Completely Consumed (Addicted To You, Book Eight)
Covington, Lucy
LINDSAY
When I woke up, Justin wasn’t in bed next to me. I sat up and looked around the room, wondering where he’d gone. I could hear voices coming from the kitchen. Low voices. Voices that sounded serious and kind of scary.
I grabbed a sweatshirt off the desk chair and slid it on, then crept to the bedroom door. It was hard to hear, but I could pick up snatches of the conversation.
“….like to have a word with you….”
“…this about?”
“…Slaughterhouse…”
My stomach turned and bile rose up in my throat. Whatever they were talking about had something to do with Justin’s gym. But what? And who was he talking to? I heard footsteps approaching, and I quickly turned and tried to make it back into bed before I got caught spying.
I wasn’t fast enough. Justin opened the bedroom door while I was only halfway back to the bed. But if I’d been worried about him being mad at me for eavesdropping, I hadn’t needed to be. He acted like he didn’t even care. He pushed by me and walked over to his dresser, where he started rummaging through the top drawer. His jaw was set and his eyes burned with intensity.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
He hesitated for a moment, then grabbed a sloppily folded t-shirt and turned around. “Yeah,” he said. “Everything’s fine.” He pulled the fresh shirt over his head, and I caught my breath as I took in the hard planes of his chest, his flat stomach, and his smooth, tan skin. Would I ever get used to how absolutely beautiful he was? Even now, when there was obviously something very strange going on in his kitchen, I couldn’t help but notice his body.
“Who’s out in the kitchen?” I asked.
“It’s just some…” he trailed off. “It’s the police.”
“The police?”
“Yeah. You know, the cops?” He tossed me my pants that were lying discarded on the floor. “It’s nothing to worry about, but they want to talk to me alone.”
I stared at him. “It’s nothing to worry about but they want to talk to you alone?”
I repeated.
He shrugged. “Yeah. So you should get dressed.”
I picked up my jeans and angrily shoved my foot into one of the legs. “Oh, good,” I said. “So if it’s just the police then, I should definitely get dressed. I wouldn’t want to get in the way, you know, if they want to talk to you alone.”
He sighed, then crossed the room and kissed me softly on the forehead. But turned away. Beautiful or not, he was still being shady.
“Look,” he said. “I’ll explain everything later.”
“Whatever.” I was mad and I was worried. But most of all, my feelings were hurt. Why was he always keeping me at arm’s length? It was like just when we took two steps forward, we took one step back. Just when he finally kissed me, I had to find out he’d slept with Brooklyn. And if that wasn’t enough, now there were cops in his kitchen.
The whole thing was completely insane.
“Mr. Brown?” a voice called from the other room. “We don’t have all day.”
Justin rolled his eyes. “You ready?” he asked me.
“I guess.” I grabbed my purse and followed him out of the room. I’d expected to see two cops sitting in the kitchen – officers who would be wearing blue police uniforms.
They’d be older, maybe a little overweight, with soft stomachs and sharp eyes. They’d be trying to act scarier than they actually were. At least, that’s the way it had always been whenever I’d had interactions with cops. I’d been pulled over once back in Ohio for speeding, and after the cop had given me a stern talking to and made it seem like he was going to give me a ticket, his face had softened and he’d let me go.
But the men in the kitchen looked nothing like the police officers in Ohio. The men in the kitchen were sharply dressed in nice pants and expensive-looking ties. Their eyes zeroed in on me as soon as I walked in.
“Who’s this?” one of them demanded.
“She doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Justin said.
He grabbed my hand and started walking me toward the door, but one of the men stepped in front of us, blocking our path. “If she’s got nothing to hide, then she shouldn’t mind telling us her name.”
I opened my mouth to tell them, but Justin broke in.
“I told you,” Justin said, the muscle in his neck twitching. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
It was a stare down. Justin was looking at the man like he might haul off and hit him. I liked that he was protecting me. I just wanted to know what he was protecting me from.
“Fine,” the officer said after a moment and then stepped away.
Justin walked me to the door. My hands were shaking and a cold dread had filled my body. I opened the door and stepped onto the porch. But Justin pulled me back.
“Hey,” he said and squeezed my hand. “It’s going to be okay. Trust me, all right?”