Page 30 of The Complete Truth Duet
I shrugged out of his hold and started pacing. “It’s not okay. It’s going to be another fucking tragedy all over again.”
“No, it won’t. This time, we’re in control. Just be nice to her. Figure out what she likes and doesn’t like. Talk a little. Listen a lot. And be there when she needs something. Too easy.”
I stopped and leveled him with a glare. “And if she gets hurt?”
There was no if about it though. When she got hurt was more like it. I’d known it would happen coming into this. I just hadn’t realized I’d be the man responsible—or that I’d even care.
I’d always been of the thought process that all was fair in love and war.
But two days with that woman had me reconsidering everything.
She wasn’t collateral damage. Or a pawn we needed to move.
She was an incredible woman who needed a life raft, not another shark in the water.
Drew moved back to the couch and sank down. “She’s been hurt a lot. A heartbreak is the least of her worries. But…if it comes to that, we’ll make it right.” He threw his legs up and resumed his position with his head on the armrest, his eyes closed and aimed at the ceiling.
“How exactly are we going to do that if we’re both dead or in prison?”
“One day at a time, Penn.” He turned his head, bringing his gaze to mine. His façade was gone, all the bravado he usually carried going with it. In its place was the cold, malicious darkness that, years earlier, had become the true Drew Walker.
It was the same vile black that stained my soul. I barely survived with it eating me away like acid from the inside out, eagerly waiting until the day it would finally devour me.
But not Drew. I hadn’t seen that side of him since he’d gotten out of prison, but there it was, front and center, staring back at me with all the gentleness of a dagger.
“You having second thoughts?”
“No,” I answered definitively. “But this does not blow back on Cora. No matter the cost.”
He arched a menacing eyebrow. “Those are some dangerous words, brother.”
“No matter the cost.”
An approving grin pulled at his lips. “Then I guess we’re going to have to make sure there’s no one left to blow anything back.”
Cora
The very next night after my run-in with Penn, the lights on the third-floor breezeway miraculously started working.
Penn, however, turned into a ghost.
Drew showed up every morning bright and early and worked long hours ripping out walls in my apartment, trying to find the source of our water leak, but Penn drifted in and out throughout the day. He didn’t speak. He didn’t linger. He was just there, like a figment of my imagination. But for the way my chest tightened and my body tingled each time he so much as walked into the room, I knew he was very, very real.
I tried to distract myself from harping on Penn’s phantom routine by dealing with the aftermath of Angela’s suicide. However, that only brought me back full circle—Penn working relentlessly to save her.
The majority of the girls had been adjusting well. They were good at that. But the ones who had been close to her were struggling. Some secretly—and some not so secretly.
I was in the secretly category. I couldn’t stop racking my brain for all the signs I’d missed. She’d seemed happy.
But was happiness really possible for women like us?
Sure, we laughed.
And smiled.
And made the best of the shitty hand we’d been dealt.
But happiness? Maybe that should have been my first clue. Prisoners were never truly happy.
It took two solid days for me to find the courage to go back down to Angela’s apartment. Armed with a bucket of bleach, a face mask, rubber gloves that went up to my elbow, and an onslaught of paralyzing memories, I made my way down the stairs with dread rolling in my stomach. As soon as I swung the door open, I suffered a minor cardiac arrest.
Her apartment had been cleaned: the carpet torn out, brand-new linoleum glued in its place. The bloodied couch was gone, and the fresh scent of Lysol danced in the air.
With a lump in my throat and tears stinging the backs of my lids, I spun in disbelief.
There were two possible suspects in the whodunit: Drew and Penn. Only one of those men caused the somersaults in my stomach.
Whoever it had been had known I wouldn’t have survived cleaning that room. At least not in one piece.
“I’ve known you two days and I’m drowning in it, Cora.”
There were no words as I looked around that spotless apartment. Quite honestly, I found it hard to process.
In my experience, people didn’t just do things out of the kindness of their hearts.
Everyone had a motive. And, suddenly, I was desperate to know Penn’s.
