Page 33 of I'm Sorry

“On any other day, sure, I would just to make a point. However, today, I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m starving.” I shake my head, sniffing the flower. It’s useless to remind him to eat when he works anymore. He doesn’t listen.

“He might just eat you,” Lauren’s boyfriend chimes in. The collective silence that befalls the room is deafening before we all break out in fits of raucous laughter.

“Babe!” Lauren gasps, unable to control her giggle fit. Her boyfriend groans, a flush coloring his cheeks. Benny’s head is back as guffaws leave him.

Lauren’s boyfriend groans, but even he is chuckling. “That definitely did not come out right.”

“How else would it come out?” Benny asks when the noise settles for a moment.

“I don’t even know. But I did not mean it to be sexual. I know you would never—”

Benny holds up his hand to silence our friend. “I know you meant nothing by it.”

“Wouldn’t that be wild?” Junie chimes in, wiping tears from her cheeks from laughing so hard. “Me and Lennox ending up with the same guy.”

Benny’s eyes, along with everyone else’s in the room, go wide and the silence is utterly deafening. I cannot believe she just said that. The thought of her with Benny… just ew. I love my sister, but not like that.

“That sure as hell didn’t help to make itanybetter.” Despite the near unbearable awkwardness that Junie just added to the conversation, Benny’s shoulders bounce with laughter over his comment. I want to melt into a puddle beneath this chair and absorb myself into the wood floor.

“It definitely doesn’t make it any better,” I agree. The mental images… Just no.

“Sit down, Juniper, before you make us all vomit up that amazing dinner we just had,” Lauren orders, and reaches over to snag Junie’s arm and tug her back into her seat.

“Rude. I could totally snag a guy as hot as Benny. Why would us together be vomit inducing?”

“Oh my god,” I mutter. Benny just laughs harder and our best friend rolls her eyes as her boyfriend looks on with shock plastered across his face.

“Because you’re like my little sister, Junie. No offense. You’re beautiful, but just no,” Benny clarifies. Grabbing a leftover biscuit from the coffee table, Junie tosses it across the room and it breaks apart, crumbs flying when Benny catches it. He stuffs a piece into his mouth and takes a huge bite, then winks at my sister.

“Exactly,” Lauren agrees, eyes still on her Kindle. Her boyfriend looks exactly like I feel. Like we’re waiting for the ground to open up and steal us away from this conversation.

Junie sags, dropping back into her chair. “Oh. Yeah, okay, that makes sense.” She’s truly defeated, as if her hooking up with Benny wouldn’t be incredibly troublesome. My mind whirls with all the other reasons it would not be beneficial to have a relationship outside of the realms of tradition. This life is miserable sometimes and even though I love my parents, I’m not sure they would choose to do it all over again if given the chance. At least when I see them talking about the attack on me, the looks in their eyes certainly speak of the remorse they carry.

“Besides, don’t we go through enough with our parent’s relationship? Why would we want to subject our future children to something like that?” The thought is out before I think better of it. I snap my jaws shut, silently berating myself for bringing it up. As if it isn’t the elephant in the room we are dancing around by picking on Junie. No need to add insult to injury, but here we are. My comment sobers the already odd mood, leaving Junie to scrunch her lips in thought.

“That’s a very sad and limiting thought, no? If you love someone, multiple someones, wouldn’t you want to be happy?” She doesn’t get it and she probably never will. Junie is definitely the optimist out of all of us, despite what we go through.

“At the price of what?” I snap. It’s unfair. I could fly under the radar like Junie does, only gaining the attention of people who recognize her, but I’ve taken it further by putting myself in the public eye, so I get much more trouble than she does. “Destroying my children? But then again, you’ve had it pretty easy. No one wants to attack you.”

Lauren looks up from her kindle, spearing me with aI can’t believe you took it thereglare. I shrink under that glare, wishing I could rewind the words and wipe the disbelief and disappointment from everyone’s faces. They aren’t bothering to try to hide it. Not surprised. I’ve been lashing out lately and I’m sure it’s getting on everyone’s nerves. My harsh words aren’t something they deserve.

My attack is so unlike my character that Junie is frozen in place, blinking at me as if I might have just struck her. Her expression goes from surprised to appalled, then fills with sadness and remorse. It was a shit thing to say. Tears glitter in her eyes as the corners of her mouth turn down. She’s gonna cry. “Destr—”

The chiming of my phone cuts off her whisper. Feeling like a complete asshole, I glance down, only to have my mood squandered even more.

“It’s G.” Our family lawyer. He’s been keeping us updated on the charges I pursued with those jerks that attacked me at the track. Judging by Benny’s inability to talk about the case with me without going off the deep end, I’m guessing we don’t have a good chance of putting them in jail. He’s done some digging, having a feeling that the attack wasn’t just some coincidence, that it screamed foul play. Sure enough, those men have ties to a gang called Capital City Chaos.

I’m not sure what me or my parent’s relationship has anything to do with C.C.C. but apparently that organization is known for hired guns. Benny’s connections to that sort of life always surprise me and I’m not sure I want to know how he obtained the information or what he had to do because I know it wasn’t given to him freely. He’s been on edge lately, even though he’s hiding it well. But he refuses to talk about it.

He’s even more frustrated because no one would give up why they attacked me or who hired them. I guess digging that deeply means he’d owe someone, and I’m glad he drew a line before he owed a gangster something. My case isn’t worth it. We will figure it out the legal way.

With G, no news is good news, so hearing from him at this hour in the evening means he has news that he doesn’t think should wait. Once again, a sickening silence chokes us. I have a feeling I know what G is about to say and I hate it, so I pick up my phone and swipe the green button across the screen to answer. When it’s next to my ear, I take a shaky breath.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Lennox. It’s Germaine, sweetheart. How are you?” G has always been an even keeled kind of guy, delivering news, both good and bad, in the swiftest way possible without a change in his emotion, so I can’t get a read on him.

“Hey, G. I’m okay. How are you?” My voice is weak. Benny is back by my side in an instant, draping his arm back over my shoulder and pulling me close. He leans into me and drops a kiss to my hair. I rest my head on his shoulder. My eyes fall shut as I listen to how gentle his heartbeat is, despite the rage pouring into me through his tightening grip.

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