Page 76 of Break for Me

Where the fuck else was I going to go right now?

Whether I’d actually asked that question out loud or he just saw it behind my eyes, he smirked at me. He looked down at his empty hands for a second, and I watched him fiddle with nothing.

Was he nervous?

“I can’t promise you safety, Fancy Face. Or stability. You’d really probably have even less of that around me, especially now.”

He wasn’t asking about this very specific moment.

That realization hit me like a tidal wave. He managed to look at me again, while I sat there in very confused silence and couldn’t do anything but stare at him.

“You don’t have to answer me right now. Let’s get that taken care of,” he nodded toward my leg before he was gone again and closing the car door. He had Memphis back on the phone the second that he was sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Tell me where I’m going, boss lady,” he said.

“That’s the closest you’ve ever been with a name that I would actually allow,” Memphis said. “I’m bringing it up on your computer. He’s not far from where you are now, but I’d still stop somewhere in between to lose your phone and get one of the others setup. No one in the world could get into your computer so please don’t go on a total tech purge just yet. Call me when you have the other phone ready.”

“Memphis,” he said quickly, like he was afraid that she was about to hang up. “Are you leaving?”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about the dropout plan?” She asked.

“Just —,” he stopped himself. “You don’t have to tell me where. Just if you’re leaving.”

“No, Jersey. I’m not leaving.”

He breathed in so deeply that it took him a few seconds to figure out how to speak again. “I’ll call you when I switch phones.”

The way that his hand shook when he reached up to press the button on his steering wheel to end the call made my heart grind to a standstill.

He was human, after all.

He looked at the computer screen another time before he shifted the car into a gear and left a cloud of smoke in that parking lot on the way out.

“What’s a dropout plan?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why it came out like a whisper, like it was something we weren’t actually supposed to be talking about.

He sighed. “An escape plan. We have them in case a job goes really wrong and we need to disappear.”

“Disappear from who?” I asked. “Who would you need to hide from?”

“Apparently, that stepdaddy of yours.”

“And these dropout plans don’t put you and Memphis in the same place?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. In theory, it’s safer and more effective to disappear alone.”

He rolled his window down and tossed his phone out onto the road while he drove.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Your boss won’t know how to find you?”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel to such an extent that I heard the leather squeak under his grip.

“Nate Evans is my boss.”

Somehow, that really only gave me more questions than it answered.

“You and me both,” he said.

I must’ve said that last thought out loud.

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