Tana turned her face under the spray of water, then smoothed her hair out of her eyes. "It was really stupid of me to ask you to sleep with me. If Mom gets better and I am able to leave for college as planned, I guess we'll lose touch and what happened between us won't matter anyway."
The need for reassurance was there in her voice but I couldn't give it to her. Let her think I was self-centered. Let her cringe when she looked back on her time with me. Let her get angry, let her dislike, and then hate me. Let her move on with her life, but let her be safe. I could live with the pain of losing her as long as I knew she was happy and moving on. "Yeah, it won't matter," I finally said.
Her lip trembled but she firmed it and said, "I can't understand why someone would want to shoot my mom."
My chance to tell her to the truth. To point the finger at myself and see the disgust in her eyes. "I can't understand, either."
"I'm going to find out who did it."
Chapter Fourteen
TANA
As soon as I said the words out loud, I knew that's exactly what I needed to do. I'd figure out who did it and then maybe, I could stop feeling so helpless if I could make sure that whoever did it was caught. Ryan didn't like what I'd said but I didn't care. Someone had grabbed a thread from the tapestry of my life and unwound it. I needed to know who and why.
He crossed his arms. "What are you going to do if you find the person?"
"I don't know. Maybe figure out a way to make that person pay for what happened."
Ryan swore. "You want revenge? Want to shoot someone?" His eyebrows rose and the expression on his handsome face turned intense as his eyes blazed into me. "Have you ever held a gun before? Fired one?"
"No." I held my head under the water spray again and let it flow over me¸ wishing I could wash away the pain rat chewing on my heart. Gripping the shampoo bottle, I looked at Ryan as the thought dawned on me. "Have you?"
He didn't blink, didn't flinch, and his voice was perfectly flat. "Yes."
Apparently there was a lot about my best friend that I didn't know. "Yes to both questions?"
He didn't answer.
"You must have been just a kid." I lathered the shampoo in, not caring I was naked in front of him. Not like he hadn't seen all of me before anyway. After I rinsed out the shampoo, I wiped my eyes on the towel he held up. "What happened?"
"I don't want to talk about me."
"I've noticed that you don't talk a lot about yourself, especially your past."
"Leave it alone."
His sharp answer only made me more curious, but I rinsed out the shampoo and began to soap my limbs while I changed the subject. "I called my so-called father yesterday. I wanted to talk to him about Mom."
"He ran right over with emotional support."
"Right," I scoffed. "He said he couldn't talk right then because he and the new wife were leaving for a cruise and he didn't want to be late." Remembering his self-centeredness pissed me off all over again. "I asked if he was going to pick up Mark and he said there was no reason to change Mark's living situation because his new wife didn't really like kids."
"Knocking a girl up doesn't automatically make a guy a father. You're better off without him in your life."
"I know. I asked him about the personal injury policy he had on Mom because he never cancelled it. He said not to look forward to getting any financial support from that. The policy would pay out fifteen thousand dollars. It's not like he doesn't have the money to help. I know he still has money in hidden accounts." Even part of that would help keep me and Mark afloat until like Ryan said, I got my shit together.
"He can be forced to be financially responsible for Mark."
I shook my head at Ryan's suggestion. "I don't have the energy to deal with it or the money for a lawyer or a court case. What if he decides to take Mark and not let me see my brother just to get even? 'Cause he's like that. Then my brother would be stuck with the jackass father of the year and his anti-kid wife."
"Who said anything about involving lawyers or the court?"
"You said he could be forced-oh." Finished with the shower, I shut the water off. "Street justice."
"It's pretty effective."
My mood marginally improved now that I was clean, I took the towel from Ryan and started drying off, pleased with the desire I saw in his eyes. He might have said that our being together was a mistake but he couldn't hide that he wanted me. I wrapped the towel around me and tucked the end across my breasts. "Thanks for coming over."
He nodded, looking so far out of reach emotionally that it made me want to cry all over again. "I don't know how to talk to you now, since everything." I couldn't afford to lean on Ryan, to feel more for him than I already suspected was miles past friendship. I had to make sure I didn't fall for him. The brink of love was a dangerous slope to be on when the other person didn't intend to be anything other than a friend and maybe not even that. "Everything's changed." I almost held my breath waiting for him to lie to me, to tell me I was wrong.
"Yeah. Pretty much."
"I know." I took a deep breath and forced a smile, a bright, phony one that I'd used often in the past when my parents had given lavish parties filled with people who were too important to give a shit about anyone who wasn't as rich as they were.
I clenched my hand to keep from reaching for Ryan. Seeing him, being this close to him made me feel stupid and girly and want nothing more than to fling myself into his arms. I wanted him to hold me against his chest and keep my new, ugly world at bay. But unless I wanted to be a masochist, it was best that I didn't do that.
Shivering, I pulled my robe down from the back of the bathroom door and slid it on. I couldn't prevent the wide yawn.
"Trouble sleeping?"
I tied the sash around the robe. "I don't sleep much because I worry that whoever shot Mom will come back. I stay awake and listen to the sounds outside."
Ryan's eyes turned into glaciers. "You can sleep. You don't have to worry about someone hurting you or Mark."
"What? Are you going to be my guard dog?"
"I won't let him hurt you."
The ferociousness of his response hovered, fat with unspoken meaning, between us and I scowled, sensing an undercurrent, a meaning I wasn't privy to. "You're sure that it's a he?"
Ryan blinked. "Most drive-by shootings are done by guys. That's not hard to figure out."
He took a step back into the hallway. "If you're okay, I've got to get back to work. Lock up behind me."
"Okay." I followed him into the living room and kept my hand on the door after I'd closed it. I couldn't shake the feeling that Ryan was keeping something from me, something even worse than what had happened to my mom.
RYAN
I don't scare easily. That was a by-product of all the shit I've seen but Tana talking about making someone pay scared the hell out of me. She didn't have any idea the kind of evil that lurked in the world I was going back into. You didn't hunt for justice without having shit blow back on you. A life for a life, that was the way of the street. For Tana to start asking questions and hunting for the person who hurt her mom would put her in the crosshairs.
I left her house, jogging over to Cooper's car. He lowered the window and extended his fist. We bumped and I went around to get into the passenger side. "You see anything?"
"Nah. I got here and talked to Ryker. He said a couple cars came by slow but the drivers weren't Chanos' boys." He pulled his sunglasses off and leaned across me to pop open the glove box. "Your old sidekick."
The familiar gun lying there took me back to Donny's side and all the sounds and smells of that day rushed at me. My hands pressing on his chest, pumping CPR compressions with every ounce of strength I had while blood oozed between my fingers. His broken voice telling me he was scared and pleading with me not to let him die. I slammed the glove box closed, wishing I could shut off the memory the same way. "I don't carry any more."
"I know that, but no matter how good you are with your fists, you're no match for Chanos' bullets."
"Every time I look at a gun, I think of Donny," I said.
Cooper nodded. "He was my friend too."
Like me, Cooper had chosen to get jumped out of the gang. He'd fought demons far worse than mine and had come closer than I had to ending up in prison. He put his sunglasses back on. "Now picture if that was Tana you had to bury instead of Donny."
The thought made me break out in a sweat. I couldn't let anything happen to her no matter what bad shit I had to do and I didn't doubt there was bad shit on the horizon. The demons I'd tried to outrun were reaching for me. I could almost hear their triumph. "I'm not carrying when I'm back in again."