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“What would I do if I did come?” I demand, unable to stop myself. “I can’t help you kill the guy.” I’m just barely learning to wrap my head around all of this. Especially now that I’m sitting in the middle of a fucking meeting between three men looking tokillthe brother of the man Jed previously butchered.

This is all starting to feel like a nightmare. And more than a little fucked up. The only thing to complete my day would be for fuckingBrendato call again.

“Moral support,” Virgil replies shrewdly, cutting off another protest from Jed. “Could you do that?”

Looking away from him, I slant my gaze toward one of the windows as I stir the berry compote around my plate. I don’t know.I don’t know, and that’s the problem. If I’m as in love with Jed as I think I am…shouldn’t I know?

They’re quiet for longer than I expect them to be, but it’s Wren that finally breaks the silence by saying something about knowing where the guy’s truck is parked. Apparently, Tyson Miller’s brother is just as stupid as Tyson had been, and none of them are in any way worried about consequences, or not being able to find him.

It almost sounds like they’re just looking to put a hit out on the guy.

Thankfully, none of them ask me anything else while they talk. Their plans filter in and out of my ears, and all I can do is stare at my cooling food while my heart and brain go to war over what I should do. Obviously, Jed won’t hold it against me for not going. For being here with my head in his pillow and his blankets over my head.

He doesn’t think I have it in me to go.

And frankly, neither do I.

The scrape of Wren’s chair has me looking up, and I watch as the taller man twists, spine cracking as he stretches languidly. “I’ll be back,” he offers lazily, like none of this is a big deal to him. Like it doesn’tmatter.“Let me look into some things. Find out if he’s still around where his truck is. You coming?” He looks at Virgil, who nods and stands up as well.

“If you want the company,” the man murmurs. He looks at me again, and once more I see that challenge, that look, that says he wants more from me than I’m pretty sure I can give.

In response, I narrow my eyes and stuff a strawberry in my mouth. The corner of his mouth twitches upward, before he follows Wren to the door and closes it swiftly behind him, leaving me and Jed in the room alone.

“You don’t need to go with us,” Jed promises, still riled up from telling his friends about the confrontation in the restaurant parking lot, and now me being crept up on in the fog. “Seriously. It’s going to be a mess, and it won’t be entertaining. He doesn’t deserve it quite like Tyson did. I don’t want?—”

“What if I do go?” I ask, biting my lower lip hard. “What if I just…went?”

But it’s just words. Just a question, because I know for certain there’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to get my ass in a car and go on a murder trip with my boyfriend and his two best friends.

Not on my life.

Chapter

Twenty-Four

When the Jeep crawls to a stop outside of a dilapidated old building that definitely looks like it’s falling apart, my stomach doesn’t get the memo. It keeps going, plummeting toward the ground, and I can feel the bile crawling up my throat to lodge a protest in my mouth.

Please don’t throw up,I beg myself, hands clenched against my leggings.Please!God, I don’t want to vomit all over Jed’s lap, my lap, or the ground. I’m pretty sure the last of those options would be especially bad if they’re going to commit a crime here today.

I suck in air, only slightly aware of how Jed is watching me with undisguised worry on his face. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, but not vomiting is, unfortunately, the bigger problem right now. No matter how much I want to play it cool and tell him I’m more than fine.

I am so not fine.

“Do you want to wait here?” Jed’s voice is gentle. His hand strokes over my knuckles, but I shake my head vehemently. I’d come this far. And I’d already told myself that if I can’t do this,then I can’t be with him. This is my victory condition, even though I haven’t shared that with Jed yet.

“No,” I promise him, my voice hard. “No, I don’t need to wait out here. I can do this.” I don’t think I can do this. “I’m?—”

The sound of my phone ringing makes me jump, and I glare down at it in the console, knowing that there’s only one person with this kind of awful timing.

Sure enough, when I pick it up and flip it over in my fingers, the phone readsBrendain unwelcome letters.

“Your step-mom, right?” Jed’s hand closes over the phone, not giving me the chance to answer or not. “Who you’re not really fond of.”

“Right,” I whisper. “But she’s going to keep calling. I can’t ignore her forever.” The ringing stops, and sure enough, picks right back up as she calls me for the second time in the span of a minute.

“May I…?” He gingerly picks up the phone, making sure that I’m all right with it as he does. I know that I have the choice to take it back. He makes it clear with the hesitancy, the caution, in his actions. But part of me is too curious to stop him. The other just really doesn’t want to talk toBrenda.

Jed answers the call before it can go to voicemail again, and with his gaze firmly on my face, he hits the button for speakerphone.