “Thanks prince.”
“You are welcome, darling.”
Chapter Five
SARAH
“You’re going to have to explain what happened back there. You made me an accomplice in order to get to the guy,” Jonathan says while he pours a beer in a glass.
The place is packed, full of people who multiplies the noise tenfold, and I need silence in order to think because my mind is all over the place even though my face and my body offer a different picture. On the outside they can only see a regular girl but on the inside there’s a different story.
"You're right, but I'm here now, willing to listen to you talking about your ex-girlfriends and stuff, so you know... I guess I'm worthy of your forgiveness.”
He laughs.
"I don't have any ex-girlfriends worth mentioning or any stories to tell for that matter. What about your exes?”
"Same here.” I’m not going to tell him anything about my real life, let alone a word involving Bruno. I don’t want to consider him as anexsince nothing was ever official, but I don’t need a title to know that it was something more than just a simple fling.
"That's something to celebrate then. Cheers.”
The night goes by smoothly. Talking to Jonathan is never hard, and to be completely honest, he talks a lot, so engaging in conversation doesn’t require much effort on my end. He tells me about his experiences as a tattoo artist and mentions that no one knows that he paints in his free time. He even shows me a few pictures on his phone, which are really good.
* * *
We're back home and Jonathan parks the car in front of my house. We're still laughing over a story he has just finished.
