And Jace and Brian probably had gotten the worst of it.
“I’m—”
“Don’t even say it,” he interrupted uncaringly. “Don’t even think of saying it.”
“Is he working for you or isn’t he?” I asked instead.
Jace narrowed his eyes, frowning in my direction.
“Is he?”
“And what if I tell you that you have no right to even ask that? That I’ve killed for less—people wanting to know my business.”
“Jace.” I choked out, turning away. I couldn’t handle his biting words. The hurt and anger I heard in them.
“Because you keep walking, Taryn. You keep giving any right you have, any place you have, away. You keep throwing it away. Like it’s trash—like I’m trash.” He clipped out.
“What do you want me to say?!” I finally snapped, “I’m sorry, alright. Alright!? I’m trying to make a better life for me. One that’s not…”
“Jail, sex, drugs?” Jace supplied.
“Yeah. I’d like to actually have a weekend when I wasn’t worried one of you guys would call me from the hospital, with a bullet-hole in you. Or call me from jail, asking me for a $500 bond. Or hear how some girl O.D.’d from drugs that everyone know
s you run through this town. I’d like, for once, to have a weekend where I didn’t need to worry that any of that would happen.” I breathed, “Can you blame me?”
Jace just stood there, watching me. I couldn’t read him. Not any longer.
“So is he working for you or isn’t he?” I asked.
“No,” Jace said softly, walking closer to me. “I cut him loose when I realized who his son was. He went to another business in town.”
“Another business?” I asked, alarmed. That meant Jace was at war and suddenly everything I’d been fighting for vanished. Jace was in a war.
He shook his head. “No. That’s all you get.”
“Jace,” I cried.
“Go home. Go have supper with that family of yours.”
“Jace, you can’t just… Are you in danger?”
He grinned at that one, his white teeth almost blinding in the dark. “When am I not, Terry?”
“Jace.”
Rolling his eyes, he walked to me and grabbed my arm. Pulling me to the door, he pushed me outside and said sternly, “Go. Don’t break your way in here. Just…go, okay.”
“You can’t…not like this.”
Reaching up to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear, his eyes held mine as he said softly, “This is what it’s like when you try to make a better life. You gotta leave the bad stuff behind.”
Then he disappeared inside, locking the door behind him.
None of the guards tried to usher me out. They knew I could slip from their grasp and just find my own way back in.
So I stood there, staring at the door for a while longer until I turned and walked down the hallway.
My footsteps a deafening echo.