Page 88 of Deeper

And suddenly I was angry. I knew none of it was his fault, but he was asking very real questions I could not answer. “I don’t know! I’m twenty-five, and I still don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going, okay!”

“You’re going with me, okay?”

That was just what I needed, his pity and charity.

I walked past him, going and grasping the door knob. “I need to be alone right now.”

Zander shook his head, a frown on his face. “Youarealone, which is why I’m not going anywhere.”

It was the truth. The ugly truth. Faithfully, ever since I met her at seventeen, all I had was Victoria. With us on the outs, I had no one.

Try as I might, the tears were coming. Now wasn’t the time to break down when I had to get on my shit.

“Go!” I shouted.

Zander stayed planted. “No.”

“Leave! I don’t want you here!”

His response was another shake of his head, and my rebuttal was a sight full of tears. I fell back against my door as I started to cry and Zander didn’t waste time collecting me into his arms and holding me against his chest.

Zander brought me over to my sofa and never let me go as we sat down. His resilient strength let me know he’d hold me all night if he had to.

It was a known fact that rent was high in California. I worked full time at Angles and I still stretched that as far as possible making it work as I lived in the cheap residences of Lakeside Manor. To live elsewhere, I’d have to get a second job, or maybe even a second andthird. I hadn’t gone to college and my meager high school diploma was especially laughable in this predicament. Deep down, I’d always known I couldn’t work at Angles forever, especially if I wanted better for myself.

This eviction was a rude awakening, a bitch slap to wake up and boss up—or whatever Rick Ross liked to tweet motivationally.

While I couldn’t look at Zander, I could speak, and as I relayed to him my financial troubles and the impossibility of finding my way out of this hole, he listened.

“I already work so much at the store, and now I’m going to have to do double if I’m going to find another place to live,” I said. “This place is shitty, but it’s all I could afford when I moved out.”

“It’s not awful,” Zander insisted. “I like it.”

He was just being nice.

“Will you like me when I’m homeless?” I joked pathetically.

Zander clicked his tongue. “I’m never going to let you go homeless, Bianka. What about your friend, Holliston? Could you room with her?”

“We’re notthatclose, and she still lives at home,” I said. “Things are too complicated with Victoria right now to try to ask her. I’m not going to find a place in sixty days, I just know it.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic.”

“I’m being real, Zander.” Truthfully, I had one other option. “I just have to call my dad and ask to move back in with him while I figure this out.”

Zander’s abrupt silence had me peeking up at him, finding his dark brows furrowed in confusion. “Your father?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you claim he doesn’t love you?”

“He may or may not, but I know—or Ihope, he wouldn’t let me end up on the street.”

Zander held me harder, tighter, closer. “No.”

“I have no one.”

He blinked, and then he narrowed his eyes. “What about me?”

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