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“Okay. Thank you for letting me know.”

“You’re welcome. Have a good day.”

“I’ll say a prayer for your family.”

Say a prayer for me.

“Thank you, Principal Sharp.”

The call ended, and Carla dropped the phone over the tub where Sasha sniffed the screen. She said a quick prayer of repentance for the lie she’d just told Principal Sharp.

“Carla, Carla, Carla,” she chanted. “What have you done?”

Once again, she tried to run the night through her head. Everything was going great. She was dancing with her girlfriends, drinks, the joint…

She paused. They never got to the joint because Lennox kidnapped her. She was sure of it.

“Ugh!”

Carla couldn’t believe she would’ve left with him—not in a sober state of mind or a drunken one. On top of that, she was adamant that she wasn’t drunk. Was she feeling good?

Sure.

But not good enough to be drunk. Her mind raced, thoughts shuffling.

Lennox. He’d appeared out of nowhere. Why was he there? In that ugly-ass baseball cap.

“Probably trying to hide from the media,” she murmured.

That did make sense. He was running for office. The last place he needed to be seen was a nightclub.

The Velvet Café wasn’t any nightclub. It was more of a poetry lounge. Still, people smoked from hookahs inside, and the place still embodied a club’s atmosphere.

She had a drink, told him to stop calling her, and then obliged him in what she considered a farewell smoke.

“Uggggggh!”

Carla was so frustrated with herself. Standing outside, thinking nothing of it and then, then…nothing. Her mind was drawing a blank.

“Everything’s going to be okay. You will figure this out and get through it.”

Her phone buzzed, and Sasha barked at the device. Leaning over, Carla tapped it frantically to get it to stop making any noise. Lifting it, she saw a message from Tina.

Pick up the phone.

She set the phone on the edge of the tub and stared at it as if it would bite her. She couldn’t talk to Tina right now. All of the questions she would ask, Carla didn’t have any answers. She needed to get those first. But, how would she?

The phone rang, and Jacob’s face filled her screen. Her heart thundered, and she reached for the phone but hesitated to answer it.

A second ring, third ring, fourth ring, the call went to voicemail. Exhaling a breath, Carla dropped the phone over the tub again and sank so far into the water she submerged her hair, and only her face was above.

How could she talk to Jacob right now?

This was the nightmare of all nightmares.

On her way home, she scrolled through the text messages. Four of them were from Jacob. Three missed phone calls from him. The rest of the text messages and phone calls were from Tina, except for one call from Academy College Preparatory High School.

Carla had yet to go through any of the messages. She was sure Tina’s were a blitz of questions and Jacob…