Page 75 of Shadow Dance

Maeve hesitates when I turn the car off. “Whose house is this?”

“It belongs to a friend,” I explain. “He lives here with his girlfriend, but they went out of town for Thanksgiving.”

“And he’s okay with you coming over when he’s not here?”

“One hundred percent okay. I have my own key,” I explain, motioning for her to follow me. “Come on.”

Inside, the house is just as I left it. Double locking the front door, I take off my boots and head into the kitchen. Maeve comes in a second later in her socks, looking curiously around. “This is really cute. Cozy.”

“Analisse completely renovated it when they moved in. She’s really into that kind of stuff. You’d like her,” I muse. Analisse would like Maeve, too. In another life I could have introduced them.

She pauses near the kitchen table, peering at a framed photo on the wall. “She’s pretty.”

“I don’t know, I’m kind of into ballerinas,” I say, handing Maeve a cold bottle of fruit juice from the fridge.

She laughs quietly, rolling her eyes. “Oh, is that your type?”

I’m messing with her because I like teasing her, but I meant what I said. I’m into her. Maeve is beautiful. So beautiful that I knew, the first time I saw her, that it was eventually going to become an issue. Ignoring it was easy in the beginning because we barely spoke to each other. All I had was body language.

Eventually she noticed just how much I watched her, and once she did, the vibe between us changed. Then she stopped doing coke. That’s when she began to come back to herself and open up to me. We started becoming friends before I even realized it and soon, I likedthe girlbehind the pretty face. Maeve is strong, dedicated, and loyal. She stuck with Callum for a long time, way past the point where she should’ve dumped his ass, because she took what they had seriously. It’s not her fault he took that for granted.

I take a bottle of juice for myself and motion for Maeve to follow me into the guest room. The window there looks out into a small backyard, separated from the neighbor’s property by a wood fence. I crack it open as a strong breeze blows through the fruit trees, shaking their leaves with a rushing sound.

Maeve sheds her leather jacket and sits on the bed, drawing her legs in as she rests against the headboard. Grabbing the weed and rolling papers I left last time I was here, I toss off my jacket and sit beside Maeve.

“It’s such a pretty day,” she says, gazing at the serene scene through the window.

“What do you want to do?” Laying a book on my lap, I begin to roll the joint. “We can go somewhere if you want.”

“No,” she says. “This is exactly what I wanted to do. I just wanted to hang out somewhere with you. Alone.”

“But?” I prompt, sensing a question in her voice.

“What if Callum checks my location?” she asks. “What if he saw me here?”

“I turn off your GPS sometimes,” I admit.

“Is it off now?”

“What do you think?” I ask, smirking.

She turns toward me, pushing her hair over her shoulder. It’s pulledback with a black headband today, the dark curls tumbling down her back. “How do you do that?”

“I have ways.”

“But—”

“I don’t always do it, obviously,” I explain. “He’d get suspicious, or he’d just reinstall it. He hasn’t said anything yet, though, so maybe he hasn’t noticed.”

She exhales deeply. “You don’t know how much of a relief that is.”

“I probably should have told you,” I say, licking the seam of the joint. “I did it the first time I took you to the shooting range.”

“I did wonder about that.” Maeve looks down at her phone, turning it over in her hands before placing it on the bed. “Too bad I can’t keep track of him the way he does me. See how he’d like being stalked.”

At this point, it’s safe to say I can trust her, so I brush off my hands and pull up the tracking app on my phone. Finding the map with Cal’s location, I put the phone down between us and point to the screen.

She sucks in a small, sharp breath. “That’s Cal? Right now?”

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