“Clara, you’re an adult with rights and choices. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Trips’ creepy ass dad can’t force you to marry his son.”
I swallow. “So, you know how the guys have done things that might get them in trouble with the law?”
She leans back, her gaze shrewd, guessing that she’s not going to like what I say next. “I’ve gleaned that. Also, I did some digging of my own, and this rich brat in one of my gen. eds last semester, Aiden Johnson, told me that there are high stakes illegal poker games at a house that sounds suspiciously like yours. But illegal gambling doesn’t explain the multiple trips to Chicago. Or why you’re being so cagey. I mean, it’s bad, it’s illegal and all that, but it’s not having a bug scanner in the car and a healthy fear of the cops bad.”
I huff out something that I intend to be a laugh but is more of a grunt than anything. “You’re right. But I don’t think I can tell you everything without risking you, too.”
She grips my hands. “Remember, we’re going to jailtogether, Clara. Don’t protect me. Talk to me.”
I need to get all the shit out of my head, and with my ability to write it all down still stifled by my lack of code, I do.
I tell her everything.
The crimes of the guys.
My own crimes.
The danger, the excitement, the way I’ve felt more alive in the last few months than I can ever remember being in the past. About how close this has made us, how I feel like I’ve finally found the place in this world where I actually fit.
But then I tell her about the damage we’ve taken, the close calls that we’ve barely survived.
The nightmares and the hollowness that started in my stomach and seems to be devouring more of my emotions every day.
I explain my fears that I’m not enough for Walker. About Jansen falling apart. That RJ won’t talk about his run-in with the cops while slowly boiling himself under the pressure of endless work. And Trips—how damaged he is, and how I’m wholly unequipped to deal with it.
I share my terror as I watch everything falling apart around me while knowing there’s nothing I can do to fix it. That a year from now, the most likely outcome is that I’ll be married, pregnant, and working for the FBI as some sort of double agent for Trips’ family, despite turning down the offer.
Political power would erase that ‘no’ faster than I said it.
The life I’ve been building with this group of guys will be shattered by circumstance and silence, destroyed by a puppet master I never even knew to watch out for.
I tell her everything.
And when I finish, all I get is silence.
Taking a sip of my warm beer, I wait for her to say something. To say anything.
She mirrors me, taking a sip of her beer, staring at it like it’s the one she’s having a conversation with, not me. Then she picks up a handful of the cold popcorn, crunching it while I watch.
Her silence makes me nervous, and I tap my leg,one two three four five,unable to sit still.
If I just ruined the last good part of my life from before, I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but it’s not good.
I can’t outrun the loss of my last friend.
She gets up, goes to the fridge, and pulls out a bottle of tequila from the freezer, taking down two shot glasses, the salt, and chopping a lime.
Handing me the trifecta, I lick my hand, sprinkle the salt and wait for her to do the same. Then we lick, drink, and suck, like we have so many times before. But this time, it’s not Bryce that I’m questioning in the back of my mind, but her in the front of my mind.
Please, don’t leave me.
She holds out her hand for my lime and tosses it into the garbage, then turns back, running her hands down the front of her jeans.
She meets my gaze, her blue eyes uncertain. “Clara, that’s…it’s a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“I get why you didn’t tell me.”
