A Pound of Flesh (A Pound of Flesh #1)(169)

Kat nodded slowly, robotically, gripping the blankets in her fist.

“Katherine, come out here! I know you’re in there with him!”

Kat closed her eyes, unable to look at Carter for fear that she would fly out of the room and slap her mother senseless.

“Eva, calm down.” Nana Boo’s voice crept under the wood.

“No, I will not calm down. How could you have him in your house? How could you allow this to go on under your roof?”


“Because it is my roof, Eva, and I am your mother. I don’t answer to you.”

There was a beat of silence; the acidic tone of Nana Boo’s words fizzled into the air.

“I should go,” Carter muttered, making his way around the end of the bed.

Kat’s heart dropped to her stomach. “NO!” she called out, scrabbling from the bed toward him, catching her foot in the sheet. “No, you don’t have to go anywhere. Please. Don’t go.”

He avoided her eyes, looking past her, alarm making the muscle in his jaw jump. “I can’t be here.”

“Yes, you can,” Kat urged, grabbing at his biceps. “You have as much right to be here as I do.”

“Kat—”

“If you go, then I’m coming with you.”

Before Carter could answer, the door of the bedroom swung open, smacking the back wall of the room with the momentum with which it was forced. Kat turned to see her mother glaring at the two of them: Kat in Carter’s T-shirt, and he, bare but for his ink and a pair of black boxer briefs.

“Get out,” Kat growled.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Eva’s eyes trailed down Kat’s state of undress.

“Eva,” Nana Boo chastised. “That’s enough.”

“Get some clothes on and come downstairs,” Eva insisted through thin lips, ignoring Nana Boo. She shot daggers at Carter, causing Kat to move protectively in front of him. “Alone.”

“I’m not doing a thing—”

“Now, young lady,” Eva interrupted. She whirled like a dervish and marched out of the room, thumping down the stairway.

“What does she want, Nana?” Kat asked, desperate to feel Carter’s arms around her. He didn’t move.

His stillness and silence were terrifying.

“I don’t know,” Nana Boo replied with a despondent shake of her head. “I’m so sorry to both of you. She called asking if I’d spoken to you. I told her you were here together. I had no idea she planned on coming … I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Kat urged. “It’s her, not you.”

Glancing over her shoulder at Carter, Kat’s stomach rolled violently when she saw his face: angry, barricaded, and closed off from everyone around him.

Even her.

“I’ll give you a moment.” Nana Boo sloped out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Kat sniffed and moved toward her suitcase, ignoring the waves of dangerous calm rolling off Carter. When she started talking, the words came out quickly, bumping into one another.

“We’ll go. We’ll get out of here. I don’t want to be here with her. Nana can lend us the car again and I’ll grab my bag; you can grab yours—”

“No,” Carter interrupted.

She stopped, stock-still in the center of the room.

“Go downstairs and see what she has to say.” His voice was intense and direct, but his eyes flitted around the place, searching for a way out.

“But we can leave together,” she insisted.