Dirty Little Secrets (Dirty Little #1)(17)

“Tomorrow sounds good,” I say, smiling. How will I even wait that long?

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, handing it to me. “Give me your number?”

I bite my lip, and input the number to the untraceable phone I have with me, since it’s the only one I’ve got with me, and it would be stupid to give him my real number anyway. I don’t even dare turn that phone on.

When I hand the phone back to him, he presses on the screen, and then my phone starts ringing.

I laugh. “What are you doing?”

“Just checking.”

Something in my heart sinks knowing that he thought—for even one second—that I might have given him a fake number. “Caleb,” I say, reaching out and sliding my hand across his cheek. He leans into it, like a puppy. “I’m not going to blow you off.”

He nods, then kisses me. “I’ll call you, okay?”

“I can’t wait.”

I reluctantly get out of the car, and I can feel his eyes on me as I make my way toward the doors of the hotel that I’m totally lying about staying in. I slip inside and grab a pamphlet from the concierge, pretending like I’m thinking about making a reservation, or booking a party. I slip it into the side pocket on my bag, because I need to remember the name of this place. When or if Caleb asks about it, I can’t slip up.

I shake my head. I’ve never been a liar, and now I’m a liar and a thief. Luckily, I don’t have much time to devote to think about that right now. When I’m certain that Caleb’s car is long gone, I exit the hotel, and head toward the place I’m really staying tonight.





CHAPTER ELEVEN





“How’s your mom? I ask Marcus, speaking in a voice that’s as quiet as I can manage. I’ve been in this hotel for nearly a week now, and it’s driving me insane. The walls are paper thin, and I’m worried someone will hear me. Not that any of them would care about who I’m talking to or what I’m talking about, but I can’t be too careful. With my luck, the one time I raised my voice on the phone with Marcus, Andre Privya would be walking by my door.

“She’s good. Doing better. Her new doctor is amazing.”

I smile. “I’m glad to hear it,” I tell him. No matter how I feel about the current state of my life, at least I know it wasn’t for nothing.

“How are things with you?”

I consider the question. How are things with me? Apart from the whole hiding from a hitman thing, things are great. I’ve been spending a lot of time with Caleb, and it’s wonderful. When I’m with him, I can almost believe that everything is going to be okay. I can almost believe that I could start a new life here, safely, and just forget about my old one and everything that goes along with it.

“I’m doing well,” I tell him, and I’m surprised to realize that it’s actually the truth.

I can hear the screen door on the back porch of Marcus’s apartment creaking open or shut, I can’t tell. I close my eyes, remembering all the time I spent on that porch: me talking him down whenever he broke up with a guy, him convincing me that the guy I was dating wasn’t good enough for me. He lives a block away from a pizza shop, and the air always smelled like freshly baked bread and warm, melting cheese. I feel a pang of homesickness just thinking about it.

“No sign of him?” he asks cryptically.

I shake my head, even though I know he can’t see me. “No. Still in Chicago, from what I can tell.”

“You’re not alone, are you? Where you are? Do you…is there someone you can talk to?”

“Yeah,” I say with a soft smile, thinking of Caleb. “I have someone to talk to. I’m not alone.”

Marcus knows me better than pretty much anyone else in the world, so I’m not surprised when he follows up with, “You met a guy, didn’t you?”


I laugh. “Maybe.”

“You did,” he says accusingly, even though I can hear the laughter in his voice. “You met a guy. Tell me about it.”

I bite my lip, then say, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Yeah. Okay, yeah. I understand.”

I hate this distance. I hate that I can’t tell Marcus where I am, or what I’m doing. I know he’s frustrated by the limitations of our phone calls, and being careful not to give away too much on the off chance that someone is listening. I’m sure he feels no small measure of guilt, since his mother is the reason I set this whole plan into motion. She and Marcus are the ones who are benefiting from this, and I know he feels guilty. He’s been my best friend for years, and we’ve been together through so much: my mom dying, the explosion that killed my father and nearly killed his mom, and now the aftermath of it. Everything is so strained now, and maybe this is how it’ll always be. Maybe the weight of what I’ve done for him and his mom will always hang heavily around our necks, and nothing will ever be the same again.

“Do you think I could just stay?” I ask, because I’m feeling a rare, shining moment of hope that everything will work out for me. “Do you think I could just hide here forever, and start a new life? Do you think he’d get frustrated with looking, and I could just…move on?”

“I don’t know, Mia,” Marcus replies skeptically. “If you could find a way out of it-”