“Yup,” she said. “They aren’t saying what’ll happen to them, but it’s not good. A cop got hurt, too, although I don’t know how bad. This might be the end of the club here in Hallies Falls. I wonder if he has drugs in his apartment. You should go check—if he’s dealing, you need him out of there. You can’t trust a guy just because he’s hot and mows the lawn without a shirt.”
I sat back in the swing, feeling ill.
“Thanks for telling me,” I said slowly, trying to wrap my head around it.
“I’m sorry,” she replied. “But it’s for the best. If he’s a bad guy, it’s better to find out now so you can evict his ass. That club has gotten worse and worse.”
“I can’t evict someone for getting arrested,” I told her. “That’s illegal.”
“It’s a month-to-month lease, right? Just give him thirty days’ notice and get rid of him. You’ve got enough on your plate already.”
Hmm . . . Maybe I should evict him. He’d caused me a lot of trouble and I’d already been avoiding him. God. But the thought of him leaving . . . It hurt—it hurt way more than it should’ve. I didn’t want to think about this.
“I have to go, Carrie,” I said, hanging up the phone. It was probably rude, but she’d forgive me. We’d been best friends since we were born, so not like she had a choice. Sitting back in the swing, I looked across the empty porch toward the equally empty sidewalk, wondering why the news about Cooper bothered me so much.
Because deep down inside you’re still in lust with him, of course.
Dumbass.
Reaching for my wine bottle, I refilled my glass and considered Carrie’s words—Cooper had been arrested for fighting, and possibly for meth. She was right. I needed to get rid of him. This was only common sense. Time to pull on my big-girl panties and accept reality.
Panties . . .
Hadn’t been wearing any of those that god-awful night I’d gotten caught with the stripper. And everyone knew it, too—even those who hadn’t seen the video heard the details. They felt free to judge me, too, because they thought they knew what’d happened in that room. They didn’t. So how the hell did I really know what’d happened down in Ellensburg?
You don’t.
Cooper should be innocent until proven guilty. Things didn’t sound good, but until I knew the full truth, I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Taking another drink of my wine, I looked up to see someone walking quickly toward the building along the sidewalk, arms hugged tight around her body. Sadie Baxter. Damn. There was something about her . . . she didn’t look so good.
“Hi, Sadie,” I called out. She startled, looking up at me, and I gasped.
Her eyes were a mess of purple and black and . . . Jesus. Someone had hit her. Looked like she’d tried to cover it with makeup, which was now smeared all over her face. There was dirt, too, and a nasty scratch on her cheek. Setting down my glass carefully, I walked down the steps toward her. She trembled like a baby deer, and my heart hurt. I wanted to demand what the hell had happened to her. Maybe wrap her up in Bubble Wrap and lock her in my basement.
Instead I took a calming breath and smiled.
“Do you remember that time I was babysitting you and we built that giant fort out of pillows and blankets?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Sadie said softly, refusing to meet my gaze.
“Do you remember why we did that?”
Sadie’s lips tightened as she blinked rapidly.
“Because I was scared of the monsters,” she whispered hoarsely. “So we built a castle and then you used the monster potion to kill them all.”
“Yeah.”
“What was that, anyway? The potion, I mean.”
“Aqua Net hair spray,” I told her. “I’ll bet your mom wanted to kill me for getting it everywhere. But it worked, didn’t it?”
She gave me a sad little smile, pushing a chunk of hair back behind her ear. “I guess it did. We were safe in that fort. I loved how you read me stories in there.”
It took everything I had not to react, because when she’d pushed back her hair, she’d revealed a nasty cut that’d been hidden along her hairline. Looked like it needed stitches, but the girl was so skittish . . . Couldn’t risk scaring her off.
“Sadie, I think maybe you ran into another monster,” I said, feeling my