Page 23 of Between the Stars

“Hos?” I chuckle.

“Yes, Jace. They’re hos.” Reaching forward, she angles all the heating vents at her instead of me.

“Your best friend know you’re calling her a whore?”

“You know what I mean.” Flipping down the visor, she digs through her bag on her lap like she’s looking for a treasure in there. “And if I’ve had my finger in your butt, you can’t talk shit to me. You’ve technically been my puppet,bitch.”

I practically wreck my Jeep in the ditch for the second time this week as I turn my head and stare at my sister. “The fuck you talkin’ ’bout?”

“We shared Mom’s womb. I probably had my fingers in your—” She stops suddenly, thank God, and her eyes wide. “Oh shit, did you hear about Barron?”

Welcome to any conversation with Josie. Try to keep up.

I nod. “Morgan told me all about his drama this morning.” Apparently mystery girl used to be his wife’s assistant, and guess who showed back up in town the other day? Tara, Barron’s ex. He refuses to sign the divorce papers because she won’t give him what he wants. I’m assuming she showed up to wonder what the fuck.

“I saw that coming a mile away,” Josie notes, texting someone on her phone.

“How so?” I adjust the heater on full blast and angle the vent toward Josie, so it blows her hair out of place.

“Too good to be true. This isn’t a Lifetime movie. Girls don’t just show up in your life like that.”

I suppose she’s right in some respects, but I still don’t believe Kacy was in it to hurt Barron. Tara, yeah, she’d do anything to destroy him after three years of him sending the divorce papers back. All he wants is full custody of his girls and she won’t give it to him.

We’re in the parking lot of Tilly’s bar, which is a field with hay bales lining the road. I look over at Josie fixing her hair in the mirror. The warm glow lights up her face and those spider legs on her eyes. “Why do you have those?”

“I like the way they look. I can fly away from your bullshit this way.” She bats them at me again. “And you took the good lashes in the womb.”

I roll my eyes. “Stop talking about being in the womb with me. What’s the secret?” The entire drive here, between Josie’s ridiculous butthole talk and Barron, I kinda forgot why I let her ride with me.

Josie smacks her lips together after applying what I assume is lip gloss. It makes her lips look wet and sticky. “What secret?”

I tighten my jaw in annoyance. “You said you knew a secret about Abbi. It’s the only reason I gave your three-pump ass a ride.”

“Gross. When you say it like that it makes it sound like we fucked.”

I grab her from across the cab and put her in a head lock. “Can you stop being disgusting?”

“Jace!” she screams, smacking at my face. “You’re gonna ruin my hair.”

“Believe me, it’s an improvement.”

“If you don’t let me go right now,” she warns, stomping her feet against the floorboards, “I’m going to call Rhett and tell him all about you and Abbi.”

I let go. Rhett knows more than he leads on, but I don’t feel like having that conversation tonight, or any other night. “Just tell me already.”

“Fine.” She holds up her phone to a text message Abbi sent her. I narrow my eyes at the screen and my breathing picks up. Hell, my heart drops to my stomach.

Abbi: Rhett and I are headin’ to Tilly’s. You comin’?

My eyes snap to the date and time. Today 8:07 p.m.

I swallow over the lump of uncertainty forming. “She’s in town?”

Josie fixes her hair again, breathing heavily as she reaches for the door handle. “Yes, asshole. She is. I picked her up in this hunk of junk earlier.” Before she gets out, she points a finger at me. “Don’t fuck this up.”

Fuck this up? I sit in my Jeep in silence as Josie trudges through the parking lot toward the bar, my headlights lighting the path. I look down at my phone. No messages from her. How can she be in town and not tell me? Maybe she doesn’t want to see me after that shit I pulled on FaceTime.

Or she’s scared of what she’ll do when she sees me.

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