She looked at me. “I know him.”
“I figured as much.” I sighed, then passed the small bag to Rory Bingham, the dumbass kid Rich Mulvayne was stringing along.
“Is it really you?” Rory asked Laikyn.
“Of course it is.” Her gaze snapped to the bag, then to his face. “What the hell are you doing with drugs?”
“They’re not mine,” he whined.
She snorted a laugh. “No?”
Rory shook his head.
Laikyn reached for the bag. “Then you won’t mind if I—”
Rory jerked the bag out of her reach. “It’s not what you think.”
Laikyn pushed her way into the apartment. I followed, amused by the scene. More so by the way she dominated the situation. The woman never ceased to amaze me.
“And what is it that I think, Rory?” she asked, scanning the room, taking in the mess.
“I dunno,” he said softly, eyes wide as he stared her up and down. “You look good, Laikyn.”
“I know,” she said sternly, then cocked a hip as she faced off with him. “Is this what my mom’s money buys? Cheap furniture and drugs?”
Her mom? I was lost.
Laikyn must’ve felt my confusion because she looked at me. “Rory and I used to … date back in high school.”
Ah. Now I knew why the name sounded familiar. It was in the detail we’d gathered on Laikyn.
“I made the mistake of introducing him to Monica. She gave him a hand job. His parents threatened statutory rape. She paid them off.”
She made it sound simple, as though that was the shit she dealt with every day.
“It wasn’t quite like that,” Rory countered, his brown eyes shifting to me. “Laikyn broke up with me. She ruined me.”
Laikyn laughed. “Iruinedyou?”
“Yeah.” He dropped the bag on the table. “You did. I loved you, and you loved me.”
I looked over in time to see Laikyn’s lips twitch, and a sheepish expression slid over her face. She spun away from Rory under the guise of checking out his space.
“So now you’re fucking rock stars and doing drugs, huh?”
Rory shrugged. “He pays me.”
I shook my head and rolled my eyes. There were some things I didn’t need to know about my clients and plenty of things—like that little nugget—that I didn’twantto know.
“You want a drink?” Rory offered Laikyn.
“No.” She stepped closer to me. “Thank you,” she tacked on. “We’ve got things to do. But that”—she pointed at the bag on the table—“that’s bad news, Rory. You need to clean up your act.”
“Can I call you?”
Because I could tell she wasn’t sure how to respond without hurting his feelings or possibly sending him into a darker spiral, I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her to my side.
Rory noticed the move, and his eyes widened.
