Page 38 of Bidding War

I hold my hand up. “That was rhetorical.”

He nods once and sighs. “Even if this went best case scenario like you talked about, it’ll be plastered all over the news for a long time. This will haunt me forever. Goodbye to state office. Goodbye to a possible Senatorship. My trajectory, as sketchy as it is now, will be destroyed by this piece of shit.” He kicks Neil’s thigh in anger, and the body slumps over, earning a sneer from Anderson before he turns away. “Not to mention what’ll happen to you. Do you really want to be tied to Neil every time someone googles you? Is this what you want to be known for?”

I can’t think about that right now. My mind sorts through how this will affect me. Mine ranges in trauma, though. Not in career destruction ... or will it?

I don’t know. This is going to be a lot to unpack with a therapist one day. I know it will. Right now, the man who attacked me is dead. That’s a good thing. Especially given what he said about other women … he made it sound like I was not the first he’d done this to. Did he leave a trail of bodies in Nebraska? I doubt I’ll ever know for sure.

My voice still sounds rough. “What do we do, then?”

He sighs. “I got a guy.”

A spike of chilled sickness jerks through me. Did he really just say that? I stare at him for a few seconds, open-mouthed. “You got a guy? One that helps you with dead bodies?”

His lips smooth into a line of impatience. “It’s this, or we call the police and blow our lives up, June.”

On the one hand, I don’t want this to get out. Anderson has a good point. I don’t want to be the woman attached to the death of this monster. I don’t want my face on the news, and I certainly don’t want this to be what I’m known for. It’s bad enough that Elliot has fucked me over. It’s not fair if Neil gets to, too.

With all that’s happened, I’m unemployable in my field. I’d hate to be unemployable everywhere. Kelsey would stand by me, but I don’t want to be the sideshow freak at the bar, either. People are weird—they’d come to get a drink poured by me just because of this. They’d ask all kinds of questions because drunk people have no filter. They’d ask, what did Neil do? Do I think he deserved to die for getting a little handsy? Do I like it when guys are rough with me, and he just took it too far?

He’s dead, and I’m alive, so in a lot of minds, that makes me a murderous bitch who should have gotten what she had coming to her. A lot of people will take a man’s side no matter what, and if I have to spend the rest of my life defending what happened here, I’ll have to move and hope this doesn’t follow me, or I’ll lose my mind. No. Just no. Neil’s corpse does not get to chase me out of my hometown.

On the other hand, I also don’t want to be involved in a crime. Right now, we haven’t done anything wrong. The moment he makes that call, though, we’ve mishandled a dead body. Three years in prison, as far as I remember from law school. I do not want to go to prison. I would not do well in prison. A gray prison jumpsuit will not suit me.

Committing a crime to cover up a non-crime feels like a bad idea. But so do all the other outcomes, and we’re running out of time. At some point, a neighbor will come through here, and what the hell do we do then?

I sigh. “Make the call.”

21

ANDERSON

Once the call is made, there’s no going back. I know that. But going forward legitimately is uglier than going forward illegitimately, and I don’t have the stomach to be attached to Green Sweater for the rest of my life. He’s garbage. I won’t wear his stink forever, and I’ll be damned if I let June. This is going to make things weird for me with Dad, and I’d rather things be weird than be in prison.

I dial up Moss. “Sorry it’s so late. I got a hankering to catch some haddock. You up for a boat trip?”

His smile is evident in his rough voice. “I’ll bring the gear, you bring the beer.”

“I’ll text you the address where you can pick me up.” I hang up and send him the address.

“That … that’s it?” June asks, her voice still shaking.

“Yep. That’s it.”

She looks ill. “Seems like there should be more to it than that.”

Gently, I put my arm around her. “You okay?”

She simply looks at me.

“Yeah, I know. It’s a dumb question, but I don’t know what else to say.”

That earns her smile. She leans against me a little, and fuck, I’ve missed that. “I know. I don’t know what else to say, either.” She stands there, letting me hold her for a moment. But when a thought hits her, her body gets stiff. “Can I … I really want to go shower. Forever.”

“Eh, not just yet. I want to do this by my guy’s book. He knows what to do. Sorry.”

Her lips press tightly together, but she nods. “How … how have you been? Since when do you have a guy for things like this? What’s changed?”

Everything. “We’ll talk about all of that later. Don’t really want to get into things like that when we’re about to be interrupted.”

---