Chapter 18
Bonnie checked her watch, the music bouncing off the walls and blasting in her ears.
Ten? How was it only ten? She felt like she’d been at this party for hours.
A guy bumped into her, his beer spilling on her shirt.
He muttered a sorry before stumbling away.
That was it. She was done.
She weaved through the throng of people.
Everyone from her grade danced and drank and laughed.
It was wild that she could be surrounded by a roomful of people, people she’d gone through her entire school life with, and still feel completely alone.
Maybe more alone than if she was actually by herself.
Where was Dean? She wanted to go, and if he wanted a lift home, he needed to go too.
She slipped through the crowd, searching. Her phone vibrated with a text. She pulled it out.
Mom: What time will you be home?
She pushed her cell back into her pocket.
She loved her parents, but they didn’t understand her.
No one in her family did. They were too different.
Happy and driven, and her siblings knew exactly what they were doing with their lives.
While she didn’t even know what she was doing in the next couple weeks.
She had no drive to do…anything. Sometimes she wondered if something was wrong with her.
But when she said any of that to her parents, they told her she was perfect. That she’d figure things out. That she just needed to throw herself into stuff.
She bumped into a big body.
Theodore turned, eyes glazed as a lazy smile curved his lips. “Bonnie…baby! Wanna dance?”
He slipped an arm around her waist and started to sway.
She shoved at his chest. “Stop. I’m looking for Dean.”
The frown on his face was almost comical. “You still want Dean when you have a masterpiece like me right in front of you?”
Another shove at his chest. “Do you know where he is?”
He huffed and stepped back. “Weren’t you two fighting earlier?”
They always fought. Today, it was about her possibly going to college in Santa Fe. Yesterday, it was about not wanting to have sex. Fighting seemed to be all they were good at lately. “Do you know where he is or not?”
His gaze flicked to the stairs, then back to her. “No. I haven’t seen him.”
She frowned. “Why did you look to the stairs?”
“Uh…because I like stairs.”
Her frown deepened—and she turned toward the stairs.
“Bonnie…give him time to cool off.”
She ignored Theodore. Dean’s best friend was a tool ninety percent of the time.
She jogged up the steps and knocked on the bathroom door. When no one answered, she cracked it open.
Empty.
She opened the next door—a spare bedroom. Again, it was empty.
Maybe no one was up here. She knocked and opened the third door, not waiting for a response.
Curses sounded, and the rustle of sheets. Then she saw them.
Her jaw dropped—because there, in the bed, were Dean and Maisie.
Maisie tugged the sheet over her body while Dean gaped, mouth so far open it was almost comical. “Bonnie.”
Interesting. She didn’t feel upset or disappointed. She didn’t even want to cry.
Anger, though? Yeah, she definitely felt that.
Dean grabbed his briefs and pulled them on before stepping toward her. “I can explain.”
“Don’t. I’m leaving. Maisie, I’m sure you can give him a ride home.” She closed the door and jogged down the stairs. Every step made the rage inside her ripple and burn.
Her boyfriend and her best friend.
Her freaking boyfriend and best damn friend!
She’d trusted them. Both of them. There were so few people in the world she trusted, but them? She’d told them everything. About her lack of ambition. Her feelings of not fitting into her family.
Dean called to her from the top of the stairs, but she ignored him and stormed outside. A few people stood on the grass. One drinking, a couple smoking, another person throwing up in the bushes.
All she wanted was to get away. To go where, she wasn’t sure.
She was halfway across the lawn when rough fingers wrapped around her arm and swung her around. “Bonnie. Stop! I didn’t mean to.”
Her brows shot up. “Really? You didn’t mean to put your dick in my best friend? What did you mean to do?”
“Jesus, keep your voice down!”
“Why? Because you don’t want everyone knowing you’re a cheating piece of shit?”
Maisie stepped outside, cell to her ear.
Dean tugged Bonnie closer and growled between gritted teeth, “I said, keep your damn voice down.”
“No.” She shoved his chest hard and walked away.
“You’re a fucking mouse, you know that? Weak. Passive. Worthless. What did you expect me to do? Put up with your shit forever?”
She kept walking, angry tears falling down her cheeks.
“Bonnie.”
Her arm was grabbed again, this time softer.
“Bonnie. Wake up.”
Her eyes swung open and she shot up, chest heaving.
Darkness. It surrounded her.
She looked down at the hand on her arm, then at the shirtless man beside her. “Zane.”
Zane’s eyes flashed open. Not at any sound. At the movement beside him. The dipping of the mattress. The rustle of the sheets.
He turned his head to see Bonnie’s head moving, brows tugged together in a deep frown.
He sat up. “Bonnie.”
