Chapter 4 #2
Hmm. She didn’t care one bit that he thought she was hot. Interesting. Also, three master’s degrees? That was insane. A lot of good those books had done for her. Degrees didn’t equal street smarts. Still, that level of intelligence was kind of impressive.
Snap out of it. “And what is it you want from me?”
Lauren stretched her neck from one side to the other like a boxer getting ready to jump into the ring. “You remember my cousin, Anthony Swindle?”
Zach let out a curse and rested back against the seat. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He remembered Anthony. It was hard to forget the guy that started all of this. Zach and his brother, Bobby, grabbed Lauren, hoping to find out where her cousin was hiding. He owed them a lot of money, and it wasn’t a sum they were interested in writing off.
“You were looking for him. That’s why you took me. You and your brother thought I would know where to find him.”
“I recall.” When he found out Anthony had a cousin he was close to, Zach half-expected her to be a junkie. Zach had never been more wrong in his life. Instead, he’d found the sweeter-than-sugar librarian who knew absolutely nothing about where they could find her loser cousin.
That guy had fallen off the face of the earth. Disappeared. Poof. It was like he never existed. No trace of him on the internet, no paper trail. They couldn’t even find someone who knew of him anymore.
“Well, I didn’t know where he was then, and I still don’t,” Lauren said. “I’ve been looking for him, and I need your help.”
“Nope. Not happening.”
“But I—”
“Lauren, listen to me. I am not helping you find him. I won’t change my mind. This conversation is over. Drop it.”
There. He’d covered all bases and clearly gotten the message across. Nothing and no one could convince him to change his mind. Of course, he’d be looking for Anthony too, but he wouldn’t be teaming up with Lauren to do it.
“This is serious,” Lauren almost whined. “I need to find him, and you’re the only one with the connections. The police haven’t been able to find him. I hired a private investigator. I’ve searched everywhere and exhausted my resources. Anthony is just gone, and I need to find him.”
The worst thing Lauren could do would be to get mixed up with whatever Anthony was in. People who erased their lives had something to hide—something big. Zach hadn’t ever shied away from the dangerous, but Lauren needed to be as far away as possible.
Zach rubbed his hands over his head, forgetting he cut his hair short yesterday and there wasn’t anything to pull on. “Why would you even care about him? I can promise you he doesn’t care about you.”
“I grew up with him. He was my best friend.” Her voice was so soft and sincere. So na?ve.
The weight in her plea was not good for either of them. He needed to squash those emotions like a bug. “Things change. Anthony disappeared because he wanted to. Trust me, he doesn’t want to be found by you or anyone.”
“I understand why he wouldn’t want to be found by people like you and your brother, but I think he’d want to hear from me.”
“Nope. He moved on. Let him go.”
Lauren sighed. “He didn’t move on. He made mistakes and fell in with the wrong crowd.”
“It wasn’t an accident. He did all of this on his own,” Zach reminded her. How could she have this picture-perfect vision of her cousin? He’d met the guy, and Anthony wasn’t a saint.
“I know he did. I just don’t think I should give up on him.”
“I’m going to give you permission to do that. You’re wasting your time.”
Lauren reached over and patted his shoulder without looking away from the road. “I don’t need your permission.”
Zach jerked his arm away before the warmth of her hand seeped through his T-shirt. “No touching. I don’t touch.”
Lauren lifted her hand in the air like the police had just told her to stick ’em up. “Sorry. I won’t touch you.”
After a few erratic breaths, Zach relaxed his tight muscles. As much as he hated to admit it, years of abuse made him react like a caged animal every once in a while.
Why did it have to happen in front of Lauren?
He shook off the unease and crossed his arms over his chest. “Listen, you have friends now. You said so yourself. You don’t need Anthony, and he definitely doesn’t need you. Just forget about him.”
“Thanks for the advice. I’ll take it into consideration.”
Uh-oh. Why was her voice so mechanical and flat? Was she toying with him?
“I mean it. Let it go,” Zach repeated. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Lauren could get in a whole lot of trouble if she started snooping around looking for Anthony.
When she didn’t respond, Zach ran a hand over his head and turned to stare out the window. He couldn’t even focus on the trees or the sunshine because Lauren’s stupid request was raining on his freedom parade.
“You know, Anthony had to sit in time-out a lot when we were growing up,” Lauren said after ten minutes of silence.
Zach scoffed. “I bet. The guy’s a nut job.”
Lauren continued as if he hadn’t said anything.
“When he would ask how long, my mom would say, ‘Until your heart has changed.’ He would always come back and apologize, and I fully believed he was sorry. Sure, he still made mistakes, but we all do. We don’t have to sit in our mistakes forever.
We can choose to get up and try to make things right. ”
“You think he cares about getting back on the straight and narrow?” Zach asked. “Let me clear something up. He doesn’t. There’s a reason people like us don’t leave this life. We’re usually born in it, and it’s just who we are.”
“I don’t believe that either, but Anthony wasn’t always like this. I want him to remember that there’s another option.”
