Page 66 of Dirty Love

The police run in shouting and Veronica lifts her gun to his head—the same blonde chick who tried to talk to me and Nicky the night our mom was killed.

“Get on your knees!”

“Ronnie…”

“Get on your knees!” she screams again, but he doesn’t get the chance to do as he’s told before one of the cops tackles him off of me, cracking my dad’s head on the corner of the coffee table as they both go down together. “Goddamnit.”

“You fucking bastard!” the guy cries in his face, making me grin on the inside when I realize that’s his own partner—a massive bald dude who just so happens to be Mark’s uncle. “He was my nephew, you son of a bitch! My little sister’s fucking kid!”

“Someone get him out of here!” Veronica seethes, snatching a blue glove from her pocket to hit the stop button on my speaker. “Jesus Christ, that’s awful.”

Two of the other cops haul him up by his arms and Veronica tilts her chin for me to get out of the way, still holding her gun to my dad’s head as she carefully walks towards him. I keep my head down and move for the office to get back to Nicky, steadying myself with my hands on the doorframe, my erratic heart leaping up to my throat when I catch the look in his eyes.

“Baby, come here.”

He launches himself at me and I wrap my arm around his waist, holding his head with my free hand while he drops his face to my chest. He shakes against me with his fingers curled around the front of my jacket, and I don’t have to look at his eyes to know his tears aren’t fake. He’s not putting it on for the cops. He’s just sad and relieved and hurting all at once.

I turn us around and lean back against the wall in the hallway, watching the police as they find the clothes burning on the shitty fire, the murder weapon in the sink and the bloody shoes just outside the back door. They cuff our dad’s hands behind his back and he snarls at us as he passes, his nasty eyes roaming our bodies pressed together as they drag him out of the house we grew up in.

“It’s over, baby brother,” I whisper, gently brushing my mouth over his ear. “He’s gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” I answer, moving down to kiss the crook of his neck. “He’s gone and he’s never coming back.”

CHAPTER 24

NICKY

There’s no music in my ears.

Kade set my head down on his lap a little while ago and put his headphones in for me, but there’s nothing playing, probably because he doesn’t want to make my headache any worse than it already is, but wants to make it look like I can’t hear them at the same time.

Because at least if I can’t hear them, I can’t answer any of their annoying questions.

Questions that make me nervous as fuck.

I think they believed the story we made up and the lies Kade told them, but they’ve been here for ages, taking photos and bagging evidence and…

Fuck me, this burns.

I wince before I can stop it and Kade glares, hitting the paramedic with a look that says hurry up or die.

I popped the stitches on my face at some point between the hospital and here, and Veronica insisted she needed to have us both checked out before she could leave us alone. I still can’t tell whether she’s a good person or not, but she looks at us like she cares and it reminds me of Mom.

I miss my fucking mom.

The guy kneeling beside me finally removes his hands from my face and I force myself to relax, closing my eyes while Kade plays with my hair.

“You know we can’t stay here, right?” he whispers to me, using his free hand to slide his fingers through mine.

“I know.”

“You won’t be able to finish school.”

“I don’t care about school,” I admit, breathing out a humorless laugh. “I hate this fucking town, Kade. I hate this house. I hate these people,” I tell him, not missing the several disgusted looks thrown our way from across the room. “I just wanna go.”

“To the second gayest city in the country?”

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