Page 80 of The Other Side of Together

“Marcus, stop!”

My legs tighten, but I keep running, my hands in fists now.

“I’m telling you to stop as a cop, not your dad. Stop now or I’ll arrest you.”

“You can’t arrest me for catching you in a lie,” I yell over my shoulder, slowing as the hill gets steeper. “Go call Kenna.” Pushing my legs harder, I grit my teeth and shove myself up the hill, faltering when the car revs behind me and screeches to a stop between me and the corner. Dad jumps out again and strides toward me, his face all business, no apology, no shame. His eyes burn through me.

“We can talk about our personal differences after you explain these.” He flashes his phone screen toward me as he barrels closer. I stop, glued to the moment and the picture on his screen. Me. Mei. Walking and holding hands. I swallow, my blood screeching to a halt then draining from my face, pooling in my feet.

He jabs his screen, swipes, his eyes on me like metal bars. “Have something you wanna tell me? Maybe why pictures of you with Mei Li Zhang are on my lead suspect’s phone?”

My heart thuds in my throat, mouth dry. I cough, searching for air. Me on Mei’s fire escape. Swipe. Mei in her beanie, walking into my apartment building. Swipe. Mei, Lin, me walking home from my soccer game.

Dad stops inches from me, so close I can smell his deodorant. “Go ahead—explain. I’m all ears.”

My brain’s static, only one word visible through the black and white: How?

“Talk. Or I’ll take you to the precinct and make you talk.”

He’s using his cop voice, and it bounces around my head, stirs up the anger I just pounded down on my run. “You think I’m gonna tell you anything when you’ve been hiding everything from me?”

“This isn’t about Kenna or me, this is about you and how you’re involved with Nick Chao.”

I bark a laugh. “I’m not involved with Nick, but I’m pretty involved with Mei Li Zhang. And P.S., nothing’s ever been about me. It’s been all about you and redoing your past through me. So I do one thing for myself and you wanna arrest me?”

He steps closer, gets in my face. “Marcus, you have no idea what you’re messing with and who—”

“I told Stanford no.” It rockets out of me, and I tense; I want the news to explode in his face and hurt as much as it did for me to decline my scholarship. “Because of you.”

He squints. “You what?”

“I declined my scholarship. Because of you. Because I was afraid of leaving you here alone. Turns out, you won’t be.”

His eyes flash and I swear his face goes pale but his jaw tightens and he steps back. “We can discuss this later but right now, I need you off these streets, locked in The Clubhouse. I’ve been working this case for four years and know what kind of loser Nick Chao is.” He holds up the phone, stilllaser-focused on me. “If you’re involved with Mei Li, you’re involved with Nick and if he knows about you, all his people know about you. You’re walking around with a target on your back.”

His words are pointed, like he shot them from his gun.

“Of all the girls you could’ve gotten messed up with, this was the messiest, and it has to end.” He steps to the driver’s side door and talks over the roof of his car. “Get in the car so I can drive you home. You need to stay in the apartment, understand?”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why Nick cares I’m with Mei. What does any of this have to do with Mei or me?”

He leans against the car, aiming his words at me, point blank. “Nick’s not the one you should be worried about, Marcus.” He swears, closes his eyes, rubs his forehead, then turns his eyes on me again. “You’re closer to this case than you even realize. Get in the car.” His eyes push me back against an invisible wall, so I fling open the car door and drop into the seat.

He slides into the driver’s side and talks to the windshield as he revs the car down the hill. “I need every detail of you and Mei Li and Nick. Before we get to The Clubhouse.”

I scan the purple shadows bruising the buildings as the sun comes up, people waking up to a new day that doesn’t include being implicated in criminal activity. I need to find the high I was riding before Dad showed up but unanswered questions and the threat of arrest stomps it out. I need to know how those pictures of Mei and me got on Nick’s phone and why. Need to get out of San Francisco. With Mei. Forget graduation. They can mail my diploma. Forget Dad’s threats. I’ve told him all he needs to know. Maybe too much. Definitely too much.

CHAPTER 31

Cold spreads up my back. My shivering points out the empty space behind me where Marcus was when I fell asleep. My eyes fly open to more darkness. It’s inside my head, my chest, now all around me. It lifted when Marcus carried me from the shower. Darkness never stays in his presence. Maybe there was too much for him this time. I wouldn’t blame him if he stayed away. He said he’d never leave me, but he thought he was talking to the old me.

I blink back tears because I don’t want to add them to the darkness. I don’t want to hear my own voice because its words pushed Marcus away. I grimace and roll over, grabbing my phone. 5:07 AM. The world is still spinning. I’m alive. I’m not in L.A.

I open my phone and search local news and don’t have to scroll far before my eyes skitter across a headline: “Missing Women Rescued from Sex Trafficking Ring in L.A.” My breath catches on two words:sex trafficking. It spins and tries to catch what those words could have meant for me, but my mind blocks it. Clicking on the article link, I scan news about missing women being rescued from an upscale hotel indowntown L.A. My hand goes to my throat where, only hours ago, Nick’s hands were wrapped around it in that same hotel.

I skim the article again.Eighteen women rescued.No names have been released to the public yet, but Su Ling has to be one of them. Would I have been the nineteenth missing woman if Su Ling hadn’t saved me? What was Nick planning to do with me? Or any of them?

I search for his name.Multiple suspects in custody.No names. But Nick has to be one of them. And Xander. Chaz?

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