Dalton: He keeps rambling about how Sloan better be there by the time he gets back. Never seen him like this, man.

I delete the texts and then set my phone back in the cup holder. I grip the steering wheel. “Sorry, but we can’t stop and eat. Dalton says Asa had a breakdown and they’re on their way back.”

“A breakdown?” Sloan says.

“Yeah, something about his father? Apparently he beat him up at the casino.”

Sloan looks out the window. “His father is alive?”

I glance over at her. She doesn’t know about his father being charged for murder? I guess it makes sense that Asa wouldn’t tell her. That’s not really something you would want your girlfriend to know.

“He doesn’t know you’re with me. We don’t have to get back before them, I’m hungry,” she says.

I hate that I’m forcing her to go back home when she needs to stay the hell away from there. “Dalton says he’s pretty adamant that you be there. Apparently he’s in pretty bad shape.”

She sighs. “That’s not my problem. Why does Dalton know you’re with me, anyway? I don’t trust Dalton. Or Jon. Or Kevin.”

“Don’t worry. I trust Dalton with my life.” I reach over and take her hand, pulling it onto my lap. “I’ll park at my car and then come over later tonight. I think there should be some distance between you getting home and me showing up.”

She nods, but she doesn’t say anything else on the drive home. We’re both dreading the inevitable, which is coming face to face with an unstable Asa Jackson. He’s bad enough when he’s in a good mood. I don’t even want to think of how he’s going to treat Sloan tonight.

When we reach my car, I look around to make sure I don’t see anyone. I parked a couple miles from her house and then walked the rest of the way this morning.

Before I get out of the car, I pull her to me and kiss her. She kisses me back with a sigh and it’s kind of sad. Like she’s tired of saying goodbye like this.

“How come it seems every time we take a step forward, we’re forced to take ten steps back?” she asks.

I push a strand of hair off her forehead. “We’ll just have to start taking bigger steps forward.”

She forces a smile and then says, “I hate that I won’t get to talk to you when you come over tonight. Or touch you.”

I kiss her forehead. “Me, too,” I say. “We should have a sign we can use in place of being able to talk tonight. Something subtle that only we’ll notice.”

“Like what?”

I lift my hand and rub my thumb across my bottom lip. “That’s mine,” I tell her.

She crinkles up her nose while she tries to think of one.

“You should twirl a strand of hair around your finger,” I suggest. “I like it when you do that.”

She smiles. “Okay. If you see me doing that it means I wish I could be alone with you.” She pulls at a strand of her hair and twirls it around her finger.

I lean forward and kiss her, then force myself out of her car. I wait until she drives away before texting Dalton again.

Me: Don’t let him alone with her before I get there. I’m scared of what he might do.

Dalton: Noted. Not sure what’s going on with him. He shot up, slept for ten minutes, now he’s talking incessantly. He keeps saying he wants spaghetti and that his hair is really thick. He’s not making any sense. He even made Kevin run his hand through his hair.

Fuck. He’s already unpredictable. This isn’t good.

Me: Let me know as soon as you all get back. I’ll wait an hour and then head that way.

Dalton: Good idea. BTW, he just looked at me and said you were LSD. What do you think that means?

Me: No fucking clue.

Dalton: He said, “Carter causes the worst hallucinations and he’s hard to fucking locate. He’s LSD.”

Me: He’s out of his fucking mind.

Sloan-33

Sloan

My phone is ringing as soon as I walk through the front door. I glance down at the screen and see that it’s Asa.

Great.

I slide my thumb across the screen to answer it. “Hey.”

“Hey, Baby,” he says. He sounds like he just woke up, but I can tell he’s still in a car. “Are you home?”

“Yep. Just walked in the door. Are you still at the casino?”

“Nope,” he says. “On our way back.”

So I heard.

“We’re hungry. We want spaghetti, can you cook some?”

“I have a lot of homework to do. Wasn’t really planning on cooking tonight.”

He sighs and says, “Yeah, well I wasn’t really planning on craving spaghetti.”