“I’m flattered,” Michael said sarcastically.
Adam sat down again, but he definitely looked provoked.
“Touch me again, asshole, and I’ll use the salad fork to poke out your beautiful blue eyes,” I snarled as I pushed my chair away from his as far as I had space to go.
“You hear that?” Michael said across the table to Adam. “She thinks my eyes are beautiful.”
“Why are you sitting here?” Adam asked with a sigh.
“Because you’re my friend and friends keep an eye on each other.” The tone in his voice seemed almost predatory. “I just needed to retrieve something.”
“What is it?” Adam asked.
“This.” Michael reached his hand down into the pocket of my skirt before I could stop him. Then he held his phone up in front of my face and dangled it as if it were a prize that I’d just lost.
“How dare you touch me?” I shouted.
If the level of conversation in the room hadn’t been so loud, someone might have been able to hear me make a scene.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Michael said. “If I wanted to touch you, I would have done more than just reach into your pocket. Trust me, Lisette, your doe-eyes are of no interest to me.”
But even as he said it, his stare seemed to linger in my eyes a bit longer than they should have.
“Give it back,” I said.
He chuckled. “Now, why would I do that? It’s my phone.”
I picked up the dinner knife from the table and clenched it in my hand. I heard Adam calmly say my name as if he were trying to talk me down from a ledge.
“What is it that you think you’re going to find on my phone, Lisette?” Michael’s voice got very low, and it was hard for me to hear him. “Do you think you’re going to find out who is responsible for murdering your mother and framing it as a suicide?”
My heart raced inside my chest. “What did you just say?”
Michael leaned in close to me and put his mouth by my ear. He reached his hand over my fist and pulled the knife from my fingers. “You heard what I said.” He cocked his head sideways a little so that his lips were touching my earlobe. “Be careful, you won’t like what you find if you go looking too hard.”
When he pulled away from me he got up to leave, taking both the knife and the phone with him. Adam looked so mad that he was shaking, and his knuckles were turning white from his clenched fists.
“We should leave,” he said.
I licked my lips. “No, I should leave.”
I got up from the table and ran all the way back to my room. When I got there, Julian looked up from a book that he had been reading on my bed, and when I saw him, I couldn’t stop the tears from starting to come.
“What happened?” he asked as he rushed over to me in the doorway.
“Michael took the phone.”
There was more to say than just that, but I was too emotionally exhausted to say anything other than the most important thing; the one lead I might have had to figure any of this out was gone. I pulled off my skirt and shirt and grabbed a T-shirt to throw on. I didn’t think twice about undressing in front of Julian. I mean, he’d seen me naked before, although not since my pre-pubescent years. I cried, and he hugged me, and I snuggled against his chest in my soft shirt that was too big and fell off the corners of my shoulders.
“Can you stay here tonight?” I asked.
He kissed the top of my head reassuringly. “Of course, I can. You know all you ever have to do is ask.”
We got into my bed, and he pulled the soft blankets up and over me as I lay against his shoulder. I must have been even more tired than I thought because as soon as his arm wrapped around me, I fell asleep.
And my nightmares were more fruitful than ever as I slept.
7
When I woke up in the morning, I was still curled up against Julian. My hand was lying on his chest with his palm resting on top of it. His arm was still around my shoulder, and my ankles had intertwined with his under the blankets. It was comfortable; Julian was always comfortable. And when we were together, it always felt just right.
I laid there with my eyes open until he woke up too.
“Hey, you,” he said as he looked over at me. “How long have you been awake?”
I sighed. “Only a few minutes. I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“I wouldn’t have minded,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Still upset, but at least I’ve stopped crying.”
He tilted his body toward me. “It’s not a bad thing to cry. You know you don’t have to hold in your emotions with me, right?”
“I know,” I replied. “Julian?”
“Yeah?”
