Page 83 of Hard To Stay

My Uber got me back to my apartment in about 15 minutes. On the way home I felt guilty about leaving the party early, but I knew I would regret it tomorrow if I didn’t.

I walked in the apartment and I still couldn’t get over how quiet and empty the place felt. Lexi had been gone for a couple weeks and the smell of her perfume still lingered in the air. I looked around the room and started to take inventory of everything that needed to be packed up and wasn’t sure where to start.

I reached in the fridge and grabbed a beer and started to pull my dishes and glassware out of the cupboards. My apartment looked like a Costco warehouse with all the empty boxes. I grabbed a huge stack of old newspapers from the utility room next to the garbage chutes on my way up.

One by one, I started grabbing items and wrapping them into the sheet of newspaper. Over a mindless five minutes, I had finished the glasses and started to do the same with the dishes.

I had just finished using an entire newspaper and was reaching for the next copy when I paused and looked at the print on the page.

There it was as clear as day. It was a picture of Colton’s father posing with both the Mayor and Commissioner Devane. What the fuck? I ran my hand through my hair and skimmed through the article. They were standing together outside a ribbon cutting ceremony of a building dedicated to… Holy shit! My eyes must have been playing tricks on me because the building was being used as a shelter for abused woman and it was called the Hunt House.

Motherfucker. I threw the paper across the room. Everything started to make sense. I knew she’d lied to me. What kind of sick fucks were they? My stomach bottomed out as I reached down and picked the article back up. My face paled on the date. The answer to all my questions was right there in black ink.

I surged to my feet and stalked over to my laptop. Venom filled my veins. I fired up my screen and curled my hands around my beer. I went right to work, pulling up my good friend Google.

I dragged my fingers across my jaw when I saw a recent picture of the two of them together. That picture wasn’t there when I checked yesterday. Trust me, I had been checking on a daily basis. I wanted to reach into the fucking screen and squeeze the life out of that son of a bitch. Damn it to hell. The look in her puffy blue eyes, combined with the tight smile falling from her lips, fucked with my mind. I was going to beat Colton within an inch of his life. Every male instinct screamed at me to demolish him, but first I needed proof. I picked up my cell phone and called Captain Brown.

“Hello.”

“It’s me, Brad.”

“I know who it is. I got caller ID, you know. Shouldn’t you be out, celebrating?”

“I left early. Listen. How close are you to the commissioner?”

“Are you in some sort of trouble?”

I rolled my neck and cracked my knuckles. “No. But I could still use your help.”

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