Page 83 of Unruly

After a few miles, she finally breaks the silence.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

I glance over at her. “For what?”

“For all of this. For dragging you into it. For …” Her voice cracks. “For pushing you away.”

I tighten my grip on the wheel. “You don’t have to apologize for that,” I say. “I was the one who fucked everything up. I got scared and I pushed you away like a goddamn coward. I should’ve fought for you instead of running.”

For a second, I don’t say anything. Then, before I can stop myself, I let out a short, dry laugh. “Well,” I say, keeping my eyes on the road, “at least now we’ve got a hell of a story to tell the kids one day. ‘Hey kids, did we ever tell you about the time your mom shot her ex-husband in a bar and your dad helped bury the body?’ Real wholesome family shit.”

I glance over to find her staring out the window, jaw tight, not even a flicker of the eye-roll that joke should’ve earned me.

“Hey.” I nudge her knee with two fingers, just enough to get her attention. “What’s wrong?”

It takes her a second. When she finally talks, her voice comes out cracked down the middle. “I didn’t want to kill him, Cash.”

“I know.”

“I just wanted him gone. I didn’t want—” She stops, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth like she’s holding something in. “I didn’t want this.”

“If you hadn’t pulled that trigger, I was gonna. One of us was ending the night with blood on our hands.”

She only answers in a shaky breath as she stares at the dash. After a while, she says, “What if we can’t tell the kids?”

I let out a chuckle. “Yeah, you’re right. No statute of limitations on murder and burying a body, so probably best we don’t tell anyone. Not even the kids.”

She shakes her head. “No. I mean, because what if we never have kids.”

“Kids are a lot.” I shrug. “We can table that conversation for later. Let’s start with a wedding first.”

She scoffs. “No. Cash. Like—what if I can’t have kids?”

I glance over, put a hand on her thigh, and squeeze once. “Hal. If we want them, we will have kids. We can always talk about it.”

She opens her mouth like she’s going to continue arguing about it, but closes it and looks back out the window instead. I let it go for now. Whatever she’s trying to say, it can wait until we aren’t driving with a dead body in the back of my truck.

HALLE

It’s been a week since I killed Zach, and somehow the world has already decided to keep spinning. Aria and Matt got back from vacation yesterday feeling refreshed, even making comments about how I kept the bar in pristine condition.

If they only knew.

When I showed up for work this morning, Aria practically shoved me out the door. “Go be a person, Halle.” She’d laughed. “You’ve been stuck here all week. We’ve got it today.”

I’d tried to argue, but she won, as she usually does. So now I’m attempting to do normal people shit.

I’ve spent the last week falling back into the grooves of routine like a record needle skipping back to the start. Wake up before the alarm, brew coffee, then I work and lose myself to the rhythm of pouring drinks, changing kegs, and listening to the same ten stories the regulars cycle through, all while trying to ignore the spot on the floor that Zach bled out on.

I keep circling back to Cash, like a moth to a porch light.

Not in the ditsy, we’re in love and it’s a magical kind of way, though. With Zach gone, I’m not suddenly weaving some fairy-tale happily ever after from one emotionally devastating night where he held me together while I shattered over Zach’s death.

No, it’s more complicated than that.

The morning after, he tried to talk to me. He could tell something was wrong but I wasn’t ready to go there. He didn’t argue with that, just told me to take all the time I needed.

That was six days ago. Since then, we’ve exchanged exactly three texts. I’ve received twenty more than that. I need time, but the excuses are running out.