Page 51 of Entangled By You
“Yeah, and once I had it, I didn’t know what to do with it. By the time I got a plan in place, it was too late. Now it’s really too late. Mr. Montgomery’s gone. Evan’s gone. All those years wasted, for what?!”
She collapses into me completely, and I slowly lower her back into the chair so she can rest. This stress can’t be good for the baby.
“What do you mean, Evan’s gone?” Harlow asks, her tone just confused enough to hide her interest.
I step to the side, out of the way, so that Lexi can look at her best friend. Panic swells in her eyes as she takes us all in.
“Just say it, Princess.”
“Before you got here, he said something to me. He told me you had something to do with Evan’s disappearance.” Her red-rimmed eyes lift to mine. “What did you do, Pierce?”
LIES OF THE BROKEN
LEXI
It’slike I’ve sucked every molecule of oxygen from the room. No one moves, no one says a damn word. My skin crawls from their eyes, focusing heavily on me from around the room.
After everything I’ve just aired out for them to ingest, this is what gets their backs up. And then it dawns on me, if three dead bodies and a murder mystery solved, like Sherlock, didn’t result in this reaction, what the hell’s happened with Evan?
“What happened to Evan?” I ask again.
A second beats by, then two, I expect Pierce to say something finally, but it’s Harlow that shifts, catching my attention.
“I—” she starts, but Pierce butts in.
“Evan’s gone. He’s been dealt with, and he’s never coming back.”
“South America?” My tone drips with sarcasm, knowing damn well that’s not the truth.
“A little further south, if you catch my drift.” Pierce tries to lighten the moment, but there’s nothing light about the last twelve hours.
“When?” I choke because pieces are starting to fall into place.
“Do the details really matter? All you need to wo?—”
“When, Pierce?” I ask again, because it does matter, it matters so fucking much if this means what I think it does.
“The night Harlow found you.”
My blood runs cold.
He knew Evan was gone. He knew he wasn’t coming back. He could have calmed my nerves every time I felt like someone was watching me with a few simple words.
All those nights I drank myself into a drunken mess just to shut my brain down, to calm the panic that would rise in my chest anytime the sky turned black and the house got quiet. He knew.
“Did you two know this whole time! Did you lie to me?” I yell at his coconspirators.
“Lexi, it’s no?—”
“They didn’t know. They weren’t involved.” Pierce tucks his hands in his pockets—something he used to do to hide his fidgeting fingers when he lied.
“You lied to me. You knew what I was going through, and you fucking lied. When I confided in Si that I didn’t feel safe and he ordered your ass into my space, you could have told him, could have told me!”
I’m spiraling. I’m a train on a downhill track with no brakes to keep it from crashing into the abyss.
He moved in.
Invaded my space.
