Page 59 of It Happened on a Sunday
“They’re not Louboutins,” Sly admits, “but they’ll do in a pinch. What color do you want?”
Five minutes later, I’m the proud owner of a pair of hot pinkL.A. is Paradiseflip-flops with white flowers stenciled all over them, plus a cream bucket hat that matches Sly’s own.
It’s not a fantastic disguise, but it’s better than nothing. “Thank you,” I tell him as we walk along the edges of Griffith Park near the observatory.
Sly nods, but he doesn’t say anything else until we get into a deeper, more secluded area of the park, far away from prying eyes. Only then does he turn to me and say, “I know I said I wouldn’t push you. I even told myself I’d let this be as easy as you needed it to be. But you can’t nearly jump out of a moving vehicle and almost get run over without me having to ask… What the fuck happened back there?”
Chapter 25
Sly
Sloane looks startled by the question, like she wasn’t expecting me to worry about her climbing out of a moving vehicle in the middle of a busy street, which is the bare fucking minimum in my opinion.What kind of robots has this woman dated?
I nearly passed out when she started to fall out of the SUV into traffic, her life flashing before my damn eyes. From the quirky girl in that tween comedy to the teen ingenue dying in a horror movie to now. I’m freaked out, worried, and riding one hell of an adrenaline rush, but as I stare down at the surprise in her gold-flecked eyes, I’m doing my best not to show any of it.
“I’m sorry,” she says after a minute. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m not asking you to be sorry,” I say. “I’m asking you to explain. Did the driver try to take a photo? Did I do something to make you uncomfortable? Did you suddenly get claustrophobic? What?”
Her surprise turns to shock. “You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t,” I answer, my gaze locked with hers.
She starts to say something—I can tell whatever it is that upset her is on the tip of her tongue. But then she just shakes her head. “Let’s just forget it. It was no big deal.”
She moves past me, head down, shoulders hunched in on herself, and my heart aches.
Which is why I’m so careful when I tug on her wrist until she’s once again facing me. “I’m not about tojust move onwhen you almost got hurt. Just tell me what I missed, and I promise it won’t happen again.”
“It’s not your job to protect me,” she tosses back. “I’m a grownwoman. If I did jump out of an SUV, it’s no one’s responsibility but my own.”
“Bullshit.” The word is out before I can stop it, more raw than I mean it to be. Her eyes widen, and I force myself to take a breath. I don’t want to intimidate her—I just want her to be okay.
“Excuse me?” In an instant, the waif is gone. The Black Widow rises again.
Good. Because I can’t fight someone when they’re down, let alone Sloane. “I’m the reason you were in that SUV, and I need to know what set you off, so I know how to prevent it next time.”
“Next time?” She gives me a pissed-off look that ups the ante on the emotions roiling around inside of me. “That’s one hell of an assumption, Sly. Who says there’s going to be a next time?”
Her words bring me up cold, exactly as she means them to. And fine, maybe this is the only time we’ll ever have together. But that only makes me more determined to know what happened in that SUV. Because she was right there with me, right up until she wasn’t.
Right up until she threw herself out of a moving vehicle to get away.
The truth hits me like a two-by-four. And even though everything inside me is screaming at me to wrap Sloane up, to keep her safe, to hold on to her and make sure she never feels like she has to do something so reckless again, I force myself to back up and give her some space.
It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, second only to backing off when Lucia—
I shut the thought down before it can fully form. This is nothing like what happened to my sister. This is about Sloane.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
She looks startled, like those are the last two words she expected to hear. Which makes me feel like an ass for getting so upset.
“I don’t have the right to ask anything of—”
“It was the song!” she shouts, and now she’s wrapping her arms around herself like she’s bracing for a blow. “You didn’t do anything, Sly. It was the fucking song on the radio, okay? I can’t listen to it. I can’t be around it. I can’t even think about it or I—”
Her voice breaks. She shakes her head as she steps backward, eyes roaming like she’s looking for somewhere to hide.
