Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 99017 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99017 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
I hang up without saying a word.
Straight to voicemail means she’s either turned on her do-not-disturb or…I’m blocked. But surely, she wouldn’t…
Not like this, with no real explanation. That text wasn’t an explanation; it was a confusing apology for something I don’t even understand.
I don’t get it.
I don’t understand how she could turn her back on this, on me, on the girls.
On us.
But maybe there is no us, maybe there never was, I think as I stand staring at my phone, wondering how I’m going to go back to living the way I did before. The thought of a house without Clover in it doesn’t feel like home anymore.
It feels like a piece of me has been ripped out, a vital organ cut away without anesthesia. It’s even worse than when Frederica told me she’s been having an affair.
I’m that in love. That stupidly, recklessly in love.
I try to call her again, then once more later, after I’m alone in my hotel room, but the answer—or lack thereof—is the same.
I lie awake most of the night staring at the ceiling fan, waiting for the sun to rise, too eager to get on that plane in the morning to sleep. I need to be back in New Orleans. Now.
Then, I’m going to find Clover, even if I have to steal Blue’s phone, and track her down with his “find your friends” app.
I’m going to find her, and we’re going to talk.
I refuse to let her go without seeing her face-to-face, at least one last time.
Twenty-Three
CLOVER
The good news is that my leg feels great.
This is the only good news.
All other news is bad news. Very bad news.
I still can’t believe this is happening. That I went from making pizzas in Dean’s kitchen and giggling with the girls over “sharp toots” to hiding in a creepy motel with Plato, hoping we can think fast enough to escape the noose we’ve apparently slipped around our necks. I can’t believe this is my life, or that a room is capable of smelling this much like mildew and old B.O.
And not-so-old-B.O…
Is it me? I wonder for the tenth time. But when I pause my pacing across the tacky carpet to discreetly sniff my armpit, my skin still smells like honeysuckle deodorant.
But I’m sweating. A lot.
It’s forty-five degrees outside, not much warmer in our gross hotel room, and I’m wearing a sleeveless jumpsuit, but still…sweating. But that’s okay. It’s normal to be sweating at a time like this. It doesn’t mean I’m not ready to do what needs to be done.
It doesn’t mean I can’t handle myself when push comes to shove.
And it’s not going to come to push or shove! I’m meeting Dex’s partner in a coffee shop down the street from their club, a busy public place where people will notice if a guy hits a girl over the head and drags her out back to an unmarked van. Especially if that girl is wearing a bright red jumpsuit…
I smooth the fabric over my hips and keep pacing, resuming my silent mantra that everything is going to be okay.
It is going to be okay.
And then I’ll find some way to make things right with Dean again.
He’ll forgive me, even if I can never fully explain what happened…right?
God, I hope so.
I stop at the window, peeking out at the street below. The curtains are the color of mustard and smell like old smoke—which I guess is better than old B.O., but still not something I want to stick my face in—but I’m too afraid to pull them back. Plato has a new, fresh laptop that’s never been counter-hacked, both of our real phones are off, and to our knowledge, no one followed us here.
There’s probably no way Dex or Gio, his partner, or any of the crooked cops know that we’re spying on the UFC gym from across the street, but still…
Ever since Plato’s screen lit up, his QuickTime player showcasing a video taken of us from his laptop camera, along with a warning to get out of the gym’s system and await further instructions if we want to “keep breathing,” I’ve been paranoid as hell.
If only I’d been this paranoid sooner.
If only I’d realized how dangerous the man who hit my car last October really was. If I had, maybe I would have given up on my quest for justice before it was too late.
I don’t need justice. I just need Dean and the girls to be okay. I need to know no one is going to harm a hair on their precious heads because I was too stupid to realize I was punching way above my weight class.
“Stop staring out the window, it’s not good for your mental health,” Plato says from the desk without lifting his eyes from his laptop screen. “Neither is beating yourself up.”