Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 75720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
There was no room in her tone for arguing. Acid dripped from her gaze, melting holes into the pavement at her feet. Franky groaned but was beginning to get back up. I wanted Jake in the car and miles away before that happened. I grabbed him by the elbow and turned us around, hurriedly getting into my car. As the doors shut, Frank stood up and started toward us, shouting something that couldn’t be heard without lowering the windows.
I didn’t stick around to figure it out either. I threw the car in reverse and peeled out of their driveway, my foot hitting the gas pedal a little harder than intended. Franky ran into the middle of the street, still shouting profanities, his wife trying to hold him back from chasing after us on foot.
“Are you alright?” I asked Jake as Franky and Susan grew smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. I realized my grip around the steering wheel was tight enough to snap it in half. I forced in a breath, trying to get my body to relax, to come down from the flood of adrenaline that currently circled around my system.
“Hand’s a little sore, but yeah, I’m fine. I didn’t want it to get to that.”
“I know,” I said, looking over at Jake. The afternoon sun slanted in through the windshield and made his perfect complexion glitter as if he were a half vampire pulled straight out of a Twilight fanfic. “It was kind of hot, though.”
He shot me a wink, lips turned up into a grin. “Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it because there won’t be an encore performance.”
“Good,” I replied. “I got my fix, and it looks like Franky did, too. What a dick. An extremely unhelpful dick.”
“I was hoping for some solid answers. But maybe if it is him, this is enough to get him to stop.”
I shook my head, something about this still not clicking for me. I just couldn’t see a motive, besides the fact that maybe he still hated me for making him confront his sexuality? Was he punishing me for it, or was there something else we were missing? “And what if he was telling the truth about lending his car out?”
Jake huffed out a breath. “That’s excuse 101. An easy lie for him to say without much of a way for us to dispute it. Especially if he doesn’t want to tell us who he lent his car to. I think he was saying that just to get us off his trail.”
I slowed to a stop at a red light. We were now in a more expensive part of the neighborhood, where the homes were further off from the road and circled by tall fences and pristine landscaping. There were political signs on most of their front lawns, making it clear that it was also a primarily liberal neighborhood, which actually wasn’t rare for a city like Atlanta.
“We’re going to have to look at the tapes again,” I said. “There has to be a way to figure out who was driving. We can CSI that shit.”
“We can certainly try to,” Jake said, keeping his spirits up.
A thought struck me, one that had been teetering on the edge of my focus since we’d started to drive away from Franky’s house. “Wait, hold up… when we were leaving, did Susan say my name?”
Jake took a moment to think about that. He nodded, confirming my suspicion. “I think so, yeah. Why?”
“I’ve never met her before. How does she know who I am?”
He shrugged. “Did we use our names when we introduced ourselves? I can’t remember.”
“No, I don’t think we did.”
“Maybe she heard Franky saying it. She was probably eavesdropping by the door the second it shut.”
“Maybe…” I tried forcing the puzzle pieces together, trying to make sense of all this. Franky didn’t seem guilty, but his reaction wasn’t exactly helping prove his innocence. He clearly still wanted to stay in the closet, and maybe that was feeding some kind of hate-filled monster inside him? It could explain why he was lashing out at me, suddenly fixated on where I was and who I was with.
But what if it wasn’t him? Then that meant someone out there was even more interested in torturing me than Franky. And we were no closer to figuring out who that person was.
My anxiety started to spiral. I could feel it in the way my chest contracted and my head felt as light as a cloud. “I’m freaking out,” I said out loud, keeping focus on the road and simultaneously trying to calm my hammering heart. “Like, legit, I’m starting to really freak out.”
Jake must have heard the tremble in my voice. He reached out and put a hand on my thigh, squeezing, his thumb rubbing soft circles. “Right now, you’re completely safe. As long as I’m by your side, you’re safe. So don’t think about the scary what-ifs and focus on the nows instead. Everything is okay.”