Page 46 of Hell to Pay

“You can take tomorrow off,” I said. “We’ll go out and get you some things to tide you over. I can drive you to school the next day.”

It would be my first day at my new job. I could drop him at school on my way in.

“I don’t… I don’t have any money,” he said. “I only brought my phone.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got it.” It would be the last of my savings, but at least I had my new job, and one thing I’d learned from living on the edge was that you had to ride the wave in front of you before you looked at the ones coming from farther away.

“What if she calls the police?” Matt said. “I’m not eighteen. She can make me come home.”

I sucked in a breath and exhaled slowly. The possibility had been thrumming in my temples like a toothache. My mom wasn’t exactly a reasonable person.

“I’ll… I’ll call her,” I said.

I read his skepticism in the lift of his eyebrows.

“I know we’re not on the best of terms.” I hadn’t spoken to my mom in two years, since we’d had a fight about the way she treated Matt. I’d texted on her birthday and Christmas, trying to keep things civil, but she’d never once responded or reciprocated.“But I’ll try, tell her you called me and it’s temporary.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” he asked.

“Then we’ll deal with it.”

He nodded and sighed. “Okay.”

I was relieved that he let it go, that he’d let my relationship with the Bastards go, probably because it had been eclipsed by the news that my boss had come after me and it wasn’t safe to stay at my own apartment.

I was on overload, overwhelmed by the responsibility now in my hands, not just of taking care of Matt — that part was easy in the short-term thanks to the Bastards — but about the ramifications for Matt long-term, and for me too if my mom decided to be especially unreasonable.

I wasn’t looking to be arrested for kidnapping a minor.

“Let’s go take a look at the room,” I said, “make sure there are sheets and towels and stuff.”

I thought about my mom, about the fact that I’d have to talk to her.

Tonight.

I didn’t feel ready, didn’t feel equipped, but she was the next wave on the horizon.

32

LILAH

An hour later,I sat outside on the deck, my phone in my hand. I’d introduced Matt to the Bastards — by their real names obviously — and had gotten him settled in the room next to mine.

Part of me had expected him to recognize them once he had a chance to really look at them, really talk to them, but he hadn’t. And why would he? It wasn’t like what had happened to me had been a news story. It had been a family scandal, the boys who’d taken the pictures unnamed and faceless, the way boys who did things like that were, while my face — and my body — had been plastered all over everyone’s phones.

My mom had always called them “those boys.”

Jude had offered to make Matt a grilled cheese and Nolan had offered to make him an omelet, all while Rafe looked like I’d brought home a puppy he had no idea how to care for.

Matt had politely declined, obviously emotionally exhausted, and gone up to bed.

Now I couldn’t put off the moment of calling my mom any longer. I’d been in the room when he’d texted her, had heard the ring of his phone — one call after another — when she’d tried to get him to pick up.

I’d told him not to go in circles with her, to tell her he was going to stay somewhere else for a while and that he was safe and would still go to school and be in touch.

It would never be enough for her, and to be honest, I was pretty sure talking to me wasn’t going to help. But it was the only thing I could think of, which meant I had to try because if she got crazy and went to the police I was going to have to make some tough decisions. I couldn’t risk something happening to Matt and I couldn’t risk exposing the Bastards to scrutiny from the police.

I exhaled forcefully and dialed my mom before I could change my mind. I was surprised when she picked up on the second ring, then realized she probably knew it was about Matt, that I knew something about where he was and what was going on.

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