True (True Believers #1)(51)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Tyler sighed, but he didn’t say anything. He just kissed the top of my head. “Good night.”

“Good night.” I tried to close my eyes, but they kept popping back open, thoughts swirling through my head with the velocity of a tornado. Who was staying with Jayden and Easton? I knew that Jayden was almost eighteen, but was he really capable of looking after his little brother? Where was their mother? And how could she let Tyler take the hit for her drug use? It was just incomprehensible.

Tyler’s breath slowed and evened out, and he was asleep within five minutes. Sometime much later, my fingers still splayed across his chest, I fell asleep. Only to be yanked out of a dark and dreary dream about locked boxes by Tyler’s phone ringing next to me.

He leaned across me and fumbled for it, glancing to see who the caller was. “Hello? Yeah, I’m out, man, thanks.” Sitting up, he held the phone away from his mouth and murmured to me, “It’s Riley. Go back to sleep, baby.” Then he slid out of the bed and readjusted the blankets back over me. He moved across the room, opened the door, and headed toward the living room, speaking quietly. “Rory and Nathan posted bail. Yeah, eight Oxys, charged with possession, and my drug test was clean, so you know what that means. Could be twelve months.”

Twelve months? Was he serious? He had reassured me that it was going to be fine, yet he had known that it was possible he could get sent to prison for a whole year? Tyler moved into the living room and I couldn’t hear him speaking anymore, so I sat up and crept over to the door he had almost completely closed. I wanted to hear what else he knew but wasn’t inclined to share with me, his suburban girlfriend who cried after seeing the police station lobby.

“Oh, she did it on f**king purpose,” Tyler was saying. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she called the cops herself.”

I sucked in a breath. He thought his mother had set him up.

“He starts giving me some shit about how I didn’t use a turn signal and why was I loitering in the parking lot. I told him my mom was in the store and I was waiting for her, and he says I have attitude and to get out of the car. It was bullshit, all of it. I was just parked there, doing nothing.”

There was a pause when obviously Riley was speaking. “Well, you know she totally went off when we got home on Thanksgiving. She was f**king pissed that I took the boys to dinner at Rory’s. She starts going on about how I think I’m too good to eat in her house and how my rich girlfriend is trying to steal her babies from her. Her usual shit, but now she has a new person to blame, you know?”

Me. She was blaming me.

“She threw the leftovers across the room. It was like a Tupperware grenade, man. Stuffing exploded everywhere.” Here he actually laughed, ending it in a cough. “So damn stupid, and actually kind of funny except that she wasted good food. I haven’t eaten like that, ever. I’m sorry you missed it.”

“When does she ever have that many pills at once, anyway? She usually snorts ’em as fast as she can buy them. Or she buys heroin because it’s cheaper. That was five hundred bucks in that bag, so where the hell did she get that money?”

That was a very good question.

“Not that it matters, I guess. All I know is that I’m pretty much f**ked. If I’m lucky I’ll get off with parole and a fine, but there’s no way to know how the judge will go. Not that I have the money for a fine, anyway.”

That I could help him with. I wasn’t sure how, but I would figure something out. My dad could loan me the money. Which I’m sure would go over big with him.

“Yeah, I’ll talk to you later.”

I dashed back to bed and slipped in, closing my eyes. My heart was pounding so loudly I was sure he would hear it, but he didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. He just slid back into bed beside me, his thigh warm as it brushed mine. But he didn’t go back to sleep. I could tell he was looking at something on his phone because the blue screen was squint-worthy with its glaring false light when I cracked my eyes.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

He glanced over at me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up. Just playing a game.” He slapped his phone back down on the nightstand.

Except he hadn’t been playing a game. He had been doing a search on mandatory sentencing for drug convictions in Ohio. It may have been three in the morning, but I had 20/20 eyesight.

That he was worried, worried me.

I couldn’t think about it or my head would explode.

“I’m wide awake.” My hand snaked down his chest to below his waist. “And I want you.”

It was probably the boldest thing I’d ever said to him, and he reacted exactly as I had hoped he would. He gave a low moan and rolled over on top of me, already tugging my tank top up as he kissed me.

I wanted to hold him close to me, to feel that deep intimate connection, to be alone with him, without our fear and thoughts crowding in.

He clearly felt the same way because he was rougher, more demanding than he had been so far, as if he could release his frustration with sexual desire. “Get on top,” he demanded after a few minutes inside me. “Ride me.”

Keeping us entwined, he flipped over, dragging me with him so I ended up on his chest, hair falling into my eyes. He brushed it back, tucking it behind my ears.

“Sit up,” he urged, his eyes shining with something I didn’t understand.

I did as he asked, pushing off his chest, finding my footing with the unfamiliar position, feeling powerful in how I was pleasing him. Tyler put his large hands over top of mine, holding me tightly in place.

Our movement, our emotions were frantic, urgent, deep and passionate.

I knew that no matter what, I had turned a corner and I couldn’t go back.

I was deeply, madly, truly in love, so much so that it almost hurt.

Chapter Seventeen

Though I texted my dad to tell him everything was okay, I didn’t call him until I got back to my room on Sunday. It was not exactly a fun conversation. I tried to downplay everything.

“So, he has to have a hearing, but it’s a first offense. I’m sure it will be no big deal.”

My dad wasn’t buying it. “I did some research. If he isn’t a drug user, then he gets charged as a dealer and the penalties are more severe.”

Damn it. Why did everyone seem determined to cram that depressing bit of information down my throat?

“There’s no point in speculating,” I told him, which was a ridiculous thing for me to say. I was the absolute queen of speculation. It was my nature to assess something from all angles and categorize all possibilities. Being methodical was normally my path to sanity. If you imagined all the potential outcomes, then you have hypothetically faced the worst-case scenario and you are more mentally prepared if it occurs, which is usually unlikely—like thinking the knock at the back door is a serial killer instead of your next-door neighbor asking if you’ve seen her missing dog.