Page 99 of Coach
I didn’t like how things felt after she interrupted my meditation session.
And, to be fair, we both held some blame there.
Este, for lying to me. More than once.
Me, for being upset about it instead of confronting her, asking her why she felt like she couldn’t give me the truth.
I just didn’t understand why the hell she felt the need to lie.
For me, I felt like we were past that. We were opening up. She’d told me so much about her upbringing. Less about her early adulthood, but I’d gotten pieces.
In turn, she got my childhood, my life before prison, what it was like inside, and how it felt readjusting to being on the outside again.
We were heading somewhere. I could feel it down to my damn bones.
So why the hell would she feel the need to lie about what happened to her face?
Had the Novikoffs threatened her?
That didn’t feel like them to me. Then again, we only had a casual business-type connection to them. I really didn’t knowmuch at all about how they handled their business or even how they treated their employees.
I hemmed and hawed about how to handle it the whole next day. For a good part of it, I figured I would let her come to me when she decided she wanted to be more honest.
But as the night fell and she still didn’t show, I realized that it was childish to wait. If I wanted answers, I needed to ask the questions.
It was late as I made my way into town, using the club’s SUV instead of my bike so I could drive Este and Trix back to the clubhouse once we got shit sorted.
The pool hall was closed. Este was probably washing the day away and trying to get some sleep past the racket of renovation sounds at her house. The last thing she likely wanted was a confrontation. The longer we let this stew, though, the harder it was going to be to get past it.
So I made my way to her street, frowning at her darkened house.
Was she asleep already?
But she told me even when she slept, she kept a light or two on in the house.
“I know it only feeds the fear, but I can’t stop doing it.”
Knowing there was nothing around that was still open, save for the pub, I made my way up the porch steps.
Each step felt like it got heavier.
It wasn’t apprehension about a difficult conversation, though.
It was something else.
Something that had the hairs at the back of my neck standing up, that had my skin pricking.
It was the same sensation I felt when the cop car sirens wailed outside my house, knowing I’d just lost years of my life.
It was what I felt while doing a drop for the club and seeing shadows move in behind us, knowing we were surrounded and fucked.
It was the sensation of something having just gone horribly wrong.
I tried to shake off the sensation as I got to the door and lifted my hand to knock. Once. Twice. Three times.
But there was no sound from inside.
Not even Trix barking.
