Page 84 of Call It What You Want
“Boy Scout. Jackson used those exact words to describe you.” My pulse is hammering now, hot anger flooding through me. “He paid you off, didn’t he?”
“What? Ava, no?—”
“Don’t lie to me, Chase.” I step closer, and he actually backs up. “Akindafull-ride scholarship out of nowhere? Breaking up with me because you need to ‘focus on school’? Using the same weird phrase Jackson used?”
“Ava—”
“How much did he give you?” I demand.
His jaw clenches, and for a long, awkward moment, he just stares at me. Then something crumbles in his expression. “It’s not like that.”
Goddamn. Are thereanyguys out there who aren’t lying sacks of shit?
“Then what is it like?”
“It’s—” He runs both hands through his hair now, agitated. “It’s complicated, okay? He approached me, and I needed the money for school. But that doesn’t mean?—”
“You took money from Jackson to break up with me,” I interrupt, my voice shaking.
“Not from him,” Chase says, pushing out a sigh, deflated now that the truth has come out. “And not to break up with you.”
I pause. Confused. “What does that mean?”
If it wasn’t Jackson who paid him off, thenwho?And more importantly,why?
“Ava, don’t look at me like that.” His voice rises defensively as his hand darts out. He grabs my wrist, and I’m so shocked, I can’t move. “All he wants to do istalk.”
Adrenaline flares in my chest, and I twist against his hold. “Hewho,Chase?”
“Don’t fight me,” he says, ignoring my question. His face is a mask of anger I’ve never seen before. “Why not make this whole thing easier on both of us?”
My stomach drops. “You need to get out.”
He tugs me toward one of my dining room chairs. “Ava–”
“Getout,” I scream, hopefully loud enough for my neighbors to hear.
He forces me down into the chair, his expression shifting, something cold sliding behind his eyes. When he speaks again, his voice is different. Flat. Almost mechanical. “I can’t do that.”
Then he pulls something out of his back pocket—zip ties. A cold chill trickles down my spine. He planned this, whateverthisis. He came prepared to restrain me, and God only knows what else.
“I have two neighbors who share walls with me. They’ve probably already called the police…” My words come out in a frantic jumble. “But you could leave now. And I won’t say anything, I swear…”
That’s what kidnap victims always say on TV. Does it ever work? I can’t remember.
“The neighbors aren’t home,” he says, as he zipties my wrists to the spindles of the wood chair, followed by my ankles. “In fact, both apartments are vacant now. I was told the tenants moved out last week.”
What the fuck? Who even told him my neighbors were gone? I never would’ve guessed Chase was capable of something like this.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and what’sreallyfucked up is that he actually sounds sorry, which somehow makes this all worse. “I really am, Ava. But it’s going to be okay. Just answer the questions you’re asked, and you’ll be good.”
As he walks away, toward the front door, my heart starts to pound. “Chase, please?—”
When he opens my front door, there’s someone standing in the doorway. It’s one of the security guards from Rush House—I never knew his name—and for a split second, hope flickers in my chest—stupid, desperate hope that he’s here to help. But then he steps inside, eyes cold, expression unreadable, and any hope I had dies instantly.
Chase starts to move past him to leave, but the guard catches him by the front of his shirt and shoves him back into the apartment.
“You stay,” the security guard growls.
