Page 116 of The Venom We Bleed

I hadn’t corrected that assumption either. Despite how angry I’ve been—how angry I still am—seeing my dad sitting in handcuffs and a garishly bright orange jumpsuit had hit me much harder than I thought it would. He’s aged in the months he’d been incarcerated. The gray at his temples has begun its takeover, moving from his temples to the sides of his head and even a few streaks at the top. His eyes had been heavy with dark circles, and more wrinkles than I’d ever seen on him had lined his lips.

Just for a moment, when I walked into that big room with all of those tables—bolted down for safety purposes, of course—I’d looked at him and wanted to turn back into a scared little girl. I’d wanted to run up to him and throw my arms around him and start sobbing. I wanted to beg him to make it all better.

He hadn’t even opened his arms. How could he have when he hadn’t even been able to stand up from the table? The security guards had handcuffed him to a loop in the metal surface.

Just when it was all starting to get better—just when I thought I might be okay…

My new cell phone rings in my back pocket. Taking it out, I trudge towards the glass overhang for the bus station a blockaway from the facility. More rain falls, soaking into my hair as I lift it to my face and see the caller.

A spark of resentment crawls up my throat.Nolan. Of course, he calls me now. I’m more surprised it’s not Gio, since he was the one that was supposed to be here. The one that lied. My chest constricts as I swipe the green button and put the phone to my ear.

“Where are you?” he demands.

“Where the fuck do you think I am, asshole,” I snap back. “At the correctional facility.”

“What?” Nolan’s shocked voice slaps me. “Why would you be there? Gio didn’t—” He stops and takes a breath. My lower lip trembles and I bite down hard to stop it. He knows. He knows Gio didn’t pick me up. Had they just pressured me to do this only to take it back not thinking I’d come all this way by myself? Why? To humiliate me? Remind me that no one gives a fuck about me? Why make promises if they had no intention of keeping them? Why even bother to be kind to me when it was only half-assed? I was so much better when I’d been relying on myself. It was easier when it was just me. No stupid Scorpion Kings buying me shit or making me feel like I’m not alone.

Being alone isn’t the hard part—it’s thinking you’re not and then finding out no one gives a shit about you. It’s easier to be in a room by yourself than to stand in a crowd of people without a single one of them reaching out to help when you’re in danger.

“Listen, you need to come back,” he says.

“You’re not surprised that Gio forgot,” I state instead. “Or did he forget?” My damn chest tightens up again, a coil winding around and around until it hurts. “Did he ever intend to actually bring me?”

There’s a brief moment of silence on the other side of the line and I laugh out loud, a broken, achy sound. “The answer’s no, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not,” Nolan says. Then just as quickly, he barks a curse. “Fuck.” That’s it. That’s all he says.

I nod as if he’s right in front of me and hop onto the sidewalk. A streak of water slides down the side of my face.

“Yeah, fuck is right,” I tell him. “Fuck you.”

“Juliet, I didn’t—there was a situation.”

“Let me guess,” I say. “You had to go collect more money from poor business owners and take it to your boss?”

I stomp on each crack in the pavement, breathing heavily as I throw the words out like bullets.

“What we do for work is none of your business.” Nolan’s voice is low, a warning. “Where are you now? Are you done there?”

“It’s none ofyourbusiness,” I say, throwing his words back in his face.

He growls. “I’m not fucking around, Juliet. Where the fuck—goddamn it. You know what…”

The bus stop is in my line of sight and I spy a couple of people already standing there, waiting, taking up most of the space underneath the minuscule overhang. I’m going to look like a drowned rat by the time I get back to Silverwood.

Nolan says something, the sound of his voice slightly muffled as I assume he turns away from the phone and talks to someone else. When he comes back, it’s with the same frustrated tone. “Did you turn off your fucking location?”

I grin at the question. Yes, I had. I’d been so angry with them that as I’d ridden into Hansgard via the bus, I’d found the location-sharing app on my cell and promptly deleted it.

“I don’t think you should worry about my location anymore,” I say. “In fact, don’t fucking concern yourself with me at all anymore. When I get back to Silverwood, I’m going home—back to my apartment and you can fuck off for all I care.”

“The door still isn’t fixed,” Nolan says. “It’s not livable.”

“I don’t care as long as it’s away fromyou,” I seethe even as I start to tremble from the chill burrowing into my bones from the rain. “From all of you.”

Stopping beneath a tree that offers some reprieve from the rain a few yards away from the bus stop, I wrap my arms around myself and clench my teeth to avoid chattering. “I’ll ship Lex’s phone back to him. I don’t need shit from you.”

I never did. I’d just forgotten that.

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