Chapter 31
It took way too long to fucking explain to West what was going on.
As soon as Rian and I burst into his house, I told him everything. Kaylee sat by his side as I tried to keep things brief. I’d left out the part about my feelings and all the sex and not-sex we’d had, because none of that shit mattered now.
But there were so many fucking questions and details, and by the time I was done, I was dying inside.
I’d been so slow, and Everleigh had been tied up the entire time.
“We tried calling her on the way over, obviously, but her phone is turned off,” Rian said.
“We need to call the cops,” I pleaded. “I’ll confess everything, I don’t fucking care.”
“Fuck that, dude,” Rian said. “I’m not letting you go down for that shit. You did what was right. It was a long time ago.”
“Not long enough,” Kaylee offered, her voice calm and steady. West sat silently there on the couch, but I could see the wheels in his head turning a million miles a minute. “You’d still be charged. And after all these years, with no evidence to prove you were protecting Everleigh, it would be a mess. You and Everleigh would both probably get some prison time, even in the best-case scenario.”
“Fuck!” Rage filled my veins. I’d been trying to protect her, in Austin and ever since, and look how much I’d fucked up it all up. I’d ruined any chance of ever getting what I wanted, which was a future with Everleigh. And now that it had all come to light, West would never trust me again.
“That’s not the problem right now,” West barked out. “Fuck the cops, they’re not going to be able to do anything that we can’t. We have money. We have resources.”
“Give me your phone,” Kaylee said, reaching out a hand towards me. “I have lots of friends at the precinct that will help us on the down low. We need to keep this out of the press right now. As soon as they get a whiff that Everleigh’s missing, they’ll swarm. We need to move fast to help Everleigh. We’ll start by tracing the text message you received.”
I handed her my phone, my hands trembling, my heart sinking with fear.
If anything happened to Everleigh, I only had myself to blame.