She shook her head. “I’m getting obsessed, wondering if that person is here,” she said. “Maybe this wasn’t the right answer. Maybe whoever is after me isn’t even here. Isn’t someone close to me after all.”
Thinking of Annabelle Belinski, he shrugged. “That’s certainly possible,” he agreed. “I need to move around a bit more. Talk to some people without you right next to me so I can casually start a conversation about Fritz and maybe find out who he’d been seeing. People would figure me for being curious, wouldn’t find it odd, me asking about your ex, but with you standing right there...”
She nodded. Threw the paper plate into the trash with the rest of her dinner. And walked off without another word.
He watched her going, feeling a bit too much like the lovesick pup he was pretending to be.
* * *
Had she piled it on too thick? Or somehow given him some vibe that she was leaning on him more than she should have been? Reddening at the idea that Clarke Colton had had to tell her to give him some space, Everleigh entered the living room with trepidation, determination and a strong desire to get out of her parents’ home, their neighborhood, and just keep going.
To build a completely new life.
She no longer fit the old one.
Feeling completely alone, more than she’d have ever thought possible, she pasted a smile on her face and made her way slowly through the throng of people in the living room, stopping to talk on Gram’s behalf several times, encouraging people to write to her, to help keep her spirits up. Having just come from two months behind bars, she knew how important it was to have contact with loved ones. To feel like there was still a life for you on the outside.
Clarke kept her in his sights. She looked up a few times to see him just feet away, in conversation, but watching her, too. And warmed up a tad. They weren’t a couple. The relationship they were presenting at the party was fake. But he was real. And in her life at the moment.
The bridge to get her from who she was into a safe place to become the woman whose skin she was growing into.
“Everleigh!” Turning, she saw a bright spot in the room, opening her arms for Larissa and returning the tight hug. The blonde, a little taller than Everleigh with blue eyes and perfect skin, had been out of town taking care of her sick mother since Everleigh’s release.
“God, girl, it’s so good to see you,” Larissa said, giving her another quick hug before looking her over from head to toe. “I told you those boots would do it.”
Smiling, Everleigh nodded. “How’s your mom?” Larissa’s mother refused to leave the house in Grand Rapids where her daughter had grown up. And so Larissa made regular treks back now that her mother was widowed.
“Good. Better. Turned out it was just a bladder infection. I told you I’d make it back in time for the party.”
Yeah, well, she’d been told a lot of things, and found herself not counting on any of them until they happened.
Finding a somewhat quiet space along the wall by the television, she pulled Larissa with her and caught up on everything that had been going on at Howlin’ Eddie’s in the past two months. And heard about Larissa’s married younger sister and her seemingly perfect husband, too. The pair, who both had high-powered jobs in DC, were expecting their first child. Larissa couldn’t wait to be an aunt.
And Everleigh knew that being the older sister working in a bar, not married and without children hurt Larissa, too. Like Everleigh, Larissa had married the wrong man. But unlike her, Larissa had divorced him years ago.
“So tell me about your hunky boyfriend,” Larissa said, grinning as she glanced at Clarke and poked Everleigh in the shoulder. “You’ve been holding out on me!”
Everleigh shook her head. Was not going to give any misconceptions that could lead people to think that she really had been cheating on Fritz. Fixing the damage he’d done to her reputation was on her...even as she had to pretend that she and Clarke were together.
“I just met him while I was in prison,” she said, managing to look her friend in the eye while she lied. Hating that she managed to pull it off. She wasn’t a liar.
Or a cheater, either. Looking at Clarke, she found a resurgence of strength, a reminder of why she was there, doing what she was doing. There was a murderer on the loose—and she was helping to catch them.
She had to stick to her story. To keep Clarke safe, as well as herself.
“He’s like no man I’ve ever known,” she said, the words pouring out of her because they had to. “He touches me and it’s like you read in books... I physically melt. I never knew such a thing was possible...”
She was telling a story to save her life. And his.
She needed people to believe her.
And to remind herself that no matter what truth might seep through, no matter how relieved she suddenly felt saying something out loud that she’d been avoiding admitting, there was no truth in her being Clarke Colton’s girlfriend. Or in him being her man.
“I heard about the break-in at your house, the ransacking,” Larissa said, her voice lowered, as though she also thought someone in the room could be the perpetrator of the crime. “Does he have anything to do with finding out who did it?”
Everleigh shook her head. It wasn’t the first time that night she’d heard the question. Apparently, everyone knew about the break-in.
But no one had mentioned the near murder in the grocery-store parking lot.