The Not-Outcast(79)

Cut never spared him a look, but he said, “You’re damn right it is.”





*



“Babe.”

We were in his bathroom.

I was on the counter. He was standing between my legs.

A dab.

I hissed, feeling the burn.

He was cleaning my wounds.

It started to come back to me then.

I looked up as he was holding my hand, and our eyes met.

I asked, “I attacked him?”

Cut never answered me. He didn’t need to.

I knew.





39





Cut





Chad told me an hour after I got Cheyenne to bed.

I went back down, sat across from him, and said, “You talk or I call my lawyer tonight to start the ball rolling on how to make you sell your half of the house to me.”

He stared at me, long and hard.

There were red marks around his neck. Scratches from Cheyenne. Blood seeped out over the dried blood already, and his entire neck would be black and blue tomorrow.

Fuck.

I grimaced because he could take pictures, if he hadn’t already, and I couldn’t promise Cheyenne would be protected.

He let out, shaking his head, “You’re going to regret choosing her. She’s got a wild side to her, and she’ll never not have that in her. It was how she grew up. She had to be wild to survive, but that gets in them people, and that’s just how they are the rest of their lives.”

“You should stop talking about Cheyenne…seriously…and tell me about her mother instead.”

He looked to argue.

“Now.”

There was nothing to argue with me. He talked or I left.

Another beat where he studied me, as if he were gauging me, but then he gave in. He told me the story.

It was after Cheyenne had stayed with him. Deek wanted him to run over to their house, check on Cheyenne. Deek never told him why he wanted him to do that, but he did. He went after one of our hockey practices, and instead of Cheyenne, he found Donna.

She wanted a fix, so she needed money.

He said, “She offered to sleep with me for cash.”

“And you did that?”

“I was in high school. I was young and horny, and Donna was hot. Yeah. I did, and I’ve hated myself for it ever since.”

Jesus.

“Did you give her money?”

“It wasn’t like I paid for sex, but I felt bad and she was asking. Said she didn’t have anything for food for her and Cheyenne. I gave her what I had in my wallet. Fifty bucks.”

“She’d been sober before that?”

“Yeah. It was after her rehab stint. She was really going nuts for a hit.”

Christ.

“How soon was it before she overdosed?”

I waited, hoping…

Then, a soft, “Fuck.”

I stood, moving my chair back.

Chad looked up at me. “What are you going to do?”

I didn’t know, but I took his phone. He had no camera, and he was clueless how to use a computer.

“Why are you taking that?”

“So you don’t do anything stupid with it, stupid that you and I both will regret later on.”

“Oh.”

I shoved his phone in my pocket and turned.

“Cut?”

I’d been heading for the stairs. “What?”

“What’s going to happen with you and me?”

This was what he wanted to ask now? I gave him the only answer I could.

“I don’t know.”





40





Cheyenne





I woke up tasting peanut butter and regret.

I’d like to say the peanut butter was the strongest taste, but it wasn’t.

“Hey.”

I looked over.

Cut was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in his sweats and shirt. He’d showered and he was eyeing my hands as he asked, “How are your hands?”

I flexed them, and hissed. “They hurt.”

I wanted to pretend that I didn’t know the reason they hurt, but I couldn’t. My brain thought of everything and remembered everything, and I just wanted it to shut up. Today would be the best day for that miracle to happen.

“I asked Chad to leave.”

“What?”

“Correction.” He reached for a coffee mug on his nightstand and handed it to me. As I sat and took it, he added, “I packed a bag for him, woke him up, and shipped him out of here. He should be on the plane and heading for Vancouver as we speak.”

I swallowed over a knot. Damn. “You sent him to Vancouver?”

“The team has a timeshare there and I wanted him gone for a while.”

He sent him out of the country, and then I spied the phone on the nightstand beside his phone. “Whose is that?”

He gave me a dark look. “I packed a cheap throw-away phone in his bag. He’ll find out when he gets there that it’s not his phone I said I packed.”

“You lied?”

Another dark look, and if possible, this last one was even darker. “I know Chad. He won’t be motivated to buy a camera. He won’t even think about buying one, and if he tries to take pictures of his neck with his phone, then he’s an idiot. The quality will be shit.”