Gun Shy(59)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR





LEO





Cassie’s gone for forty minutes, and for most of that time, I’m convinced she isn’t coming back. I don’t know why. It’s just this uneasy feeling that spreads through my limbs, that voice in my head that says why the fuck would she want anything to do with me after what I did to her?

Maybe she hates me so much she’s led me here, so I’ll break my parole and get sent back to prison. Her mother’s dead now, maybe this is her way of trying to make things right.

I mean, I probably deserve it.

So when she does finally come back, her expression unreadable, her green eyes stark against the black scarf she’s got wrapped around her neck, I almost cry with relief.

She doesn’t tell me where she’s been and I don’t ask. It’s enough to be here with her, to be able to look at her sitting across from me, to be within grabbing distance of her. I’m halfway through a burger and fries when her food arrives. I watch her mouth open, the way she loads her pink tongue with ranch-dressed lettuce, and I almost come in my jeans at the sight of her doing something as innocent as eating a fucking salad.

“You okay?” she asks, chewing slowly.

I nod, picking up my bacon burger and shoving it in my mouth before I can say anything stupid.

Something suddenly occurs to her. “Hey, when did you get your license back?”

I swallow. “Two-thousand-nineteen.”

She shakes her head, but the expression on her face isn’t disapproval. It’s.... amusement. I don’t argue when she reaches her hand over the table and slides the keys away from me.



Once we’re back in Nevada, Cassie, the girl who used to tell me to slow down whenever I was driving, puts her foot flat to the fucking floor and wipes fifteen minutes off our previous journey. Speed demon. I kind of like that she’s driving; it gives me a chance to steal glances at her for three hours while she bites on the insides of her cheeks and searches through the radio stations incessantly, clickclickclick. Her hands grip the wheel tighter the closer we get to her house, and at the last minute, she turns down my driveway, not hers.

“I can take you to your door,” I say, looking back at her empty driveway as she comes to a stop beside my container room. I can’t fucking breathe, she’s so all-consuming.

She shuts the car off and hands me the keys. “I don’t think you showing up at my door is a very good idea,” she replies. “Especially not with me.”

“Right,” I say. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I guess you’re a little preoccupied, huh?”

“It’s been a strange day,” I say. “A good day,” I add quickly. “Just…”

“Not what you expected?”

“Right,” I agree.

We sit there in silence. I don’t want to say goodbye and watch her walk up to her house. I mean, I’m still not sure that today actually happened. Maybe I’m hallucinating. Because I’m sure as shit not convinced that I just drove to California and back with my ex-girlfriend whose mother I killed.

“Well aren’t you going to invite me in?” she asks finally.

The pressure inside my chest releases like a hot wave of lava. “You want to come in?”

She just looks at me. “You forget your manners in prison?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just — I didn’t think you’d ever want to look at me again.”

I look at the floor, at the creek line in front of us, anywhere but at her.

“Leo,” she says softly, putting a hand on my arm.

I cringe at her touch. It’s entirely foreign to me. I pull my arm away and open the door. “Come on,” I say gruffly, a lump in my throat the size of Nevada. “You’ll catch a cold out here.”



* * *



Inside it’s warm, and I don’t know what the fuck to do. It’s not like I have beer or vodka or a goddamn soda to offer Cassie. Having her walk into my shitty little home and sit down on the unmade bed reminds me of how much I don’t have.

“What’s prison like?” Cassie asks, kicking her shoes off and crossing her legs on the bed. I snort, sitting on the other end of the bed, as far away from her as I can get.

“You’d know if you read any of my letters.”

I’m staring at my feet, but that doesn’t stop me from catching the way Cassie freezes in the corner of my eye. I glance at her. “What?”

She lets out a long breath. “Letters?”

I’ve got that sinking feeling again. I don’t like it. I wish it would go away. “I wrote you, like, every week I was gone.”

“Bullshit,” she says, her eyes shining with tears. “Bull-shit.”

Sinking, sinking. Everything is sinking.

I’m drowning in the impossibility of reality. Damon. Of course. I killed his wife. Of course he’d hide the letters. He was fucking his stepdaughter while I rotted in prison. Of course he’d intercept any communications from me. What a fucking idiot I am, thinking that I’d been writing her for eight years without a single goddamn reply, not even a ‘return to sender’.

“He got to them, didn’t he?” I say. “He fucking got to them.”