Page 90 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Smooth. Clean. Professional. And I’m protecting her too—you can see that, right?
“We were trapped during the blizzard when the building locked down, and we got caught up in the situation. That’s all this is. Wrong place, wrong time.”
The reporters wait. They smell blood in the water.
“Look.” The truth is pushing, trying to break out. But the wall holds, because that’s what it’s meant to do. That’s what I built it for. “The only reason we were even on that ice this morning was because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got wrapped up in something she didn’t belong in.” A beat, the reporters still waiting. Still smelling it. Rick’s voice whispers through my head. Your mother’s sacrifices, your father’s legacy, it’s all in jeopardy. And there it is. The bomb.
And here comes the shrapnel. I laugh. “She should have stuck to the stands, if you know what I mean.”
“So she’s not your girlfriend?”
“No. She’s nothing.”
The words leave my mouth and cross the thirty feet of parking lot like a puck fired at the wrong net, traveling at speed toward a target I didn’t mean to hit, with a force I can’t recall.
Should have stuck to the stands. Of all the things I could have said…
The crowd of reporters shifts. Breaks. And my eyes lift, find her in an instant.
And for one horrible, terrible, split second, her face crumples. That persona she’s built, the one who writes strong women worth rooting for, it cracks, just enough for a glimpse of the scared little girl in the stands. Abandoned. Unwanted.
Oh no, she heard me.
Everly—wait?—
But I can’t move—too many people between us. And I couldn’t run to her anyway, not without being called a liar in the press. So I stand there, my throat closing.
She doesn’t cry. She’s past crying. Her face just…closes. The light goes out.
She pulls the foil blanket tighter. Adjusts the cracked glasses. The EMT says something, helps her onto a gurney. A moment later, they load her into the back of the ambulance.
The doors close. The ambulance pulls away.
I stand in the parking lot, microphones boxing me in.
“No more questions.” I’m done. It’s over.
Like it never even happened.
Sixteen
Everly
“You look terrible.”
Julia McMillan is not a woman who sugarcoats. It’s what makes her a great lawyer. And it’s what makes her a great best friend. Because while everyone else’s friends will look them dead in the eye and tell them their terrible haircut looks great, mine will be in the trenches, fighting for punitive damages. She doesn’t hold back. She read every draft of my first novel, back when I still wrote he said/she said religiously after every line of dialogue.
“I look fine,” I grumble, popping the lid off my Häagen-Dazs as I flop back onto the sofa, my phone propped up on the coffee table.
Julia raises a brow from her side of the phone. “You’re wearing the same pajamas from Monday.”
“These are different pajamas.”
“I can see the hot-sauce stain on the left sleeve. It was there Monday. It was there yesterday. It is there today. You are wearing a timeline.”
“It’s called water conservation, Julia. I’m saving the earth, one missed load of laundry at a time.”
“Have you left the house?”
