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He exploded, throwing his hands helplessly overhead. “Because it doesn’t fucking matter, Daisy! It doesn’t matter that I didn’t kill Hunter and it doesn’t matter that there’s no work, it doesn’t matter that I can’t possibly pay my keeper without the work, and it doesn’t matter that Leroy is scratching his skin off. There’s no winning here. The best I can hope to do is scrape enough together to blow this town and hope to God you come with me.”

I stepped in front of him, glaring. I grabbed his face in my hands and forced him to look at me. “Listen to me, Kash. You are not going back to selling drugs. You are not going back to prison. And you are not going to run away to goddamn Mexico. You know why? Because if you do, I will never speak to you again. Is that what you want?”

Dark fury whirled in his eyes. “So if I go back to prison for failing to do the impossible things Breaker demands that I do, you’ll never talk to me again? So supportive, Daisy.”

His cruel sarcasm cut but didn’t wound me. I was too pissed off for that. I dropped my hands to my sides. “Way to dodge the point, Kash.”

“What the hell is the point, then?”

I turned to walk away from him. I was too angry to make a sensible argument, and he was too upset to hear me. There was no point in my staying up there with him.

“Daisy! You aren’t even going to answer me? What the hell was the point of that little ultimatum if it wasn’t just your way of taking Breaker’s side?”

I whirled on him, my hair whipping my face. “There are no sides, Kash! You’re out here acting like the whole world is out to get you, well guess what, it’s not. Breaker’s doing his job. Your foreman is doing his job. The city is doing its job. Leroy was a lost cause before you even lost all your baby teeth. This isn’t about taking sides, Kash. This is about doing the best you can with what you have even if the situation isn’t perfect!”

He tensed and narrowed his eyes, then raised his hands in sarcastic surrender. “All right then, since you know everything, why don’t you tell me how to make the best of this situation? Oh, what’s that? You can’t, because you can’t even tell your own daddy that you’re a grown woman and you do what you want?”

I clenched my fists, trembling with fury. “Nice deflection,” I choked out. “But here’s the thing, Kash. You won’t make enough money to get away even if you do go back to selling, you know why? Because you never made any to begin with. That’s why everybody wants you to go back to dealing, so they can get their shit for free. Fool yourself all you want, but I know that you and Hunter never saw a dime.”

I didn’t cry until I was alone in my room with the window shut and locked.