Page 125 of Good Girl's Guide to Love
Once we saw Brad videoing the entire fight, Linc grabbed my hand and we all but ran to his car two blocks away. We half-expected the photos and/or video to come out last night. The fact that nothing has come out yet is more shocking than anything.
It’s also making it worse. The longer this drags on, the more anxious we both are.
We're back to silence when a banging my apartment door makes both of us jump In our seats.
“Stay here,” he says as gets up. I don’t know who could’ve gotten through the security in my building. It’s not like we have a door man or anything, but there are three security measures to get in.
I turn from my couch to look back, nervous when the knocking keeps coming.
“Who is it?” Linc yells.
“The cavalry!” Simon says. “Now let us in!”
I stand up from the couch, simultaneously laughing and tearing up as Linc opens the door for each of my siblings, as well as their significant others, to come piling through.
“What are y’all doing here?
Maeve raises her eyebrow like my question is dumb. “You can’t send texts like the ones you did this morning and not expect us to react in this exact fashion.”
“How did you get in?”
Stella holds up a keycard. “Tracked your location. Still had my key card from when I lived here. Also conveniently ran into someone from the second floor who remembered me. Now tell us what’s going on before Simon blows a gasket.”
“I’m fine,” he says. “I just have three lawyers and a guy who I’m not sure what he actually does for a living on ready in my phone.”
Normally that joke would make me laugh, but as we all find seats in my living room, there’s nothing to laugh about. Especially when we fill them in on everything that happened.
Of course, the story takes longer to tell, because there are interjections throughout. Those included, but were not limited to:
“You’ve got to be shitting me!”
“You swore! And slapped her! I’m weirdly proud.”
“That whore!”
“Can I rip out his other ACL?”
And, my favorite, of course, from Quinn: “I hope they are together. He doesn’t like his dick sucked, and she looks like she gives terrible head. All teeth, I bet.”
That helped break up the heaviness in the room.
But it didn’t last long.
“So what are you two thinking?” Maeve asks. “Because the more you talk about this, the more I feel like this wasn’t accidental.”
“We’ve both been thinking the same thing,” Linc says. “If it was just Rockwell? Sure. He’s a dick and likes to antagonize. Katie’s fucking crazy. And Dipshit isn’t far behind. If this was individual, we could chalk it up to just the coincidence of being at the same place and tempers getting heated.”
“Side note: I love you call him Dipshit,” Stella interrupts. “Sorry. Continue.”
“Because he is,” Linc says as he and Stella exchange a head nod. “Except last night he was more calculated. He and Katie were definitely working together. I don’t know how they joined forces, but that’s a thing. The part about Rockwell, though—did he just see a chance and took it? Got lucky that he was at the right place at the right time?”
A light bulb flicks on over me. “You said that he normally never went to that bar with y’all, right?”
Linc nods. “He was never part of our crew. It’s not a secret that we go there a lot, especially since Maddox has dubbed it our place, but I don’t buy that he’s in town for a night and just got an inkling to go and check out a karaoke bar.”
“Is it normal for players to stay behind after away games?” Maeve asks.
“It’s not typical, but exceptions have been made,” Linc says. “If he told them he didn’t have time to move all of his things, and they had a bye anyway, I can see them giving him the green light.”
