Ready to go…but Ihaveto get the kitten first.
The thought slips in before I can stop it. Leaving a tiny animal in a house full of morally questionable men would be worse than abandoning my plan altogether.
I stare at my bag and start building a plan that gets uglier by the second.
Drive. Find somewhere to stay. Track Deacon. (How, though? I’ll figure it out later.) Get close.
Finish it.
No middleman. No asking permission. No more men telling me to wait, to stop, to forgive, to forget what happened to me.
The sliding door opens across the patio. I close my eyes once before looking up.
Fuck my life.
“We need to talk.”
Nash’s voice carries, roughened by the hour and the heat.
“Took your sweet time getting here. Where’s my cat?”
He steps outside in dark jeans and a black shirt, sleevesshoved up, feet and forearms bare. He isn’t dressed for bed. Men like Nash probably actually don’t sleep.
His gaze lands on the chair first. On the duffel. Then on me. The sequence tightens something in my stomach.
“He’s fine. Inside asleep with one of the others by now, I imagine.”
“He’smycat,” I say, turning to brace my forearms on the edge, “he should be sleeping with me.”
“And yet here you are. You brought your bag to the pool, so it doesn’t look like you plan on sleeping.”
It isn’t a question.
I glance at the chair and then back at him. “Observant.”
“You were planning to leave tonight.”
Again, not a question.
I give him a bright, mean little smile. “Maybe I was going to take the advice I was given. Leave before it’s too late.”
Something shifts in his face at the wording. Small. Quick. There and gone.
“Ever said that to you.”
I tilt my head. “You all compare notes now?”
“We survive by comparing notes.”
The answer digs in between my ribs and twists. They have this brotherhood, this sanctity of loyalty that I’ll never be a part of. I both admire that and feel cut by it.
I look away first, out past the fence line into the dark. “Then add this to your notes, Nash. I asked for help. You told me no. I got the message. Now I’m done here. Where I stand, things are perfectly clear.”
He comes to the edge of the pool, close enough that I can see the darker navy surrounding the brighter blue of his eyes.
“You got part of it, maybe.”
I roll my eyes. “Then how bout you finish the sentence.”
