Her smirk was back and broader than before. “I doubt that.”
I looked to the door, trying to mask my conflicting feelings. My need to find Conor was fighting with my need to hide. “Libby—”
“Why did you look so scared when you walked in here?” she suddenly asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. When I glanced at her again, her brow was furrowed.
“I wasn’t.”
“Yeah, okay . . . and my boobs aren’t fake,” she countered with a dry look. “I’ll talk to you all night to keep you distracted until you forget whatever’s happened to you . . . but I can’t help you if you keep running from everything.”
“This is your idea of helping? It comes across as borderline interrogating. And I never asked for your help.” With that I stood and walked quickly out of the bar and back onto the busy streets of downt
own.
But I hadn’t even made it past the building before my wrist was grabbed and I was yanked backward.
“Answer one thing,” Libby begged.
God.
If one more member of this family grabbed me tonight, the Borellos wouldn’t have a girl left to hunt down. I’d be dead from heart failure before they could find me.
I blew out a shuddering breath as my heart painfully started back up, and pressed my hand roughly to my chest in an attempt to ease the aching. “What, Libby? Let it be enough for you to know that there is nothing going on between your brother and me. I’d never spoken to him before tonight.”
She held up her free hand, waving her fingers at me. “Totally not what I was going to ask you, or any of the dozens of questions I want to. Earlier you said you had to leave, but now you’re right back here. It’s only been about forty-five minutes. Why did you have to go?”
Forty-five minutes?
No, it felt like it’d been hours . . . lifetimes.
My head shook, the motion sluggish as I fought my exhaustion from the night. “I just needed to leave.”
One of her eyebrows ticked up. “Earlier you seemed anxious and kept looking around. When Dare came back from running after you, he told me that you’d been afraid when he’d caught up to you—that you’d thought he was someone else. But you’re still in town, asking to use a phone at a bar.”
I stared blankly at her as she spoke, trying to figure out where she was going with this, and worrying what her next question would be.
“Where are you going right now?”
“It’s none of your business.”
Eyes as dark as her brother’s dragged over me repeatedly before she insisted, “Then you’re coming home with me.”
A startled laugh escaped me. “What? No, I’m not.”
“So then you have a home? You have somewhere you can go?” she asked, challenging me. “Because I feel like if you did, you would be there instead of here trying to contact someone. I feel like you wouldn’t have so perfectly replicated what Dare described to me earlier when I just stopped you from walking away from me.” Libby glanced at her nails and gave a noncommittal shrug. “But what do I know . . . right? I’m not observant or right or anything.”
I stared at her with my mouth open, unsure how to answer her. Because I did have a home, but I couldn’t go back there now. I didn’t know if the Borellos were still there. I didn’t know if they were waiting for me.
They’d hit on the perfect night.
Mickey and Kieran were out, Beck and most of the other men were working as well. Conor had been called off for the first time. Only a few men remained on the property, and I didn’t know if any of them were alive.
Libby eyed me carefully, the haughty expression suddenly gone. “Look, I might not know a lot about everything, but I do know women. Because, well, duh. You were breathing fast when you first walked into The Jack, and your fear was enough to make everyone in there think the cops were about to come charging in.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” I whispered, but she just held her hand up again.
“You’ve refused to give me or any of my friends your name at least a thousand times now—”
“Another exaggeration . . .”