Except, as soon as I stepped outside, a hand wrapped around my good arm and pulled me back. I turned to see Derek looking down at me, brows pinched together, eyes wide and almost black.
“Teddy,” he said, leaning his face closer to me. “Are you okay?”
Those three little words almost brought me down to my knees. Digging my nails into my palms, I forced a smile on my face anyway. “Not really,” I said. “But I will be.”
“Did you—”
“Go,” I cut him off, pushing him inside the house a little. He let me. “Just go talk to him. I have to get to work.” When I turned to leave again, he didn’t stop me.
“Bye, Teddy,” he called as I practically ran down the street with my head down, hoping to get away from that placeas fast as possible.
And I’d be damned if I ever set foot in that house again.
“Out with it.”
I looked up at Hunter who was standing right in front of my desk, looking down at me with his arms crossed in front of his chest. I hadn’t even heard him approaching.
“What?”
“Out with it, Teddy,” he said, and he was completely serious.
“You’ve barely said a word since you got here. It’s almost five p.m. and you haven’t eaten anything—not even chocolate,” Eva said. “We can turn a blind eye to some things, but when it’s too much, it’s just too much.”
“So, you either tell us what the hell is up, or I, personally, amnevergoing to say anything other thanhito you again,” Patricia said from her desk.
“Me, too,” said Hunter, squinting his eyes at me.
“Ditto,” said Eva.
I must have been closer to cracking than I thought because I believed them. And I panicked. The three of them were my friends—the only friends I had in the City. I didn’t want them to hate me. I didn’t want them to stop talking to me. I didn’t want to keep secrets from them, damn it.
And I just needed to let it all out. I needed to breathe. I needed to talk.
So, I stood up from my desk. “Follow me.” And I turned for the doors of the office.
They all followed me right outside into the wide hallway, the overhead lights so big and bright they were giving me a headache already. Or maybe it was just my mood. I took them all the way to the end of the hallway and into the janitor’s closet, right where I’d met the wolf-ass for the first time. It didn’t even matter. This wasmysafe place. I could come in here and talk to myself all I wanted. I could come in here and hide whenever I needed a break.
I could also come in here to tell my dirty secrets away from prying ears.
“What the hell, Pink?” Hunter muttered as he came inside, and I shut the door behind them, turning the light on.
“This is the janitor’s closet. Please, sit down.”
They all watched me like they were expecting me to pull out a katana and cut their heads off. Fine. I went and sat on the floor, my back turned to the shelves full of cleaning tools and detergents and watched them until they finally came and did the same.
“If you tell me that you’ve been killing people and hiding them in this place, I’m going to—” Eva started, flinching as she took in the shelf behind us, but I didn’t let her finish.
“I had sex with Dominic Dane.”
The silence was immediate and absolute. It made me wonder if I’d maybe gone deaf, too, for a second. None of them even moved or blinked or breathed.
Until Hunter slowly turned his head to me. “Excuse me?”
“Can you please repeat that? Because I thought you saidI had sex with Dominic Dane,” Patricia said, laughing.
“She did say that,” Eva said, shaking her head.
“You’re lying,” said Hunter. “You’re a liar, Pink.”