Page 24 of X's and O's

“I don’t need it.” It was practically a snarl.

War didn’t seem fazed by my tone. Just…sad. “I’m not my father. Things are different now.”

But we both knew that was a lie. An outlaw club was an outlaw club. Once you turned down that path, there was no going back.

Not unless you left the club behind.

Which was exactly what I was doing.

“Give my room to someone else. Did you hear what I said up there? I can get my own job and my own place to live. I don’t need nothing from you.” I took a step closer, so I was real sure he heard every word. “I’m never coming back to the club, War. Never.”

7

VIOLET

Isent Francine a text on Monday morning, telling her I couldn’t come to work that day because I was sick.

She sent me back a frowny face emoji, which I honestly didn’t even blame her for. I’d only just gotten the job with her, and calling in sick this early in the game probably wasn’t good.

But I couldn’t get out of bed. Between waking up what felt like a hundred times throughout the night, the constant images in my head of X’s knife stabbing through Paul’s skin, and the stinging marks all over my body, I felt like death.

On top of that, I was sick to my stomach with worry over Levi’s parole hearing.

Toby perched on the edge of my bed; a thermometer gun pointed at my forehead. It beeped, and he checked the display, spinning it around to show me the green light, proving I didn’t have a fever. He gave me a motherlylook of disapproval. The kind that was filled with love but that he knew I wasn’t going to like what he had to say. “Girly-pop, you ain’t sick.”

“I really am.” Maybe not in the fever sort of way, but definitely in the “sick to my stomach, head messed up with trauma,” sort of way.

He squeezed my ankle through the blankets. “I know what this is about.”

I froze. “You do?” I didn’t have a clue how he would know, unless the cops had come to the door searching for me? It wouldn’t have surprised me at all to know they had, and Toby had lied and said I wasn’t here. He hated the cops more than anyone. There’s no way he would have let them step a foot inside our apartment without a warrant.

My heart rate picked up. If they were questioning me, then they’d found Paul’s body. And probably the knives all over his house with my fingerprints on them.

Shit. This was all so messed up.

Toby grimaced at me. “You’re worried about Levi getting out of jail, aren’t you?”

I relaxed a few degrees. “Yes. That’s it.”

It wasn’t a lie. I was worried about Levi’s parole being denied.

“Girly-pop, you just say the word and we will go down and get a restraining order. I don’t care what you’ve been writing to that man all these months, he cannot come near you—”

I held up a hand and shook my head, confused as to what he was talking about. “Wait, what? I’m not taking a restraining order out on Levi.”

Toby’s fingers clutched my leg tighter. “He’s a convicted criminal, Vi! I know you writing to him was my idea, and don’t get me wrong, I lived for the dangerous excitement as much as you did in the beginning, but I did not think this through, and I don’t think you did either. You’re planning to run off into the sunset with a man you don’t even know.”

Irritation prickled beneath my skin, even though I understood every word he’d said. If the roles had been reversed, I knew without a doubt, I would have been saying exactly the same things to him.

But I did know Levi. I knew he was a good man who’d gotten caught up in bad things. I knew he loved art and he read books, and before he’d gone away, he’d had a sixteen-year-old Chihuahua named Tinkerbell. I knew about his family, his club, and the way he’d grown up.

Writing letters back and forth for a year had given us more time to get to know each other than any regular couple.

I’d told him things I’d never told anyone except Toby.

Like how screwed up I was over my family. Or rather, my lack of one.

Like how I wished I could forget my years in foster care and the things I’d seen there.