Page 6 of You for Her (The Edge of Retaliation 2)
“I knew you were here.”
“What do you need, Ethan?” I ask, my voice hard even though inside I’m screaming.
I’m angry.
Damned angry.
I want to tell him everything I think of him. I want to scream and yell and punch him. When I look into his eyes, I feel like I’ve been sucker punched in the belly. The friend who got me through the worst times of my life has been lying to me all along. He was meant to be there. He was meant to care. He let me down in the most horrendous way.
I’ll never recover from that.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says, his eyes scanning my face.
Ethan Corel knows how to read me—he spent six years learning how my features change. He knows when I’m lying, he knows when I’m covering something, he knows when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Right now, he knows something is wrong, and unless I give him a good story, he won’t let it go. I need him to let it go. Because I need him to leave my house before I break.
I’m barely hanging on.
“I’ve been sick,” I tell him, “really sick. I haven’t been speaking to anyone.”
“Bullshit,” he says immediately, his voice accusing. “You went into that house, didn’t you?”
I exhale, and here begins the lies. “No, actually. I didn’t. I got some other information on Chase, so I decided to follow that up. I don’t want to risk going back to prison, so for now, I’m going to see what I can find without breaking and entering.”
My voice is steady, calm, and I’ve thrown Chase in beautifully, cleverly, because it makes sense. It works.
Ethan studies me for a few moments, really taking me in, then murmurs, “I’m glad you changed your mind; it was a huge risk.”
Yeah, a huge risk for him.
“Yeah, I know. Anyway, I actually have been sick. I’ve not been able to go to work for a few days, I’ve been sleeping.”
“Sorry to hear that,” he says. “Anything I can do?”
What would I usually say to that? What would my normal response be?
“Yeah, you could get me some chocolate.”
His face lightens, just a touch. He knows how much I love chocolate, and he knows it makes everything better. He used to make sure I got some when I was in prison. It’s my weakness.
“Chocolate isn’t going to make you feel better.”
I shrug. “It might. It has to be better than the chicken soup Jo has been forcing down my throat.”
There.
That’s me.
That’s Callie.
Maybe I can do this.
Maybe everything will be okay after all.
Right?
3
“I CAN GET INTO ANYTHING,” Caleb says, his fingers flicking over the keys and doing god knows what to get Celia’s laptop open.
“Do you think someone has already gotten into this?” I ask the young whizz, trying not to lean over his shoulder too much, but I’m rather fascinated by what he’s doing right now.
“Doubtful, it hasn’t been unlocked by the looks. I’m guessing someone tried and couldn’t, so they let it be. Most people don’t push too hard unless they have reason to.”
I mean, that makes sense really. If Celia’s parents had no reason to suspect something was wrong, why would they go into her laptop? They probably tried and realized it was locked so they decided to just let it be. They had far bigger things to worry about, of course. Losing their daughter being quite enough.
My phone buzzes on the table beside us, and I look down to see it ringing. Tanner’s name flashes across the screen. I haven’t seen or heard from Tanner Yates since I told him my version of the story. A story I thought he was hearing for the first time, only to find out he knew all along who I was and what I had done.
My heart dips, and my stomach twists at the sight of his name. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Jo and I got really really drunk last night after Ethan left. I cried, I screamed, I yelled, and I swore that today when I woke up, Callie would be back in full force. I would not mope any further, I would seek the justice I deserved and, to do that, I had to leave my pain where it cannot affect me.
I didn’t think seeing Tanner’s name would bring such pain to my heart, but it is, and it’s confusing as hell.
But, I have to answer it.
I would have answered it before I knew. I know that. He knows that.
So, I have no choice but to follow through on that.
“Tanner,” I say when I bring the phone up to my ear after flicking the green button upward.
I walk out of the room as Caleb keeps working on Celia’s laptop.
“Callie, how are you?”
His voice is husky, and gorgeous, and it makes me weak at the knees. That’s quickly replaced by a cruel reminder of what he’s done, and it takes a few seconds for me to push the anger from my voice when I say, “I’m fine, how are you?”
