Page 49 of Cruel Debts
"That's why you started covering them in chocolate, isn't it?" When I was younger, less cultured, I hated the chocolate coatingon cones. It felt harsh against my teeth, tasted cheap. Now, though, I could appreciate it. "You sneaky shithead."
His chuckle made me braver than I had a right to be. Even though I'd tried to seduce these men, I was far from the coquettish flirt I presented as. Not when the chips were down. Not when I was sitting here in regular street clothes.
But when he looked at me fondly, like he remembered a time when things were simpler, and yearned for its return, I came undone.
I sat my ass down in his lap, tugged his hand toward me, and licked right up the side of his cone, snagging a chunk of the coating as well as the ice cream in the process.
I didn't break eye contact the whole time.
When I swallowed the chunk of chocolate, neither one of us said a word for a long time. But he didn't kick me off his lap, and I didn't move, so it was like the world's tensest standoff.
"I need to come clean about something, Trinity."
I slid off his lap then, all teasing forgotten as he took his sunglasses off and turned to me with a serious stare. Whatever he was about to say was heavy. It meant no kidding around.
I shelved the light teasing jokes and got real for a second.
"I know you were listening in at the door the other night."
I didn't confirm or deny it. To do so in either direction was stupid. If I admitted it, it proved he couldn't trust me. If I lied, he'd see right through me, and then I'd lose all credibility with him. Neither option was ideal, so I chose option C: stay quiet and hear him out.
I didn't have to wait long.
"You're right about one thing: we didn't try hard enough. And it looked like we just gave up on Tank from the outside. But we have our reasons for that."
"What could possibly be a good enough reason to give up searching for your best friend?" I couldn't think of a singlereason aside from confirming his death that would make me give up the search. "How can you justify that?"
"When we ran into a man using his name."
I frowned, realizing he had no idea I already met the man pretending to be my brother. "You mean the detective?"
His eyes blew wide, and he sucked in a breath in shock. "How did you know about him?"
I shrugged, remembering the party that got broken up via a bomb in Nocturna Beach's night club scene. "Let's call it a twist of fate. I've known about him since before I came here. Why else do you think I was so dead-set on staying?"
Asher wasn't done with the conversation, though. "How did you meet him?"
"He was at a party in Nocturna Beach, and I was there, too. When the place got bombed, he asked everyone questions at the scene. And he just so happened to talk to me."
Asher looked disturbed. "So he had no idea who he was talking to, did he?"
"None."
His frown deepened. "Talk about shit luck."
The atmosphere around us was tense, and not in a good way. "Why did you guys keep that a secret? Why not tell me?"
"Tell you what, Trinity? That we were letting someone run around using your brother's name and identity? That we'd turned a stranger into an errand boy, an informant, because we had something over him? That we lied to you, to your parents, to everyone, and let this charade go on to benefit ourselves?"
Tell me that he was dead. That you found his body. That someone who may or may not have killed him was now on your payroll.
"I don't know, Asher," I spat, hating the way tears formed in the corner of my eyes. "Why not saysomething?Why leave me in the dark all this time?"
"We tried to tell you to drop it," he growled, his brows furrowed as I shot up and threw the remainder of my cone in the trash. "You didn't listen."
I had no taste for ice cream anymore. It was like chewing cardboard.
All this time, I'd thought they were different from other men. That they'd come around. And yet, here they were, with a secret bigger than any I could ever come up with, and the excuse for their lies and omission was that they'd tried to tell me to let it go and I didn't?
