Page 55 of Sweet Like a Psycho (Secrets of Suburbi 2)

“Zeke is going to be okay, you know. Nicknames come and go. It’ll pass, you’ll see.”

“Why, because when he gets older people won’t be mean anymore? From my experience, adults can be pretty cruel too.” Her eyes stayed locked with mine. “I overheard Damien say he thought I was guilty.”

Damien had been referring to her homicidal tendencies, not the case. I wonder if she’d heard the beginning of the conversation, but I didn’t think so. She probably just thought it was about the fire.

“You didn’t seem to disagree,” she added.

“We weren’t talking about the case,” I said, trying to stall for a second.

“So Damien wasn’t referring to me? How often are you completely blinded by a nice pair of tits?”

It took me a second to register the fact that she was joking. I found my gaze dropping to her chest before I could help it.

She laughed. “It’s okay if he doesn’t believe me. Maybe I can convince him tonight. But you said you believed me. You do, right?”

“I do. I do want to talk to you about a few things, though. Maybe when Zeke’s asleep and Damien’s gone?”

“What do you want to talk about?” She looked as nervous as she did earlier when she was talking about driving Zeke to school.

“Nothing serious.” I shook my head. I wanted to ask her what happened in her childhood home. I wanted to be upfront about everything. “I just want to get to know you better. One on one.”

“You know me better than most people already. But I’d like that.”

We both stood on her front porch staring at each other for a few moments. The silence should have been awkward, but it wasn’t. It was comforting.

“I’m going to go get the lizard. You remember the plan?”

“I’ve got it.”

She grabbed Damien’s empty mug from me and opened up the front door. I followed her inside and shrugged out of my jacket as she left me alone. And then I wandered into the living room where Zeke was parked on the couch with a laptop on the coffee table. He was halfway done his hot chocolate and had the plate of cookies on his lap.

“Found the cookies?”

Zeke looked up. “Mhm. Thanks, Mr. Reed.”

“You can call me Tucker.” I sat down next to him and took a sip of hot chocolate.

“Okay.” Zeke smiled at me before taking a bite of another cookie.

“What are you watching?”

“I don’t know, I don’t even like TV.” He closed the lid of the laptop. “I know you heard what the other kids called me. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. I understand.” He stared down at his plate of cookies.

“If they don’t know you’re cool then it’s their loss. I love hanging out with you.”

“Really?” He looked up at me with so much hope on his adorable little face.

“Really. Kids can be dicks.”

“What does dicks mean?”

Fuck. Cursing in my head made me curse in my head again. I needed to watch what I said around him. He was five. I cleared my throat. “It’s a bad word, you shouldn’t say it.”

“But what does it mean?”

“It’s like…” my voice trailed off. “It’s an offensive term in reference to you know…” I gestured toward my lap. “A penis.” What the hell was I doing? I was going to go to jail for pedophilia. I looked over my shoulder, worried that Violet would choose this exact moment to walk in.

“Oh. But the other kids aren’t penises. They’re just mean.”

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