“Yes. He released three weeks early, thanks to his perfect behavior.” MeeMee rolled her eyes and then frowned as Dobby rubbed his head against her leg. “I don’t like you, so I don’t know why you insist on doing that.”
She was lying, she loved him, and I knew that because I’d borrowed her phone a couple of weeks ago and found about three hundred photos of him on it.
“What’s the relevance of the pub he was in?”
Shuddering, I swirled the little bit of coffee in the bottom of my mug, focusing on it instead of making eye contact. “I used to meet my friends with our grandmothers there on a Tuesday night. It’s the closest pub to where I lived, so I didn’t have far to stumble if I had too much to drink—which was hardly ever,” I added quietly.
Once you’ve had your power tested, you stayed in control as much as you could, and being drunk wasn’t being in control.
“But you got drunk with Ari and Beau,” he pointed out, knowing full well I had because he’d seen the security video footage of the whole debacle.
Yes, because I trust them.
“Please don’t remind me,” I whispered. “Those videos will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
I hadn’t wanted to say anything because it would make his family feel terrible, but the videos were humiliating for me. Yes, I laughed at myself all the time, and I wasn’t upset with them for showing people the fun we’d had, but the embarrassment I felt at the things I’d done on them…
Frowning, he leaned forward slightly and looked at me carefully. “You deserve to have fun and laugh, Sadie.”
That was rich…
“So do you,” I replied, not missing a beat.
I regretted it as soon as I said it, worried that he’d shut down, but instead, his mouth twitched. “Touché.”
“I’m still here,” MeeMee snickered, then sighed when Dobby jumped up onto her lap with a thump. “I wasn’t talking to you, you bald bastard.”
Not offended by the insult, he started purring and nudging her hand with his head.
“Looks like he likes you,” Elijah mused. “Either that or he thinks you’re a steak. Every time he looks at me, I swear he sees a thirty-ounce piece of beef waiting for him.”
Nodding, she gave in and started stroking his head. “You’re father and I made sure we had eyes on Riley, but you needed to know. We’ve also told Phyllis,” she assured me, talking about my maternal nan who was just as crazy as she was, “and she said she’d let us know if she saw him—”
“No, she didn’t,” I interrupted, narrowing my eyes at her. “She said she’d cut his balls off or hurt him in some way, didn’t she?” I knew them both too well. There was no way she’d ‘let them know’ if she saw him.
Shrugging, she kept her eyes on Dobby. “She might have plans to nudge him into the traffic or even turn her car into a Bentley with him as the symbol on the hood.” That was more like it. “The point is, we have eyes on him.”
“And he can’t get into the country because I’d assume with him being on parole, he has no passport,” Elijah added.
“He probably won’t even be able to get an ESTA,” I told them both, referring to the travel authorization document you needed to complete and be granted before flying to the States from England.
“I don’t think we should rest our assurance on either of those matters,” MeeMee huffed. “The man’s shown he’s got zero sense but a hell of a lot of plans and determination in the past. Complacency is what gets people hurt.”
Shitting shit, she had a point.
“Which is why I’m so glad you’re staying with Sadie now,” she said, looking at Elijah with a beaming smile on her face. “Although, I’m intrigued as to how you got those bruises on your face and why she was wearing god awful sweatpants that weren’t hers.”
Blushing, I sank down in my chair and tried to cover my face with my hair.
“I train,” Elijah hedged, “and last night it got a little more involved than normal. Then, this morning, Sadie must have picked up the first thing she could get her hands on—“ not a lie “—as she came to answer the door.”
“And how did they come to be the first thing she could get her hands on?”
“I dropped them there to change into on my way from the couch to the bathroom.”
Raising an eyebrow, she narrowed her eyes at him. “You know, I’ve got my own son, and Sadie and her brother and sister have always been a handful. I’ve learned the art of how to tell when someone’s full of shit.” I had to give Elijah credit because his expression didn’t change. “You might call it training, the rest of us call it relieving tension. You also might refer to the bed as a couch, but a bed is a bed.”