Page 86 of Justice II

She kept moving. I caught up before she reached the next storefront and stepped in front of her.

“Can you stop for a damn second?”

“Move,” she demanded. I wanted to slap the shit out of her.

“After what you did, you owe me five minutes,” I snipped.

“This isn’t the place.”

“My car is right there.”

She looked toward it, then back at me. Her phone was already in her hand.

“Please,” I said, lowering my voice. “Just five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.” I couldn’t believe I had to beg her but I get it. Maybe her fear of Roman was why she was avoiding me. But he was out of town.

I just hated how familiar that felt. I begged her to call me after Golden died. I left messages asking what I did, why she wouldn’t answer, whether she was okay.

She let me worry about her while she was getting comfortable with my husband. Conniving bitch.

Aria looked past me at the studio. More women were coming outside.

“Five minutes,” she said.

I walked beside her to my car before she changed her mind.

She got into the passenger seat and kept her bag on her lap. I slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and turned on the heat.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

This close, I could see how much she still looked like the little sister I remembered. But she wasn’t. We’d grown apart and I never knew what I did to her to make her get with Roman.

“I’m not mad about you getting with my abusive ex-husband,” I said.

That lie damn near caused me to gag. It was so rancid sitting in my throat. Aria turned toward me with a scowl written on her face.

“You could’ve left the abusive part out.”

“Why? That’s what he is.”

“You don’t know anything about our relationship.”

“I know he’s hitting you.”

Her fingers tightened around her phone.

“Who told you that?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters,” she bit back.

“I lived with him, Aria. You think I don’t know what he’s capable of?”

She looked through the windshield.

I wasn’t giving her Keenan’s name. The last thing my son needed was her going home and demanding to know who he had been talking to.

“Things get heated sometimes,” she said.