Page 155 of Red Flag
When I popped my head around the kitchen wall, his eyes met my wet ones and his mouth dropped open in horror. “Livie—”
“Don’t you think she has enough going on right now?” his mum snapped in English, on his heels as he walked towards me.
I batted his hand away over the kitchen island before mirroring his steps on the opposite side, not letting him get any closer. “Don’t,” I sniffed. He stopped. “Where were you?”
“I was…” He looked around for an excuse. He wanted to double down on his lies. Prick. “I was atVinny’shouse.”
I blinked, the ferocity of it making a tear slip from one of my brown eyes.
“You werewhere?”
He lifted a laptop I hadn’t noticed in his hands.Vinny’slaptop.
“You broke in?” I breathed, hands up, fingers spread as if to grab something. To do anything to take control.
“It’s fine,” he said, placing the laptop on the island and reaching for me. I let him approach, but he was smart enough to remain a few steps away. “It’s covered. No one will know.”
“Shewill,” I cried, shaking my head.
Samantha Garvs.
She’d know I had called for her house to be broken into and for his laptop to be stolen. If I wasn’t already in shit, I would be now.
Or Nix would be, at least.
“Well, she’ll have no proof,” he said softly. “It wasn’t you. It wasn’t even me.”
I swallowed and then inhaled a frustrated breath. “Your brother Jules.”
Marie whipped around. “Jules?” she snapped, nostrils flaring. “Don’t tell me—”
Before he could answer, I interrupted. “You have to start telling me these things! You can’t have people following me, then pull crap like this without telling me!”
“You wouldn’t let me—”
“For good reason!” I shouted as his mum cried, “You shouldn’t even have considered going—”
“Mum, can you give us a second, please?” he snapped.
His mum glared, her dark blue eyes narrowed and her lip was slightly curled as she looked him up and down. “This won’t come cheap. You had a way out.”
She turned on her heel and made her way to the guest bedroom.
“Don’t take this out on your mum,” I mumbled as I opened up the laptop. “I’m fucking fuming with you.”
“I did it for you,” he told me, coming to my side. “I did it so no one else will have a copy of it.”
“You did it for me,” I repeated with a mocking laugh. I shook my head, turning to him. “You don’t think, do you? You don’t get it. I gave up my story so that chapter of your life was over. So that they couldn’t publish it. I’m going through all of this so you wouldn’t ever get caught for that!”
By the end of my words, I was feebly clutching his shirt.
He caught my hands but I wasn’t done. “What are they going to make you do? What have you given up? I won’t let you—”
“Nothing. They want nothing,” he promised, eyes wide and desperate.
“Bullshit!” I cried, pushing him away. “You didn’t have to do this. This was reckless and—”
“I did this so it wouldn’t be worse for you! So that video won’t end up anywhere else than with us! So you can do what you want with it.”
