Then he nods, gives him a smile, and that’s the end of the conversation.
I press my back against the corridor wall, I look at the ceiling, and I breathe. I give them another minute.
Then I push off the wall and I go in.
Hayden glances at me when I come through the door, and something in his face tells me he knew I was there, which makes me smile.
"Not bad," Dad says, looking around.
"No," I agree.
He meets my eyes.
He doesn't say anything else.
He doesn't need to.
Thirty-Eight
Hayden
Mason is losing,and he knows it, he's been arguing that he isn't for the last forty minutes.
"That's not how you hold a cue," he says, watching Miles line up his shot.
"I'm winning, so shut the fuck up," Miles says.
"You're winning wrong."
"There's no wrong way to win, Mason," Miles snaps at him, and I have to laugh.
"There absolutely is and you're doing it." Mason points at me across the table. "Tell him."
"You're losing," I say.
"I'm strategically behind." He straightens up, then smiles. "There's a difference."
I lean against the wall with my drink, and I hear Olivia's laugh carry down the hall.
She's in the kitchen with Lileah and Trixie and has been for the better part of an hour, the three of them are making plans for something involving lunch with Autumn at a place in town that Lileah’s been trying to get Olivia to try for weeks. I catch pieces of the conversation. They’re being girls, talking about girl things.
Lileah's voice lifts slightly, something changes in her tone, and I catch the tail end of a sentence without meaning to.
I set my drink down.
"—two weeks, not one call, nothing?—"
Olivia's voice, quieter. "Has she tried calling him?"
"Of course she has," Lileah says. "He's not picking up. Lincoln keeps telling her he's fine, that he's sorting something out, but he won't say what he means. Autumn is worried, you know what she's like. She'd never say she was scared but she is. It’s been two weeks.”
The pool cue in Mason's hand connects with the ball taking my attention away from the conversation, but now I’m thinking about where Cain is.
Two weeks.
Cain went quiet two weeks ago. It’s also been two weeks since I killed Leo.
I take my phone out and find Cain's name, I stare at it for a second before I call it.
