Too Late

“I’m not asking you to fall in love with the chick. I’m not even asking you to pretend you love her. All I’m asking is that you take advantage of her feelings for you. For the sake of this investigation.”

“And how do I do that?” I ask. “Asa is always around. It would be more dangerous for us to get her involved.”

“There are ways,” Ryan says. “You have class with her today. Start there. I know she goes to visit her brother on Sundays. Go with her this Sunday.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure Asa would be absolutely fine with that.”

“He won’t know. He mentioned something to Jon about us all going to the casino Sunday. We’ll be gone all day. Just pretend you have something else to do and offer to go with Sloan instead. You’ll get a full day with her, uninterrupted and unmonitored by anyone who knows him.”

I know I should tell him no. But the truth of the matter is, I’d offer to go with Sloan whether it helped the case or hurt it. That’s how pathetic I’ve become at my job lately. Nothing should come before the job. Especially someone on the other side of the job.

“Fine,” I say. I grab my jacket and pull it on. Before I open the door to exit, I pause. I slowly turn and face him. “How did you know I have class with her?”

Ryan grins. “She’s the hottie from Spanish, Luke. I’m not an idiot.” He grabs his own jacket and pulls it on. “Why the fuck do you think you were signed up for that class?”





I’m still shaking when I walk into the building. It’s been hours since the incident with Asa, but I’m still sick over it. I’ve never been that scared. Not even last night when Jon was on top of me with a knife to my throat.

I can’t believe I said Carter’s name out loud while I slept. Not only could I have gotten myself in a serious situation with Asa—I could have been responsible for whatever Asa would have done to Carter.

I don’t know how I recovered from that one as well as I did. And thank fuck Carter’s name rhymes with harder.

But one thing I’m not relieved about is what happened afterward. The things Asa said to me. Him bringing marriage into it.

Him not using a condom.

I don’t know what Asa does when I’m not around. I’ve never been told he cheats on me other than what Jon said last night, but I don’t even know what he meant by that. I’ve also never caught him cheating, but I don’t trust him enough to put my health and my life at risk.

But that happened this morning and it’s at the forefront of my mind. The second it turned 8:oo a.m., I called my doctor and made an appointment for next week to be tested. I’m on the pill and I take it religiously, so I’m not at all worried about him getting me pregnant. But I am worried about everything else he could give me.

I’ll try not to think about it until next week. And I’ll do whatever I can to make sure that doesn’t happen again. I was just honestly too scared for my life to say anything this morning. I’ve never seen him look at me with so much hatred as he did when he thought he heard me moan Carter’s name.

When he did hear me moan Carter’s name.

Before I walk to class to face Carter, I stop by the bathroom and try to calm myself down. Now that I’m not in the same house with Asa, I can breathe easier. But I have no idea how to ensure I don’t talk in my sleep again. If it means just never sleeping in the presence of Asa again, I’ll figure out a way to do that.

When I’m finished in the bathroom and walk out into the hallway, the first thing I see is Carter, propped up near the door of our classroom.

He’s waiting for me.

When he sees me, he stands up straight and waits for me to reach him.

“You okay?” he says, his eyes immediately falling to my neck. There are bruises there from what Jon did to me last night, but it’ll probably look even worse by the end of today, thanks to what Asa did this morning.

God, what kind of fucking life am I living right now that I’m choked by two different men in the span of twelve hours?

“I’m fine,” I say unconvincingly.

Carter lifts his hand and touches a finger to my throat. “It’s bruised,” he says. “Did Asa notice?”

He runs the back of one of his fingers across my neck. I know it’s out of concern, but whenever he makes any sort of contact with me at all—no matter the reason—I seem to forget just how capable I am of actually feeling things. I’ve learned to numb myself over the past couple of years with Asa, and Carter negates all that effort.

“He noticed, but he wasn’t suspicious. He thought he did it himself.”

My words cause Carter to flinch. His eyes flick back to mine. “Sloan,” he whispers, shaking his head. He pulls his hand away from my neck and runs it through his hair. I can see the roll of his throat as he swallows back what looks like pure hatred at the thought of Asa’s hands on me. He’s obviously worried about me, which I completely understand. But he also knows why I stay, and he doesn’t seem to judge me for it. He actually understands my situation and sympathizes with it. I like that about him—his empathy.

Something Asa has probably never felt for anyone his whole life.

Carter lays a gentle hand on my elbow. “Come on. Let’s get our seats.” He makes an attempt to direct me toward the door, but I pull back.

“Carter, wait.”

He turns around to face me again, stepping aside to let two students enter. I glance down the hallway to the left and then to the right. “I have to tell you something.”

Concern overtakes whatever residual anger he felt. He nods and leads me down the hallway, away from the door, looking for somewhere more private. We pass another door and he checks the window, then the doorknob. It turns, so he pulls open the door and leads me inside.

It’s an empty music room, flanked with various instruments against one wall and several desks arranged in a circle in the middle of the room. When the door closes behind us and we finally have privacy, I expect Carter to ask me what I need to tell him. Instead, as soon as I turn around, he pulls me to him, wrapping his arms tightly around me, cradling my head against his shoulder.

He hugs me.

That’s all he does. He hugs me tightly without a word, yet I can feel everything he’s saying. And I realize that since last night—since everything that happened with Jon—he’s probably been worried sick about me. He probably wanted to hug me and reassure me last night. As soon as he saw me this morning. But simple hugs aren’t so simple in my life.

I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his shirt, inhaling the subtle hint of his cologne. He smells like the beach. I close my eyes and wish we were there. Away from all this bullshit.

We stand in silence for several minutes, neither of us moving. After a while, I can’t tell who is hugging whom—who is holding whom. It’s like we’re both barely suspended, clinging to each other, afraid we might fall down if either of us lets go.

“I said your name in my sleep,” I whisper, slicing through the silence.

Carter immediately pulls back and looks at me. “Did he hear you?”

I nod. “Yes. But I think I covered it pretty well. I told him he misheard me—that I said something else. But he was really angry right after it happened, Carter. Angrier than I’ve ever seen him. And I just...I thought you should know. I think we need to be more careful. I mean, I know there’s nothing really going on between us, but—”

Carter interrupts and says, “Isn’t there, though? I know we technically haven’t acted on it, but this isn’t innocent, Sloan. If Asa even knew I had class with you...”

“Exactly,” I say.

Carter nods, knowing what this means. He can’t talk to me at the house. Hell, he shouldn’t even look my direction anymore. After what happened early this morning, Asa will be suspicious, even though he believed me. The last thing I want to do is cause trouble for Carter, but it seems I’ve already done that.

“I’m sorry,” I say to him.

“Why are you apologizing? Because you had a dream about me?”

I nod.

Carter lifts a hand to my cheek and the corner of his mouth lifts into a grin. “If we’re apologizing for that, then I owe you about a dozen apologies already.”

I bite my cheek to hide my smile. He drops his hand and presses it against the small of my back. “We’ll be late if we don’t hurry.”

I laugh a little at the thought of being tardy. What weight does being late for class hold against all the other shit that’s going on in our lives? Very, very little. But he’s right.

I follow him out the door and back down the hallway toward the classroom. Before we walk inside, he leans down and whispers, “For what it’s worth, you look really beautiful today. I kind of can’t catch my breath.”

He keeps walking, despite the fact that his words have frozen my feet to the floor.

That’s all those were. Words. A few simple words strung together, but they held just enough power to physically stop me in my tracks.