The monster pushed its presence into my hands to stall the anxious tap of my fingers as Dane sat forward, rubbing the center of his chest. I tried not to think about the kind of scar that would form over a wound like that. “I remember pieces from the reception,” he said. “It’s all scattered, broken up.” Our eyes locked together. “But I remember you.”
The monster swirled in my belly. To quell the sickening churn, I braced my head between my knees. Cold whispered through me.“I could make the pain go away. You just say the word.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Summoned the strength to refuse. To linger. To stayArthur.I didn’t realize Dane had asked me anotherquestion until he cleared his throat and I looked up to see him watching me expectantly.
“You’re just like them, you know,” Dane said, frustration leaking into his voice. “All four of you bend over backwards to keep each other’s secrets. What am I supposed to do with that?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. He’d made it sound like I still belonged to the Moreaus, when nothing could be further from the truth.
“You bruised my brother up real good. He could press charges,” Dane said, visibly exhausted. “It would be in Jack’s right to press them as well, if he wakes.”
The mention of Jack cut like a thorn.
“How is he?” I pressed.
“Stable, for now.”
The monster stirred nausea in my belly again. I needed to soothe it before I was sick. Fill the emptiness. “Can I have a Pop-Tart?” I asked, my voice cracking.
Dane hesitated only a moment before tossing me the foil through the bars. I tore open one end, my hands shaking, and was hit by the artificial smell of strawberry sugar. Nostalgia rose inside me. Mom had always kept a box of these on hand. They were her favorite flavor.
“It’s strange,” Dane said. “Secrets don’t usually survive in a town this small. Tongues slip, you know? Everybody knows everybody’s business.”
I tensed, swallowing a large bite of the too-dry pastry.
“Things were messy enough when you left,” Dane went on. “The doctors didn’t know what to make of my scar, or Jack’s condition, and my ex-wife didn’t want the press looking deeper into our lives.” He took a breath. “There was an investigation.”
I’d known there likely would be, and that I’d been a coward to leave town the way I did. Audrey was a snow globe that was constantly shaking, obscuring the truth with false snow. But I’d hoped to draw the town’s ire when I disappeared, giving them a scapegoat to take the pressure off the Moreaus.
Apparently, it had worked.
Dane watched me intently. “My brother remembers things from that night much more colorfully.”
What a diplomatic way of saying Lenny had been drunk off his ass. I struggled not to squirm beneath Dane’s stare.
“Why did you run?” he asked, his calm expression belying the urgency of his words.
Before I could dredge up a lie, the sound of rising voices came from just outside the holding cell. A knock sounded, and a guard peeked in. “We have a visitor,” he said.
“Not now, Grayson.”
A pale sheen of sweat glistened on the man’s forehead. He looked visibly uncomfortable as he cleared his throat. “I told her to come back tomorrow, Sheriff, but she insisted.”
That’s when I noticed the lichen slinking over the door’s threshold, and the smell of spring filled my nose.
Eva.
Dane must have clocked the edge to his deputy’s voice. He looked up, then sucked in a hard breath, his eyes darting back to me a moment. He stood. “Five minutes.” At the door, he looked back at me. “I meant what I said, Arthur. We can help each other.”
Then he was gone.
In the doorframe he vacated, the bee girl stood with her arms crossed, her expression a whetted blade. Eyes bloodshot, mouthhard, she stepped toward me, the door to the holding cell clicking heavily into place behind her.
When Eva reached the bars, she slipped what looked like a letter out of her pocket and shook it at me. “What the hell is this?” she seethed.
Chapter 12
Eva