She continued to throw her head from side to side.
He grabbed her arm gently but firmly. “Bonnie, wake up.”
Her eyes flashed open and she shot up in bed. Her breathing was ragged, and her gaze darted around the dark room before they zeroed in on his hand. When she looked at him, she frowned. “Zane.”
“Hey, Bon.” He kept his voice soft. “Everything okay?”
Her gaze shifted between his eyes. “He called me a mouse.”
“Who?”
“Dean. When we fought, that last night, he called me a mouse. He told me I was weak and passive and worthless.” A shudder ran down her spine. “It was the last thing he ever said to me.”
The pieces clicked together. The headless mouse delivered to her doorstep hadn’t just been to scare her…it was a threat. She was the mouse.
Motherfucker.
“Who knows?” Zane asked quietly.
She blinked. “What?”
“Who knows that he called you that?”
“Well…Maisie, because she was outside. And there were a handful of other people too. But I also told the police, so it’s probably in a police report, which I’m sure his parents got a copy of.”
“We’ll tell Jesse in the morning.”
She glanced up at him. “Did he go to my apartment?”
“Yeah. He wanted to see you, but I told him you were sleeping. He’s going to drop by in the morning.”
“I bet he told Noah.”
He absolutely told Noah. Exactly why Zane had gotten a text from her brother, asking if she was okay. That’s all it had said. He’d replied yes, expecting follow-up questions. They hadn’t come.
“Tell me about it,” he said softly.
“My dream?”
“Yeah.”
She pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “It was our graduation party. I found Dean in bed with Maisie. I was so angry. I ran outside, and he followed. We fought and I left without him. It was the last time I saw him alive.”
“Did Maisie talk to you after?”
She shook her head. “No. We were both at his funeral but didn’t speak to each other. I didn’t even know she’d married Dean’s brother until I came back.”
“Could it be her?”
Bonnie’s brows flickered. “I want to say no. The person who pushed me against the wall was definitely a male. But a few months ago, I wouldn’t have thought anyone would cut the head off a mouse and leave it at my doorstep, so…anything’s possible.” A visible shudder rolled down her spine.
He set a hand on the small of her back. “What can I do?”
She leaned a cheek on her knee and looked at him. “Tell me about Billings.”
It was three in the morning. Hardly the time to rehash his past. But sitting in bed with Bonnie, watching the sadness in her eyes, he would have done anything she asked.
“I have a cousin. His name is Monty Cruz. He was part of the UFC while I was an Army Ranger. I wanted a change, and he got in my ear about how good the UFC lifestyle was. How good it felt to be in the ring. So when my contract ended, I got out and started training. I got good. Spent most of my time in Billings with him but also traveled a lot.”
“You were close.”
“Really close. My grandmother who raised me had passed. I had no siblings. He was my closest family. I thought I knew him.”
“What happened?”
“He had a party. That whole scene wasn’t really my thing, but I went because he was the host. When I was ready to leave, I went to find him. He was upstairs in his bedroom, standing over the body of a woman who’d been shot.”
Bonnie sucked in a shaky breath. “The woman in the article.”
“He’d already dropped the pistol. And when I told him I was calling 9-1-1, he flipped out. We fought. I got to the gun before him.”
She gasped.
“He didn’t want me to tell anyone. He wanted to use his money to make it disappear.”
“What did you do?”
“Someone else walked in. Saw us. Called the police. He told them a different story than what happened. Tried to pin the murder on me. We went to trial. During the trial, we were both out on bail when he sent someone to kill me.”
Her skin chilled. “Who?”
“A paid hit man.”
“And you killed him in self-defense.” Her frown deepened. “How did they prove Monty was guilty if you were holding the murder weapon?”
“Monty had cameras in the halls in his home. He tried to have the footage erased but police recovered it. It was the audio that saved me. It caught everything he said. They also traced the money that the hit man was paid back to Monty.”
He traced a circle on her thigh with his finger.
“The story divided a lot of people in Billings though,” he continued. “Not everyone believed I was innocent. Some thought I was an accomplice. It made living there hard.”
“So you moved.”
“So I moved.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Like you, I know that trusting the wrong person can hurt you.”
Bonnie shook her head. “But he was your cousin. He was family. I can’t imagine how that would have felt.”
“Not everyone has a great family.”
For a moment she just watched him, a new softness in her eyes.
A tinge of sadness. Then she crawled into his lap, her legs and arms wrapping around him as she hugged him.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry that happened. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you out sooner.
I’m sorry that the reporter published part of your story—the parts that made you look like the bad guy. ”
He wrapped his arms around her. And for some reason, holding her, feeling the softness that was Bonnie, took the edge off the pain of his past.