Page 2 of The Retaliation You Deliver

Ripping her eyes from the door, Peyton turns her silver eyes on me.

“Are you okay, Lee?”

“I… uh…”

She reaches for my hand, squeezing it in support.

Pulling on my mask and finding the strength I’ve used to get me through the past ten years, I force a smile onto my lips.

“I’m good. I’m sorry I dragged you down here to bail me out.”

“Anytime. But—” I suck in a breath, knowing what’s coming next. “You’re going to need to explain what’s been going with you. You’re not brushing this one under the rug.”

“I know,” I say sadly. I think I realized last night that my days of hiding my dark past are over.

Macie knows the truth now so it won’t be long until everyone else does.

My chest aches as I think of her. Images of our final minutes together flicking through my mind. Regret floods me as I remember her cowering in the corner of the room as I took my frustrations out on everything inside her uncle’s house. The memory of the tears tracking down her face as she watched me. The horror of our reality is so clear in her eyes.

She really had no idea. But she does now.

She knows exactly who I am. She’s also discovered that everything she feared about our relationship was true. I didn’t go into it for her, not in the way I made it out like I did. I just wanted revenge. I wanted her pain. I wanted to teach her a lesson so she would know the mistake she made that day.

Peyton lacing her arm through mine drags me from my nightmare and I come back to the here and now.

Together we walk out of the station, with the sun searing my eyeballs the second I step out of the building and look up.

“You okay?” Peyton asks, clearly noticing my reaction.

I grunt a response and head toward where Luca is leaning against his car with his hands curled into fists at his sides.

“Just take me to my car and I’ll get out of your hair,” I say, needing to get away from the both of them and their probing stares.

“Fuck off, Lee,” he barks, pushing off from his car and stepping up to me.

“Can we not?” I ask, although I already know what his answer is going to be.

“No,” he snaps, his palms landing solidly on my chest and making me back up.

I don’t have the energy or the strength right now to fight him.

“No, we’re fucking doing this. Why the fuck are we here, Lee? Why did I get a call from Mom at the break of dawn to tell me that you’d been fucking arrested and needed bailing out from jail in fucking Miami of all places.”

“I’m not talking about this right now,” I mutter, trying to step around him.

“You don’t have a fucking choice, asshole,” he seethes.

“Luca, give him a break,” Peyton says softly, coming to stand beside him.

“A break? A fucking break? He’s had a long enough break. He’s been lying to me for years. We’ve bailed on classes to come and get his drunk ass. He owes us an explanation.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“I need the fucking truth,” he says, fisting my shirt and slamming me back against his car. “Why the fuck are you here? Who do you know in Miami?”

Our green eyes hold, both of our chests heaving. Him begging me to talk and me desperately trying to come up with a way to get out of this.

I don’t see Peyton move to our sides once more, but I sure hear her words.