“About dinner or gloating?”
“Hmm. Definitely about dinner, but I’m not sure about the gloating.”
“Where are we going?”
Our surroundings grew pitch dark as I drove us out of Vail.
“I’m taking you to Lombardi’s in Aspen.”
“Lombardi’s?”
“Yep. It’s our brand-new restaurant.”
“I’m fully aware of it. It’s been on the news and in the papers asthenew place. The news said it’s booked through March already.”
I shrugged and teased, “I know the owners.”
“Sawyer, why are you taking me there? The deal was I’d treat you to your favorite restaurant for dinner tonight.”
“I wanted to take you to the restaurant you wanted to try as a celebration for your promotion.”
“But don’t you want to be able to drop me off at home so you can go out and party or find some place to park your dick for a while?”
I laughed out loud at her deadpan humor.
“Damn, girl. I don’t know who the asshole is that you’re comparing me to, but I need to find him and kill him.”
She was quiet for a few moments and then she threw me a line.
“It was my foster father. And you don’t have to worry about finding him and killing him. I took care of it.”
There we go, Taylor.I grabbed on to the small opening she’d given me—she trusted me with—and started pulling.
“You killed him?”
“I did.”
“What happened?”
“I… I was fed up. I bounced around from foster care families and then this sick son of a bitch was just… He was terrible. He’d hit me and send me off to school. He threatened to kill me if I told anyone.”
I swallowed hard as the picture became clearer of her connection to Michael.
“Michael was the only person who knew.” She laughed and then added, “He bumped into me on the playground, and I fell. When he helped me up, he saw the bruises on my arms. And he just knew. He went out of his way each day to say hi to me, and he’d sit beside me while you were off running around.”
“He never told me.”
“He promised me he wouldn’t.”
“Michael was always good for his word.”
“I was too. Things at home got worse the older I got.” I gripped the steering wheel tighter as she continued. “I had three abortions in high school—”
“Because of him?”
“Yes. You have no idea how terrible it is to be dragged to an abortion clinic and hear him tell the people there that I’d slept around. He was a sick fuck. He purposely wouldn’t use protection sometimes and then would have me take home pregnancy tests. He found it funny when he’d discover I was pregnant. I’d basically become a social leper at school, and Michael was the only person who gave me the time of day. I’d told him about some of it, but he had problems of his own.”
“When did you kill him?”
