“Don’t tell me this is goodbye.” I can’t bear it if he breaks up with me. I know I have to go to school, because not getting to is all I could think about when I was certain I was a dead girl. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not losing me, but I need to focus on my job here. The best way I can do that is if I know you’re safe.”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice breaking. I shudder and take a deep, controlled breath, refusing to cry.
CHAPTER 26
January
3 months to Mancuso’s downfall
The blue-gray sky fogs over as the afternoon clouds roll in. Damn it. Dad always accuses the city of being foggy and hard to drive in. Honestly, I think he just hates every place that’s not home. It’s not like Fort Bragg is all that sunny and hot either. Oh well, he’s just gonna have to deal, and hopefully he doesn’t bitch too much.
Sometimes I miss him a lot. If I’m being honest with myself, I miss him all the time, though when he’s more annoying, it’s not so bad being three hours away. Still, it’s been almost a year since I started school here, and while I love the program and the city, it’s not home. I guess you never know what you have until it’s gone.
I stretch my legs out and eye the worn wooden slats beneath my feet. Even after a year, this place still doesn’t feel like home. I like the room Dad got set up for me in a rental house that Forsaken’s San Francisco charter owns. I am lucky to room with only two other people—an impressive feat in the city this clogged and expensive. Unfortunately, one of those people is a bear of a man who stands over six foot five and weighs, I’m guessing, at least three hundred pounds. He goes by the name Ratchet, and he loves to talk about all the San Francisco charter’s history. Ratchet is the sergeant at arms for the SF charter, and he does his job well. Of course, Ratchet doesn’t babysit me for free. No, every time Dad comes down, he has a new bag for my burly buddy that’s filled with some of the club’s finest weed. All in all, it’s a system that seems to work for both men. And Ratchet isn’t so bad. We’re definitely not hanging out and painting each other’s toenails, but this was the deal. I wanted to go to school, and with all the danger surrounding the club, the only way I could go was if I was under club protection. And there’s no place safer than in a house they own.
My other housemate isn’t really a Lost Girl, but she is certainly on her way to being one. She helps out around the club and does a lot of favors for the guys. She’s pretty nice and never brings anybody home, which I appreciate. At the end of the day, though, it doesn’t matter how nice any of these people are. They’re not my family, and it gets a little lonely here, especially because he isn’t with me.
I wish things were different and I could live with my classmates near campus rather than in this rental across the city in the Sunset District. But I don’t dare say that to Dad. As it is, he already likes to remind me how lucky I am to be able to go to school in the city on his dime, and the apartments near school are well above reasonable in his opinion. Plus, the whole warring-outlaw-empires thing kind of kills that fantasy.
Though Forsaken has made progress in recent months—creating an alliance with Leo Scavo and letting him and Michael work with the club to take down Tony and the rest of the Armani-wearing baddies—nothing is really settled yet. Dad says Carlo and Emilio have been quiet, which is never a good thing, so he’s extra paranoid these days, being calmed little by the inside information Michael and Leo have provided.
After everything that happened at Ian’s house with Rig and Daniel, Jeremy and I haven’t talk too much. It breaks my heart because I think I love him more with every passing day, despite our distance, than I did the night I agreed to marry him. When he and I do talk, the conversations are short and we stick to pleasantries. At the end he always says, “You’re still my girl, right?” Just before I hang up, I say, “Always.” And every single time I end up in tears because even though he says the words faithfully, they sound hollow and do little to mend my broken heart. He says I haven’t lost him, but it certainly feels like I have. With that void in my life, I need Dad and Holly now more than ever.
Even Grandma has stepped up her game and brought her new boyfriend down to meet me. Only I already knew the guy. I try really hard to block out images of Grandma and Old Man Hill making out like teenagers. Unfortunately, that which has been seen cannot be unseen. And I appreciate my vision too much to splash bleach in my eyeballs.