Page 32 of Coiled Tight
They werereallydark, and like really expressive at the same time. If I had the guts, I’d be staring into his eyes all the time. It would be creepy as fuck, though, so it was probably for the best.
“Not important now, just family stuff, and work stuff, and dating stuff, and… Anyway. I stopped replying as often, and it just… Slowly, things died down. We tried to talk about it, but it wasn’t working.” I shut my eyes. I could recite the last text conversations we exchanged. It wasn’t as if I’d downright said anything bad, but it hadn’t been pretty, either. “So, flash forward to now. I tried to reach out to her again, and her account was deactivated, and I panicked bad, right? Like, what if her ex had actually done something, or something bad had happened? I couldn’t find her anywhere else, and her job didn’t know anything about her, or at least they wouldn’t tell me, and I took it hard.”
“So you hired a PI.”
I swallowed. I was aware that it was a disgusting thing to do. “I just wanted to know that she was alive. At first. And I tried to research on my own, but I’m not as good as all the fandoms are, and… Yeah.”
“Okay.” Saúl scrubbed the hand he’d moved back out of the window down his face. “So, the PI did find her.”
“Yeah, and at first, I felt awful because what if the ex also hired a PI? Like I’d accidentally proven it was possible to find her.” I bit on the cuticle in my thumb, feet drumming against the carpeted floor of the truck. It needed some cleaning. Maybe I could do that while Saúl got us money for the refuge. “And then I started to grow more curious because I knew her father was like half Spanish, half German, but she’d moved all the way to Spain? That’s badass, right?”
“Sure.”
“And then”—I was not done, Mr. I’m going to interrupt to get you to breathe, thank you very much—“the PI sent me a few more reports, and it turns out that she’s dating her boss, which makes me a bit worried because of the power imbalance, you know? And what if she’s fallen into something bad again? I read that it was common for victims to fall prey againbecause abusers smell that shit. But I still stayed away because I knew I was going to freak her out if I basically showed her that she could be found. Until, um, I didn’t. Obviously.”
“So why did you text her?”
Oh, hell no.
We were not going there—except Saúl pinned me with that smoldering gaze of his, and I could only stand strong for so long. By now, it was already confirmed that I definitely did not deal well with silence, but I did even worse with failed expectations and people staring at me waiting for an answer. I’d ratted out more than one classmate in school simply because I folded the second a teacher stared at me two seconds too long.
“I was sad.”
Was this character development?
I hadn’t jumped into a rambling explanation that would take us back to how he found me and how I thought I was getting fired and what a mess that day had been.
Awareness that I was digressing didn’t stop me from giving myself a mental pat on the back.
For a minute after, Saúl didn’t say anything. I was beginning to fret about it when he swerved toward a service area.
I frowned. “Are we stopping this early?”
“I need to pee,” he grumbled. “And you’re going to show me that text.”
“Am I?”
Yeah, right.
The shrillness in my voice aside, Ihadsurvival skills, and this all had been embarrassing enough.
Saúl had already parked by the ancient looking gas station, killing the engine before twisting on the seat to watch me. It was eerie.
“Remember the first week you rode Mercury?You lost balance, and he grazed one of the fences when he veered to counterbalance your weight?”
I squirmed. “Yes?”
“And when you came back, you made it sound as if you’d stabbed him yourself even though he didn’t even need a bandaid?”
“That’s not fair!” It was accurate, but accurate didn’t mean fair. I had to scowl, on principle alone. “He did need disinfectant.”
“As a precaution,” Saúl quipped, “but my point is… No, it’s not great that you ghosted your friend, and it’s definitely not good that you hired a damn PI. But if you want me to judge the situation, I’m going to get all the facts, and you’re not a reliable narrator.”
“I bet you’re one of those mean as fuck Daddies that are all about getting their Littles to behave.”
The way he choked on air, you would’ve thought I’d said the most scandalous thing, or I’d screamed about it from a rooftop somewhere crowded.
“Does that attitude work for other Daddies?”
