Page 106 of Craving Francesca

“That doesn’t fill me with comfort,” I snapped, jerking open my pajama drawer.

“Well, what did he say about it?”

“He said that I was handling it by curling up like a kicked dog,” I replied flatly, dropping my jeans to the floor. “So, that was cool.”

“He did not,” she gasped angrily.

“He absolutely did. The asshole.”

“He didn’t try to explain himself?” she asked, following me back out of my room.

“He basically said that Scott deserved it.”

“He’s not wrong there,” she mumbled.

“It wasn’t his place to step in!”

“You’re also not wrong,” Lou replied, lifting her hands in surrender.

“And what the fuck am I supposed to do now? I have to go back there and give notice. Actually, I have to check my email first because if Scott’s been running his mouth, they’ve probably already fired me!” Reaching into the fridge, I pulled out a beer. The opener wasn’t on the fridge where it should have been. Cursing, I jerked open the junk drawer and ran my hand through it.

“Here,” Lou said, handing me the missing opener. “I can’t believe you didn’t just use the countertop.”

“I’m not an animal,” I scoffed with the beer held to my lips.

“Go out on the porch,” Lou ordered. “I’ll grab some junk food and meet you out there.”

“I have to grab my laptop first.”

“That can wait,” she soothed. “Go enjoy the rain.”

She’d already started going through the cupboards when I walked out onto the sunporch. We’d barely beat the rain on our ride home. I guess that was a silver lining. Laying out on the wicker couch, I hung my feet off the side and listened to it splatter on the roof.

I couldn’t believe Gray. The whole time he’d been saying how he didn’t want me to lie or keep anything from him, he’d known that back in Eugene the boys were roughing up Scott. What a fucking hypocrite.

“I brought reinforcements,” Lou announced a few minutes later as she stepped out the back door. Myla was right behind her.

“Your cousin is a fucking dick,” I announced.

“Tell me everything,” Myla ordered.

We tore open a bag of potato chips and some candy that Lou had found in the back of a cupboard before I spewed it all. I didn’t leave anything out. I was too pissed to be embarrassed about what Scott had been doing to me. The week away had given me perspective on the entire ordeal, and while I regretted letting it go on for so long—I knew that none of it had been my fault. It didn’t matter that I’d dated him when I’d known it wasn’t a good idea. A normal person would’ve left me alone when I made it clear I wasn’t interested any longer.

Myla’s eyebrows rose when I got to the point when we’d found the police outside Gray’s camper. I practically spit out the rest of the story, my words coming so fast that I had to backtrack a couple times to clarify.

When I finally snapped my mouth shut, Myla just looked at me.

“Can you believe that shit?” I asked as Lou handed me a new beer.

“Yeah, I can,” she said with a grimace.

“He lied all week,” I reminded her. “He didn’t say a word.”

She shrugged.

“Where is your outrage?” I asked suspiciously, pointing my beer at her.

“Okay, so I’m not sure if you want my real answer or the answer that will agree with you,” she replied slowly. “Which one do you want?”

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