A lump forms in my throat. “You were avoiding me all day at school today,” I accuse.

Reed lets out a breath. “Yeah. I know. I’m sorry. I was just trying to figure out how to tell you about, uh, the other thing.”

Suspicion climbs up my spine. “What other thing?”

“The trial date for my case is set for May,” he confesses.

I shoot to my feet. “That’s six months away!”

He smiles grimly. “Grier says it’s my constitutional right to have a speedy trial.”

My stomach heaves. “Tell me Callum’s guys have found something. They found me, for crying out loud.”

“Nothing.” Reed’s expression holds no hope. “They’ve come up empty.” He pauses. “Grier says I might not win.”

I’m beginning to hate every sentence beginning with Grier says.

“What now, then?” As hot tears flood my eyes, I keep my gaze pinned to the carpet. I don’t want my own torment to be heaped on top of the anguish I hear in his voice.

“He wants me to plead guilty.”

I can’t stop a moan of pain from escaping. “No.”

“It’s a twenty-year sentence, but the DA’s office will recommend ten. Because of the overcrowding, Grier says I should be out in five. I think I should—”

I fly toward him, covering his mouth with my hand. I don’t want him to say it. If he says he’s going to take the deal, that he’s going to leave me, I won’t be able to change his mind. So I jerk his head down and plant my mouth over his, shutting him up in the only way I know how.

His lips part, and I attack him—with my tongue, my hands, everything.

“Ella, stop,” he groans against my mouth. But Reed’s one weakness, if he has one, is me, and I exploit that vulnerability mercilessly.

My hands are down his pants. Then I’m on my knees, taking his full length into my mouth. Staring up at him, I dare him to stop me now.

He doesn’t. He just thrusts deep, groans, then picks me up and throws me on the bed.

His hand finds me needy and wanting. “Is this what you want?” he growls.

“Yes,” I say fiercely, wrapping my legs around his waist. “Show me how much you love me.”

Lust sparks in his eyes. He may have wanted to talk, but all of that is shoved onto the backburner now.

When he enters me a moment later, I wait for the pleasure to drive away the sadness, but the pain doesn’t recede. It’s filling my heart, and even the strength of his body, the comforting weight of his frame against mine, can’t completely drive the ache out.

He makes love to me fiercely, almost frantically, as if he thinks it will be the last time we’re together. His body hammers into mine. He fills me hard and deep and leaves me breathless. But I’m equally savage. My nails dig into his shoulders. My legs lock around his hips. In some small corner of my brain that is now in control, I feel like if I love him hard enough, long enough, I can keep him with me forever.

And when lightning flashes through my body, when the bliss finally, finally overtakes the pain, I forget why I was angry and let the pleasure rocket through me.

When I fall down from that high, sweaty but not sated, I reach for him again, wanting to stay on this emotional high where only Reed and I exist. But unlike the night of the game, he draws away.

“Ella,” he says softly, running a hand over my shirt, which we never bothered to take off. “We can’t solve anything by having sex.”

Stung by his words, I retort, “Excuse me for wanting to be close to you.”

“Ella—”

I sit up, acutely aware of how naked I am from the waist down. Reaching down beside the bed, I snag my jeans and put them on. “I mean, if you’re so eager to get locked up for twenty years, shouldn’t I be getting all my sex in now? After that, all I’ll have is memories to keep me warm.”

Reed bites his lip. “You’re going to wait for me?”

I stare at him dumbly. “Of course. What else would I do?” Then it dawns on me. He hasn’t thought this through. He hasn’t weighed all the repercussions of the plea. Encouraged, I press him. “That’s right. We’re going to be apart for twenty years.”

“Five,” he corrects absently.

“Five if we’re lucky. Five if the prison system or whoever is in charge thinks you deserve to get out. The sentence is for twenty years, you said. I’ll be nearly forty when you get out.”

Reed is the first person I’ve ever really loved besides my mother. Before I met him, a man didn’t figure into my future. My experience with Mom’s boyfriends led me to believe that I’d be better off. Now I can’t envision a future without Reed, but the road ahead of us is depressing, and the crushing loneliness that I lived with for the months following my mom’s death hovers over my head.

If I lose Reed, too, I don’t know how I’ll take it.

Fighting a burst of panic, I kneel beside him on the bed. “Let’s go. Right now. We’ll get my backpack and we’ll get out of here.”

His eyes fill with disappointment. “I can’t. I love you, Ella, but I already told you—running isn’t gonna make this go away for us. It’ll be worse if I run. We’ll never see my family again. We’ll always be worried that we’re going to be caught. I love you,” he repeats, “but we can’t run.”

26

Reed

Halston Grier is sitting in the front room when I get home from school the next day. Last night’s date with Ella was so strained, even after the sex, and now I know why.

No matter what we do, the shadow of the case is going to keep hanging over our heads until all this shit is resolved.

“More witness statements?” My question comes out snider than I intend.

Grier and Dad exchange a weighted look before Dad gets to his feet. He grabs my shoulder and pulls me toward him, almost as if he feels the need to give me a hug, but he stops before he can complete the act.

“Whatever you decide, I support,” he says gruffly before walking out.

Grier wordlessly points to the couch. He waits until I’m seated before pulling one of those typewritten statements out of the briefcase at his feet.

If I never see another piece of copy paper in my life, I’ll die a happy man.