Chapter 16: Chapter 16

“No, I’m just being dramatic.” I sigh and look around the bedroom. “I think I’ll come there, actually. I can still make my last class.” I could really use some yoga right about now, and some coffee.

I listen to Landon as I dress myself for yoga. It seems like a waste to drive all the way to campus for one class, but I don’t want to sit around this apartment and wait for Hardin to come home from wherever he ran off to.

“Professor Soto asked about your absence today, and Ken said he wrote a character witness statement for Hardin. What’s up with that?” he asks.

“Soto did? I don’t know . . . He offered to help him before, but I didn’t think he meant it. I guess he just likes him or something?”

“Likes him? Likes Hardin?” Landon laughs, and I can’t help but join him.

My phone drops into the sink as I pull my hair into a ponytail. I curse at myself and get it back to my ear just in time to hear Landon say he’s headed to the library before his next class. After our goodbyes, I hang up and start to text Hardin, to let him know where I’ll be. But then I close the app instead.

He’ll come around about this whole Seattle thing; he has to.

By the time I get to school, the wind has picked up yet again and the sky has turned an ugly shade of gray. After grabbing a coffee, I still have thirty minutes before yoga. The library is on the other side of campus, so I don’t have time to go there and see Landon. Instead I end up waiting outside Professor Soto’s classroom. His class should be ending any—

My thoughts are cut off by the crowd of students practically rushing out the doors and into the hall. I lift my bag farther up my shoulder and push my way through them to get inside. The professor is standing with his back turned toward me as he pulls his leather jacket over his arms.

When he turns, he greets me with a smile. “Ms. Young.”

“Hi, Professor Soto.”

“What brings you by? Did you need the topic for today’s journal that you missed?”

“No, Landon gave it to me already. I came by to thank you.” I shift uncomfortably on the heels of my gym shoes.

“For what?”

“Writing that character witness statement for Hardin. I know he hasn’t been that pleasant to you, so it’s very appreciated.”

“It’s nothing, really. Everyone deserves a quality education, even hotheads.” He laughs.

“I guess so.” I smile at him and look around the classroom, unsure what to say next.

“Besides, Zed deserved what he got, anyway,” he says suddenly.

What?

I look back at him. “What do you mean?”

Professor Soto blinks a few times before collecting himself. “Nothing, I’m just . . . I’m sure Hardin had a good reason for going after him, that’s all. I better get going, I have a meeting to get to, but thanks for coming by. I’ll see you in class Wednesday.”

“I won’t be here Wednesday; I’m going on a trip.”

With a light hand he waves this off. “Well, have fun, then. I’ll see you when you return.” He quickly walks off, leaving me bewildered by what he could have meant.

Chapter nine

HARDIN

My unlikely drinking partner, Richard, has escaped to the rest­room for the fourth time since we’ve arrived. I get the feeling that Betsy the Bartender may taken have a slight liking toward the man, which makes me really fucking uncomfortable.

“Another?” she asks.

With a nod, I dismiss the burly woman. It’s now after two in the afternoon, and I’ve had four drinks, which wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t straight scotch with a smidgen of ice.

My thoughts are cloudy and my anger has yet to subside. I don’t know who or what to be more mad about, so I’ve given up on reasoning things out and have decided to just run with a general state of pissed-the-fuck-off.

“Here ya go.” The bartender slides my drink in front of me as Richard takes the stool directly next to me. I was under the impression he understood the importance of the empty stool between us. Guess not.

He turns to me, raking his hand over the rough whiskers of his beard. The sound is disgusting. “Did you order me another?”

“You should shave that.” I offer my somewhat intoxicated opinion.

“This?” He does that thing with his hand again.

“Yes, that. It’s not a good look,” I say.

“It’s okay—keeps me warm.” He laughs, and I take a drink to stop myself from joining him.

“Betsy!” he calls. She nods and pulls his empty glass from the counter. Then he looks at me. “Are you going to tell me what it is you’re drinking over?”

“Nope.” I move my scotch in a circle, causing the solitary ice cube to clink against the glass.

“Fine; no questions, then. Only booze,” he says with some glee.

My hatred toward him has dissolved for the most part. That is, until I picture the blond ten-year-old girl hiding in her mum’s greenhouse. Her blue-gray eyes are wide, fearful almost . . . and then the blond boy in the fucking cardigan shows up to save the day.

“One question,” he presses, jarring me from my thoughts.

I take a deep breath and an even deeper drink to keep myself from doing something idiotic. I mean, more idiotic than drinking with my girlfriend’s alcoholic father. This family and their fucking questions. “One,” I say.

“Did you really get kicked out of college today?”

I look over at the neon Pabst sign, thinking over the question, wishing I hadn’t had four . . . no, five drinks. “No. But she thinks I did,” I admit.