Page 50 of Mask and the Magnolia

Is that something I could have told Eve about without her being anything but the amazing supportive bestie she’s always been? Absolutely. I didn’t, though. Maybe it was shame and embarrassment, maybe it was fear, but that’s something only the parties directly involved know, and I’ve kept it that way for seven years.

It would hurt Evie to know I haven’t told her something so big but I know she’d get over it. The problem is, she’d get over it, then she’d go beat the hell out of my mother, threaten to shank my father, and probably hunt down that alpha.

She doesn’t need any of that.

It’s all in the past now, and not worth her time and energy.

Besides, Evie didn’t tell me about her rendezvous with Quimby Jones, and judging by the way she lost her sense of humor over it, there’s more to that secret than she’s willing to share. I don’t need her to say anything more for me to read that all over her face.

One day.

One day, when we’re free and happy and our fathers are dead, we can tell each other everything without worrying about prison time.

”Were you expecting company?”

I blink a few times and look at Evie like she’s speaking another language. “What?”

”Knocking on the door, Maggie.”

She’s right.

Someone is knocking on the door. Loudly. And really hard.

”Wereyouexpecting someone?” I ask as we both creep into the doorway like we’re walking through a haunted house instead of our apartment. “The delivery guys don’t usually knock.”

”No,” Evie says as she grabs a frying pan. “They dump and run. The one salutes at the camera before taking his picture but I don’t think any of them knock.”

I doubt they’d knock like this if they did.

Whoever it is at our front door is impatient as fuck.

If it wasn’t almost eight in the morning on a weekday, I’d be annoyed but it is so I’m creeped out instead.

”Are you going to answer it?” I ask as I grab the ugly ass vase from the table in the hall.

If I have to hit someone with it, I know it’ll hurt them because it’s heavy as hell, and I won’t be mad if it breaks. Evie’s grandma sent it to us as a housewarming gift and we didn’t have the heart to return it, so it’s been on display in hopes ofaccidentally breakingsince we moved in.

It’s fallen on the floor about forty times, I punted it down the hall after a couple of those falls, and I know Eve all but tackled it off the table more than once.

The stupid vase doesn’t have one single crack. The paint isn’t even chipped.

At this rate, the thing will survive the apocalypse.

Breaking it over someone’s head is one of the few things that hasn’t happened, so I’m hopeful.

”We’re answering it together.” Evie grabs my free hand in hers, both of us with weapons poised in the other. “If they’retrying to rob us, they’re going to be sorry they picked this apartment.”

“Right, because we’re so menacing.”

Eve snorts as we stop in front of the door. “That’s where we’ll get them. No one suspects two omegas who look like us being capable of murder and malice.”

I’m not sure we could easily manage either, we might be more of the premeditated types, but I’ll let my best friend have her fantasy.

I hold my breath as I watch Evie reach for the knob, both of us lifting our weapons higher, and after a silent three count, she yanks the door open and yells, “You better run, motherfucker!”

”Evelyn,” Camden says with a sigh as if we always answer like this. “Stop being ridiculous. And you really should watch your language, it’s not very lady-like to shout obscenities into the hallway.”

My bestie groans and drops her hand with the frying pan. “Well if you’d have announced who the hell you were instead of cop-knocking on our door for twenty minutes, maybe I wouldn’t have. What are you doing here, Cam?”