Page 155 of Wicked Sins

Candy

Idon’t even realize I’m fidgeting until Joah takes my hand and pulls it away from my mouth, where I’d been biting my thumbnail.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” he murmurs.

Before, I’d have been pissed at him for being so damn calm. Now that strength, that calm, it flows from him to me, filling me up.

“I don’t get why she came,” I say, shifting on the hard seat.

We’re back at the police station. It’s bright and sunny outside, but in this small, chilly room, time doesn’t exist.

“Does it matter?”

“Stop being so reasonable,” I snap, but my heart isn’t in it. Not really.

I slept like the dead last night. I woke to Joah shaking my shoulder, a steaming cup of coffee on the hotel room’s nightstand.

The policewoman was still there, and she did nothing to hide her disdain when Joah and I walked out of the room holding hands. I guess she’d been clued up to who we were since I last saw her.

On the way to the station, she’d told us my mother would be sitting in on the interview.

Interview—like I was applying for a job. I guess it’s not politically correct to call it an interrogation anymore.

That was what felt like an hour ago.

I hear her high heels and turn to the door a moment before it swings open.

Mom’s cheeks are flushed. I only know this because, for once, she’s not wearing pancake-thick makeup. Her lips crumple when she spots me, and she holds out her arms.

I don’t go to her.

I don’t even stand.

“You look…” she begins, but then trails off as her arms drop back to her sides.

Like shit, I know. Forgetting the arm brace, I could have been in a car crash how scuffed and bruised I am. Thankfully the damage from the scalpel is just superficial. She can’t possibly see the lump on my head, but I’m reminded every time it gives a dull thump. The paramedics cleared me last night—no concussion or anything like that—but I still have to go and see a doctor today to make sure I don’t have internal bleeding or something.

I’m not quite sure the paramedic believed me when I said I’d been hit over the head with a bottle of tequila.

At least, that’s what Joah said happened.

“What are you doing here?”

Mom flinches at the tone of my voice, but fuck it; I’m done being nice to anyone who doesn’t deserve it.

“I worried when you didn’t call back. Then I couldn’t get through on the house phone.” Mom’s eyes dart to Joah, but they return to me almost instantly, as if she can’t stand the look in his eyes. “When I finally got through, the police…”

I shrug with one shoulder, and look away. “You don’t have to be here. Might as well go back to your boyfriend.”

“Candy, please—”

“Mrs. Bale?”

I glance up at Detective Reed and feel some of the tension leave my body. Thank God. Now we can get this over with.

Reed pulls out a chair for my mom, positioning her opposite me and beside him as if they were planning on tag-teaming the interview.

Thankfully, Reed’s patience hasn’t improved much over the last twenty-four hours. He gives up trying to get us to incriminate or contradict ourselves.

---