Believe (True Believers #3)(59)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Kylie hugged me back.

***

In my room, I found an envelope with Phoenix’s bold and stylistic handwriting on it. Robin.

Inside was a card with a couple in their eighties laughing on a park bench, holding hands. He had labeled them. You. Me.

The greeting card had been left blank on the inside, but Phoenix had written his own simple message. I miss you. I love you.

Clutching the card to my chest, I lay on my bed, tears rolling down my cheeks to fall on the comforter.

My pillow smelled like him.

***

Nathan opened the door and gave me a cocky look. “Unless you’re here to suck my dick, I have nothing to say to you.”

I stood in the doorway and took a certain amount of pleasure in the black eye he was sporting. Compliments of Phoenix, I had to assume.

“Sorry, no,” I said. “But I’m sure there are plenty of girls with low self-esteem who you can take advantage of.”

He snorted. “What do you want, Robin? I thought we had fun and then you go and tell Kylie and your boyfriend trashes my car. You are not my favorite person right now.”

“I never meant to tell Kylie. I never wanted to hurt her. She found your texts on my phone.” I had expected his anger, and I was prepared for it. I had just wanted to face him one last time and tell him exactly what I thought of him and his dickheadedness. “We made a mistake but you made it worse. You don’t deserve Kylie.”

“Yeah, well, you do deserve Phoenix. Go off and be losers together.”

Oh, he was a fine one to talk. But it didn’t really bother me. It was what I expected. “I will, thanks.” I gave him a sweet smile. “But stop texting Kylie hateful things or I will do to your balls what Phoenix did to your car.”

That seemed to catch him off guard. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You can say whatever you want to me, call me any nasty name you can think of, but leave Kylie the hell alone. Now.” I threw the plastic grocery bag in my hand on the floor at his feet, enjoying how appalled he looked. “And here’s the last of your crap from Kylie. She says to tell you to go to hell.”

I turned and walked away, calling over my shoulder, “And I’d like to add, f**k off.”

Damn, that felt good. Instead of hiding out, I was standing tall. Saying exactly what I felt. Defending a friend who I had hurt tremendously.

Nathan just slammed the door shut without a word.

That’s right. I was done with him.

Just one last stop to make.

***

The minute I pulled into the driveway and saw Davis on the front step, I should have backed out immediately. But I didn’t have the finely tuned sense of self-preservation that Phoenix and his cousins had. Totally the opposite. My first thought actually was that maybe Davis knew where Phoenix was, because he hadn’t answered my text.

But when he stood up and greeted me with a smile that was nothing like the casual friendliness he’d shown in the park, I felt a tremor of fear. “Where’s Phoenix?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. Come in the house and let’s talk about it.” He opened the front door, making me wonder if Tyler and Riley had really left it unlocked or if he had picked the lock.

There was no way I was going in the house with him. “Sorry, I have to get to work. I’ll let Phoenix know you’re looking for him.” Maybe if I were polite, friendly, if I acted like I didn’t know anything was wrong, I could just retreat and call Jessica and let her know not to go home without Riley.

But Davis grabbed my wrist so hard I gasped. “Get in the f**king house,” he said, and I saw in his other hand he had a knife.

Oh my God. I started to sweat, my fingers shaking. I couldn’t think, had no idea what to do. I should kick him or hit him or scream. But I knew that none of the neighbors would come to my aid and he was twice my size. I was fragile, I knew that.

He couldn’t really want to hurt me. He probably wanted money, or drugs, or both.

Which proved again how naive I was.

He dragged me into the house and shut the door, and when I looked at the cold anger in his eyes, I realized that he could kill me. He could kill me without thinking twice about it, and I felt the fear that Phoenix must have felt when he saw me unconscious. I finally understood what that had done to him, because for the first time, I wasn’t looking backward at a close call, I was staring into the face of my mortality, and it was terrifying.

“What do you want?” I asked, amazed that I found the courage to speak.

He had placed himself between me and the door, but I took a few steps toward the kitchen, keeping my eyes on him. I was wearing a sundress and I wasn’t sure how fast I could run in it, but I was going to try to make a break for the back door. It would be better than going down without a fight.

He grinned. “Don’t worry, I don’t want you. You’re too bony for my taste, so as much as I might enjoy sharing a woman with Sullivan, it ain’t going to be you.”

Ridiculous to be proud of the fact that he didn’t hurt my feelings, but I was. His opinion of me didn’t matter in the slightest, and I was hugely relieved that he had no intention of raping me.

“I’m not sorry to hear that,” I told him.

He laughed. “Look, I just need someone to pick up a package for me, that’s all. You’ve got a car, and no one will notice you because a lot of students live in the building. Just go and ring the doorbell and take the package, and hand them the cash I give you.”

So he wanted me to pick up his drugs for him.

“Then you’ll consider you and Phoenix even?”

He nodded. “Totally. I can’t go myself. The neighbors know who I am, and someone might call the cops.”

Which meant that they might call the cops on me. “What if I get caught?”

“Rat me out.” He shrugged. “You’re not going to get caught. Put on your backpack or whatever and act normal. Look, there’s a thousand bucks riding on this. Do this and I’ll disappear, I guarantee it.”

This was so illegal. This was the end of my life as I knew it if I got busted. But I knew it was safer for me to do it than Phoenix. Not to mention his personal feelings about drugs. It would go against everything in him to run drugs for Davis, and most likely what would happen was they would wind up in a fistfight. And while Phoenix certainly had rage and a fair amount of skill, Davis was huge. I doubted that Phoenix would come out of it unscathed.

So I had to do it.