And I was gleeful at the prospect?
Yes and yes.
“I’m not sharing that information without asking Patrick first.”
“Oh, Christ,” was Hollis’s opinion.
I’d pushed too far.
"I'll get it to you." I typed back a quick thanks to Patrick, promised to explain everything over coffee sometime and set my phone face down, because I could feel myself wanting to spiral into whether that promise had been flirting or not.
And if I had done it because I was attracted to Patrick or if I wanted to make Hollis jealous.
He eyed my face down phone then looked at me.
There it was. That thing he did. Where he just stared at me and waited.
I verbally vomited.
“I’ll text Hyacinth and we’ll meet up with her today. Coffeeshop? Or a happy hour? She looks like a wine girl. Maybe it will loosen her tongue? She’ll say yes out of curiosity.”
I paused for air.
"And you need me there because..."
"Because I want a witness."
He considered that, jaw doing the thing it did when he was weighing whether to indulge me or lecture me, which were, in my experience, roughly a coin flip.
"I'm not going in as a detective," he said finally. "She clams up the second she clocks a badge, just like you said. If I'm there, I'm there as something else."
"Okay. Like I said, you can be my friend.”
“That’s stupid. Why would I be hanging out with you like that? Crashing girl dinner?”
I could think of one reason but he wouldn’t like it so I kept my mouth shut.
“Fine. Then you can be what, my accountant? My contractor? My sober coach?"
"I was thinking your boyfriend."
My brain froze. I nearly choked on the last of my coffee. "Excuse me?"
"It's simple. Believable. Nobody questions a boyfriend sitting at the next table looking at his phone. Nobody clams up in front of a boyfriend the way they do in front of a cop." He said it like he was reading off a very reasonable checklist.
Which it was.
But pretend Hollis was my boyfriend? It made me…weird.
"It's tactical."
"Tactical," I repeated.
"Very."
"Uh-huh." I narrowed my eyes at him, and he looked entirely unbothered, which made it worse. "And you just landed on boyfriend. Not cousin. Not an old family friend. Boyfriend."
"All of those are dumb. Boyfriend explains proximity." He shrugged, infuriatingly logical. "It's the cover that requires the least amount of lying."
