I wanted Benny.
Would he even take me back after all of this was over? I’d understand it if he didn’t. I’d pushed him away so many times, maybe this would be the time I was successful.
Maybe that was a good thing. He’d be better off without me.
He could find someone who’d love him the way he deserved.
I cried harder.
Shadows swallowed me, and I let them. Submitted to them. Longing for them to devour me whole.
I wasn’t going to sleep tonight, so why even bother trying to get myself off the floor and into the bed?
A distant scream caught my attention over the low buzz of electricity. Not of a person, but of a machine. A familiar one. The scream of a supercharger. Even more out of place here than the city where I’d first heard it.
Louder. Louder. Until the rumble of a bike I knew was pulling into the motel lot.
I sighed, wiped my face on my sleeves, and sat up.
My head ached. Possibly from crying. Possibly from a lack of water, or food. It didn’t matter.
I forced myself up to my feet and opened the motel door.
Shady was already standing there, helmet still on.
I stepped to the side, and he came inside as he pulled it off, running his fingers through his peach-colored hair.
“How did you find me?” I asked, voice tired.
“I have eyes wherever there are shadows.” He smirked and then gestured to the dark room we were standing in.
It wasn’t an answer, but I suspected he wasn’t going to give me a truthful one of those. It didn’t matter anyway. “What do you want?”
“To help you.”
I frowned. “Why?”
He smiled. “Because we’re friends.”
Were we? I stared at him.
He huffed. “Because you have something I want, and I have methods of getting you what you want.”
How much had Benny told him? I didn’t know a lot about Shady, but I knew enough to know that he wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to owe anything to. Maybe he could help us, but I didn’t trust he wouldn’t put us in another impossible situation.
“What is it I want?” I asked him, because I wasn’t giving up any information until I had an idea of what his motives were.
“You want your father to die.”
I swallowed.
He continued. “And more importantly, I’m betting youdon’twant your boyfriend to kill him, as he intends to, just three days from now.”
“How would you know that?”
He smiled wider. “Well, I set it up for him.”
Panic clawed at my chest. “No. You can’t let him do that. It’s too dangerous.”
