Page 39 of Rent a Bad Boy

I can only completely relax when I know he’s asleep. If he’s sleeping, he’s not feeling the pain. God, the guilt. I know it was his choice to take a fall, but that doesn’t shake my guilt. Not even a little bit.

But now he’s resting, and his body can repair itself, so I can melt into him. His arm tightens around me when I do, and he snorts a little in his sleep.

I’m exhausted. Now that everything’s over, and the adrenaline rush has passed, my body feels like lead. I was held hostage tonight. It still doesn’t feel real. Neither does this, lying in bed with him while he holds me, and I worry about him.

But isn’t it funny? The meeting with Christine is tomorrow, and I’m worried about Everett. Twenty-four hours ago, that meeting was the scariest thing in my life. I’ve lost sleep over it. All it took was getting kidnapped and thrown in a trunk, and watching somebody get beaten half to death for my sake to put everything in a new perspective.

Christine Jones isn’t so scary anymore. I know I can face her because I’ve already faced so much worse.

My eyes close when I can’t keep them open any longer. For the first time in a long time, I sleep without dreaming about anything at all.

14

EVERETT

She’s been chewing her thumbnail for the past five minutes, sitting in the passenger seat of my truck. I’m driving because after the stick shift situation, there’s no damn way I’m letting her behind the wheel. She’s staring out the windshield like the community center parking lot is a war zone.

“You’re going to draw blood,” I murmur as I pull into a spot.

“I’m coping,” she mutters back, staring at her thumb and sighing. “What if this doesn’t work?”

“It’s going to work.”

“You keep saying that, but you won’t tell me what ‘it’ is,” she points out, turning my way. “You just keep saying ‘trust me’ like that’s a plan. That’s not a plan.”

“Sure, it is.”

“A plan has bullet points.”

“My plan has bullet points.”

“Name one.”

“Walk inside.”

She presses her forehead against the window and makes a sound somewhere between a groan and a scream. “I’m going to throw up.”

“Could you please not until we’re out of the truck?”

She’s wearing her nice jeans and a sweater without a chicken on it, which tells me she’s taking this seriously. Her glasses are straight, and her hair is pulled back tight. She looks like she’s about to defend a thesis, instead of fight a neighborhood board. “When we’re in there,” I murmur as I reach out to cover her knee with one hand. “I need you to do one thing.”

“What?”

“Don’t freak out.”

“That is the least helpful thing anyone has ever said to me,” she groans. “And my grandmother once told me to ‘just relax’ while parallel parking before she pulled a flask out of her purse.”

She would do that, too. “It’s the only advice I’ve got. Are you ready?”

“Absolutely not.”

That sounds about right.

The community center is one of those low brick buildings every neighborhood has, with fluorescent lighting and linoleum floors that probably look dirty no matter how many times they get mopped. The meeting room is in the back, through a set of double doors with a laminated sign taped to the front that reads CARDINAL OAKS HOA—BOARD MEETING 6:00 PM.

It’s 5:58. I pull one of the doors open, and Isla walks in ahead of me.

Then she stops. Because the room is packed.