“What? Um, no!” he stammered.
“Yeah, you do,” I muttered. “Why don’t you want him to know that you know? Why hide it? It’s obvious to everyone that he loves you and you love him.”
“Sometimes, Slate, you have to move past the fear, or you’ll never live again. Sometimes, you have to ride that fear and hope it doesn’t kill you the next time death sneaks up on you.”
I’d been uttered those words by Rome just yesterday in regards to a certain little woman that was quickly burrowing her way into my cold, dead heart. Going so deep that I’d never be able to dig her free.
The words seemed perfect here, though.
As if I should say them.
But something stopped me.
“Why aren’t you telling them?” I asked.
Craig swallowed hard.
“I…I have really bad parents,” he admitted. “Ones that love that I’m a doctor. What they don’t love, however, is Dre. They hate the fact that I’m gay and stop at nothing to let me know how uncouth that is.”
I looked at him with every ounce of revulsion that I had for him in that moment.
“Well,” I said softly. “I think that you’re a coward. I also think that at the end of the day, if you’re willing to give up on the person that you love, then maybe he’s better off without you anyway.”
I hated that Dre would learn this about the man that he loved. Being lied to was the worst.
And somehow, what Craig was doing to Dre seemed even lower than what Vanessa had done to me.
Craig’s chin lifted up. “You’re not going to tell him?”
I shrugged. “I won’t have to. Harleigh will…you just may want to start making up a better lie than the truth you just told me if you want there to be a relationship there ever again. If you don’t…well, go ahead and tell him what you just told me, and I can guarantee that you won’t have one.”
With that, I walked back over to where Max was leaning against his bike with his son standing next to Harleigh’s vehicle.
“I have to go somewhere,” I told them both. “With Payton here to watch over Harleigh, I figure you might want to come with me.”
Dax’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m not sure I want to go anywhere with you,” he snapped.
I grinned. “Oh, I bet you will.”
I was right.
He did want to go once he learned where it was that we were going.Chapter 20Ugh, I need a new house. This one is dirty.
-Text from Izzy to Slate
Slate
“Let me tell you something,” I said as I squeezed the prick’s neck tightly. “You don’t go near her. You don’t look her up on the internet. You don’t even think about her.” I paused. “I want you out of this house in two days. I’ve already cleared it with your parole officer. You’re clear to move. You have a new parole officer in Tulsa.”
“Tulsa?” the prick Roan wheezed. “I don’t know anybody in Tulsa.”
I grinned then. “No, but I do.”
His eyes widened.
“I won’t touch her,” he promised. “I was high as fuck that day. I don’t do drugs anymore!”
“I don’t care what you do and don’t do as long as it doesn’t involve my fiancée,” I said. “What you do in Tulsa is your business. Just know I’ll have eyes on you. I’ll also be checking up on you every once in a while. If I don’t like what I hear, I’ll be amending my plans to let you live.”
He swallowed hard. “I won’t.”
I smiled then, showing all of my teeth. “Good.”
I let him go and rubbed my hands on my pants as if it would help me get rid of the filth that I felt after touching him.
“Go,” I said. “And don’t come back. I don’t even care if your mother dies. I see you anywhere near here and you’re dead.”
Roan took off like his ass had been lit on fire.
Though, maybe it had.
Maybe he finally understood that Harleigh was off limits.
Though, that was only after Dax and Max had gotten ahold of him, too.
I was the closer. The one that got to say the words.
Max and Dax had done all their talking with their fists.
“So…y’all ready to go?” Max asked, dusting his pants off.
I nodded once. “Probably so. We’ve been gone for over an hour, and Harleigh’s going to come looking for us soon.”
“That’s the truth,” Dax muttered. “Are you sure that you want to marry her?”
I grinned wickedly. “About as sure as I am that I want to keep breathing.”
Max snorted.
Dax, however, tilted his head.
“As long as you know that if you ever hurt her, I’m going to make your life a living hell,” he growled.
I held my hands up in surrender. “Like I’ve told your father, I will gladly stand still and allow you to shoot me if I ever hurt her.”