Page 72 of Blade

She narrowed her eyes at me. “How do you know I lied?”

I needed to decide how much to tell her. I was already walking a slippery slope. One word and my gig would be up, and I wasn’t ready for that yet. “We watched the video from the parking lot.”

“I told you all to stay out of it. Let the sheriff handle it.” She pulled away and walked further out, looking at the sky. When we were kids, we used to lie in the grass and watch the clouds roll by, looking for shapes. I guess most kids did that, but it was special to me because Becca was with me.

“He can’t do his job if you don’t tell him the truth,” I reminded her.

She spun around so fast. I didn’t know how she didn’t lose her balance.

“How do you know what I told the sheriff?”

I dropped my eyes to the ground, not wanting to see her angry at me.

“Did the sheriff tell you?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Church has cameras.”

“That was why King let us use it. He knew you all could hear everything I said. Dagnabbit!”

I chuckled.

I had forgotten her penchant for using silly words to avoid cussing. It was fucking adorable now as it was when we were kids, maybe even more so.

“You don’t get to laugh at me,” she hissed, poking me in the chest.

“I am not laughing at you, babe. It’s cute you can’t cuss.”

“I could if I wanted to. I choose not to. There’s a difference. Swearing shows a lack of intelligence. There are millions of words, and most people use the same ones every time. And they don’t always mean the same thing. That’s just stupid.” Folding her arms over her chest, she looked like a toddler who didn’t get her way.

Dragging her into my arms, I kissed the top of her head.

“I need you to tell me what happened. We could tell Grant had a lot to say. What was it?”

She pulled away from me and turned her back to me again.

I was getting pretty damn tired of her rejecting me.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why?”

Throwing her hands in the air, she spun around again. I was getting dizzy myself with how much she twirled around.

“Because he wasn’t making any sense. Nothing he said made sense, and I just want to forget what happened.” She threw her arms around my waist and buried her face in my chest.

Holding her tight, she whispered, “I have enough things I can’t forget. I don’t need more.”

“Ok, we can table that for now. Tell me about Ryder.”

She looked up at me. “What about Ryder?”

“Is there something going on between you two?”

“Me and Ryder? No.” She laughed, shaking her head.

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