Page 55 of Devoured
“Pretty much,” I said, my shoulders sinking. I wanted to be excited that he cared, but why was he interested? Why couldn’t he be the asshole he was supposed to be, and not care about anything?
Why did I like that he cared?
“Who’s next?” he asked.
“There’s another server I could ask. Scarlett. She only worked here for a short while though.” I sighed. They all left because they didn’t want to come back. Every single one of them. What use was it to try and beg them?
Roland sat up. “What’s that look?” he asked. “Who are you thinking of?”
“Teagen,” I said. I swallowed, trying to hold it together. He didn’t need to know how lonely I was, now that she was gone. “She was a few years younger than me, but once she got here, we stuck it out together. Through thick and thin. A ride or die kind of chick.”
“She meant a lot to you then.” That was one way to put it.
“She’s like, the sunshine I never knew I needed,” I said in an exasperated tone. “Until you, I guess.”
He smirked. “You think I’m sunny?”
“In your own sunburn kind of way,” I said flatly.
“I’ll take it.” He offered me his plate, a full piece of pizza on top. I shook my head. “Where is she?” he asked.
“She ran off with this Adler,” I said. I crossed my arms. “Sonofabitch thought he could kidnap her. But then she ran away. With him. Willingly!”
“An Adler, huh?” he asked.
“Yes. Those fucking Adlers. I have to wait for her to call me through these anonymous numbers. Do you know how many solicitation calls I get in between? It’s pure torture.”
“Have you seen her lately?”
“Not since she left.”
His eyes drifted, thinking over something in his mind. Did Roland ever feel lonely? Or abandoned? Especially moving around like he did, never letting the dust settle before he went to the next location. But he had feelings. I knew he did. He had to. He might have pretended to be a heartless party boy, but inside, there was something there. Something meaningful.
And then there was the matter of his ex-girlfriend. Had that left a mark on him? Or did she blow away like a handful of sand?
“There’s something I want to ask you about,” I said. He gave me his full attention. Those black-rimmed glasses made him look studious. It was comical and really cute. He looked like a returning student in college for the first time in decades. It made me want to melt. “You had a girlfriend that died?” I tried.
He visibly changed then, that permanent smile disappearing from his face.
“What about her?” he asked.
“What happened to her?”
He took a second, staring off into space, then stuffed his hands in his pockets. Then he turned back to his laptop.
“She died. Drug overdose. Happened three years ago now.”
I couldn’t tell if he was still hurt by it, or if he was pissed off that I had asked. “Were you close to her?”
“Sure.”
His words were dry. It was hard to gauge what emotions he was trying to hide, or if he truly was numb to it. I leaned against the doorframe, trying to figure out what was going on in his brain.
“You seem awfully quiet,” I said. He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “What really happened?”
“What do you want me to say?” he asked, his eyes still on the computer. “Lexi died. I lived.”
“But why?” I asked. “You must have been getting high together. Why did you live, and she died?”
He spun around in the chair, facing me, his eyes bulging red. “What the hell do you want me to say? Do you want me to list my DNA and tell you exactly which gene made it so that I survived?” Anger filled his shoulders, making them broader. “I had a bad feeling about what she was carrying. I knew it was lethal. But she didn’t care. She took it; I sat out. The next thing I know, she’s dead next to me.” He narrowed his eyes at me, making me feel small. “You want me to give you the details? Time of death? Drug of choice? How I couldn’t sleep for months, because if I closed my eyes, I saw her blank face staring at me? Or are those answers enough for you?”
I took a step back. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said quietly.
“Sure you didn’t,” he said, his shoulders sinking. “You never did.”
Those last words caught me off guard:You never did.I wanted to ask him what he meant, and what he wasn’t telling me. Which parts was he choosing to leave out? Why was he angry, if it had happened three years ago? Even now, after witnessing his anger, I still didn’t think Roland was the kind of man to do something malicious like Melissa and Rourke had suggested. And yet it still made me uneasy. How much pain was Roland carrying around? Had that experience scarred him? Was that why he was always on the move? Always running away from his past.
But I wasn’t going to press it. Not right then, anyway. Roland could handle my questions, but this?Thiswas something else. I would have to figure out how to unravel the puzzle. It was the kind of thing that would take time.