“And what’s that? Maybe he got his act together and disappeared to get away from the people he owed. If he used the opportunity to start over, good for him. What kind of options do you think he has?”
“Redemption. Forgiveness,” Lauren said.
Wow. She was good at stating complete fantasies and making them sound like truths. If only Zach had that skill. He might have spared himself the prison time. “You’re insane. That’s a joke, and this is a stupid idea. Trust me.”
Lauren tightened her grip on the wheel and straightened her back. “And why should I trust you? You’ve only been a law-abiding citizen since breakfast! If you don’t want to help me, just say no and leave it at that.”
Zach blinked at Lauren’s profile as a splotchy redness crept up her neck. That was the first time she’d actually lashed out at him, and she was kinda terrifying. She pressed on his fresh bruise without looking the least bit sorry.
“I won’t help you,” Zach said very plainly. “And you need to forget about this.”
“Fine. We’ll just act like this conversation never happened and continue to be friends.”
What did she say? Friends?
“No.” Zach shook his head. “Nuh-uh.”
“No what?” Lauren asked. “I didn’t ask you a question.”
Friends with Lauren Vincent? She had to be kidding.
“I can’t be friends with someone like you,” Zach said firmly. There wasn’t any way she’d misinterpret his words or intentions.
Because Zach’s intentions had to stay far, far away from Lauren. He had walls bigger than the ones surrounding the prison, and they were all to keep Lauren Vincent out of his life.
Lauren’s shoulders sank. Hold on, why was she upset? She had plenty of friends and needed him like she needed a lobotomy. In fact, she might need a brain transplant if she was worrying about Anthony and trying to be friends with Zach.
Her jaw shifted from one side to the other before she spoke softly. “What does that mean? Someone like me.”
How could he say he couldn’t be friends with a hot female? At least, he couldn’t without wanting more, and more was not something he could ever have with Lauren. “We aren’t anything. Just leave it at that.”
She glanced at him with an expression he couldn’t read.
She almost looked hurt, but if his words didn’t do the trick now, his actions would later.
There was some old saying about expectations and heartache or something, and that’s what he was preventing.
Lauren probably had good friends. Zach, on the other hand, was not a good friend. He wasn’t even a good person.
“We aren’t anything? Not even friends?” she asked again.
That wide-eyed pouty face she had going on was powerful. He almost wanted to give in and let those expectations take root, but Lauren was a beautiful flower that he wouldn’t crush under his boot.
“No. We’re not friends.”
There weren’t any words to explain the effect she’d had on him these last few years.
He couldn’t just come out and confess that waiting for her visits nearly wrecked him.
He couldn’t tell her how much it killed him to walk away from her all those times.
He couldn’t let her know that she was absolutely gorgeous and completely infuriating because he could never ever let her get too close.
Everything he touched turned to ashes, and that couldn’t happen to Lauren. She was too good for him.
Zach propped his elbow on the door. “Do you have a cigarette?” He hadn’t smoked in over a year, but he’d be picking up the habit as soon as he could afford it. Giving her a taste of what she was getting into would only help in this case.
Lauren did a fantastic job of staring at the empty road and ignoring him.
The lull in the conversation gave him a chance to study her.
She was the kind of beautiful that could fly under the radar unless someone really looked at her.
She never styled her long hair or wore flashy jewelry when she came to see him, yet she had a smile that punched him in the gut every time she flashed it his way.
She wasn’t his type, but for some reason, she was the only woman he’d thought about for years.
He had to check all the locks because Lauren could easily become just another casualty of his knack for destroying things. “We don’t fit together. Our lifestyles don’t mix well. You get it, right?”
Lauren scoffed, and her words bit at him. “You haven’t exactly earned a friendship bracelet, but we’re going to be spending a lot of time together. We could become friends if you weren’t so stubborn. Besides, what kind of lifestyle do you have these days?”
“I’ll be back to my old self soon enough,” he promised.
Her jaw tightened. Whatever anger she had brewing toward him was good. He deserved it.
Instead of slicing him to the bone with some obvious truth about his character, she flipped on her turn signal. “I’m hungry. We’re stopping at this diner unless you have a hot date waiting in Blackwater.”
Finally, he could relax. She needed to stay mad at him. It was the best thing for both of them.
When she shifted the minivan into park, she turned to him. “Zach, why—”
“Stop.” She’d already moved past their little tiff and was ready to make amends, but he couldn’t let that happen. With his elbow on the console, Zach leaned toward her, crowding her space and giving her a good look at the hardened man he’d become.
“You’re gonna wish you’d never met me. I’m a lot worse than whatever you’ve heard.”
Without missing a beat, Lauren lifted her chin until they were barely an inch apart. With narrowed eyes and breathing sharply through her nose, she leveled him with a look that had his stomach falling.
She licked her lips before laying into him. “You know, there’s an old saying, ‘Only a fool trips on what’s behind him.’”
Why couldn’t she be one of those ditzy women who did and said whatever it took to please someone? Why couldn’t she be dumb and ugly? Zach’s life would be a whole lot easier.
He reached for the door and took his anger out on the handle as he flung the door open. “Call me the fool then, angel.”