Page 39 of Gatsby's Starlet
“You took your time,” she said.
Something in my chest tightened. “How did you get in?” I asked, setting my purse down a little more carefully than necessary.
“Your spare key,” she replied, making me regret ever giving it to her.
I moved further into the room, slower now, the last of that earlier warmth slipping away with every step. “You could’ve texted.”
“And give you a chance to avoid me?” she said, her tone light, but it didn’t land that way.
“I’m not avoiding you.”
Her brows lifted slightly, like she didn’t believe me, and she would be right. Silence stretched for a second too long before she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, her voice shifting just enough to tell me this wasn’t casual. “You need to come with me tomorrow.”
My stomach dropped before I even asked. “Where?”
Her eyes held mine. “You know where.”
I shook my head once, a quiet, immediate refusal. “No.”
“Evie—”
“No,” I said again, firmer this time, the word landing harder between us than I meant it to. “I’m not going back there. I’m not going anywhere near them again.”
Her expression tightened, something stubborn slipping through. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“Actually, I do,” I shot back, the frustration rising faster than I could hold it down. “This isn’t my life, Ruby. This isn’t—whatever you’ve gotten yourself into—it’s not mine.”
“It is now,” she said, and there it was—cold, flat, final.
I stared at her, something in me cracking just slightly at how easily she said it.
“No,” I said again, quieter this time but no less certain. “It doesn’t have to be. We can stop this. You can stop this. You don’t owe him anything.”
Her laugh came quick and humorless. “You don’t understand.”
“Then help me understand,” I pressed, stepping closer now, the words coming faster. “Because from where I’m standing, this ends one way, Ruby, and it’s not good for either of us.”
“You’re wrong!” she snapped, pushing to her feet. “Drago would never hurt me or you!”
“Then why did he send his goon to threaten me?”
“You’re store! Not you!”
The room went still around that.
I shook my head slowly. “Do you hear yourself?”
Her eyes flashed, something almost desperate there now. “Just please do what he wants.”
Something cold slid through me at that.
“Let’s just leave,” I said, the words coming out before I could second-guess them. “We pack up, we go somewhere he can’t find us, we—”
“He will find us,” she cut in, her voice dropping, quieter now but somehow worse. “You don’t walk away from someone like him and just… disappear.”
“You don’t know that,” I argued, even though something in me already knew she wasn’t wrong.
“I do,” she said, and there was something in her tone that made me stop.
