"Thanks, Abi," I replied, taking a swig of my own beer.
"So, we were talking about the complicated and mysterious Ryan Pierce, weren't we?" she announced.
Ben rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "If this gets all girlie, I'm outta here."
"By girlie he means we start cataloguing Ryan's fine physical attributes," Abi explained, and I choked on a swallow of beer.
She patted my back while I coughed up a lung and Ben said with a growl, "Woman! There will be no cataloguin' of any man's physical attributes unless they are mine."
"No harm in looking, Ben," she pointed out.
"Oh, Abigail, there will be harm if you look, believe me," he threatened with a white toothed smile.
"He's bluffing," Abi whispered to me out of the side of her mouth, as though Ben couldn't hear her from across the room if she said it quietly enough.
"That's it. I'm outta here!" he announced and walked straight up to Abi, reached down and lifted her chin with a finger underneath, and then kissed the living daylights out of her. "Now see whose physical attributes you catalogue after that, Red."
Then he was gone.
"Oh, my," she said, fanning herself. "Yum," she added, and we both burst out laughing.
It was exactly what I needed. One of those spontaneous hilarious moments right from the belly. A real tension reliever, making your cheeks ache and your chest heave and the muscles in your stomach quiver. If we'd been on the floor we would have been rolling.
As it is, I had to wipe tears from my eyes with the back of my hands as I struggled with the last few wayward giggles.
"I so needed that," I declared, when Abi handed me a paper towel from the bench to dry my hands.
"I thought you might have," she said with a smile.
I sucked in a breath and took a good look at her. I think she knew what was coming.
"How did you know him?" I asked, and because she didn't flinch I was sure she'd been preparing for this moment since the penguin painting room incident.
"I grew up in his Compound," she said, holding my gaze. "My mother died when I was young, but my Dad was too far into that world to escape with his only child."
Too far into that world. Just like Rick.
She took another large swig of her beer and then launched into her tale.
"When I was fifteen years old Roan McLaren took an unhealthy interest in me. I won't go into details, but I was OK, my Dad protected me. But we knew, once Roan had shown his hand, that I couldn't stay. My Dad saved hard, taught me everything I needed to know about running and hiding, and then when I turned eighteen I did just that. And I didn't stop running until I met Ben." She sucked in a breath of air and added, "And Detective Pierce."
We were both quiet for a while, drinking our beers, lost in our thoughts.
"I was on the roof that night," she said softly. "Looking at the stars and wishing I was as far away from that place as they were." Her sad eyes tipped up to look at mine. "I saw them drag you both out there. I heard everything that was said. I watched as Roan McLaren pulled the trigger, because I was too frightened to move."
I was shaking my head, gripping the bottle neck so tightly my knuckles had gone white.
"You couldn't have stopped it," I said on a breath of air.
"I know," she agreed, quietly. "But I..." She broke off and reached out with a shaky hand to lift her own bottle up off the table's surface to take another large drink. She didn't stop until the bottle was empty.
"You know what," she said, after slamming the bottle back down and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "As my good friend Kelly Quayle would say, let's get shitfaced."
I huffed out a laugh and swallowed the last of my beer.
"I have a five year old to set an example for," I pointed out, not dismissing her idea completely though. It sounded like a bloody good one, right now.
"All right," Abi announced. "We'll hold off on the tequila until Daisy has gone to bed, but you and I need to let loose a little. Hell, after the brush up you just had with the sexy detective, I think I might get Ben to go out and grab us a case."
I groaned. "Did you hear all of that?"
She offered an apologetic smile. "You both weren't keeping your voices down." She stood up and swiped the empties off the table and threw them in the recycling bin by the door, then added, "He has so got the hots for you."
"Excuse me?" I said, spluttering slightly. What the hell?
She smirked. "Man was muttering to himself as he stormed out to his car. I heard that too." She winked.
Oh. Could I ask?
Fuck it!
"And what did he say?"
She chortled, as she started dragging the steaks out of the fridge.