| whose only crime was being related to me, so regardless, they’ve won. They’ve broken me.” Erin bit her lower lip and looked down at the table that separated them. “You told me once,” Erin said, “that it wasn’t the wall that imprisoned you, it was the fact that you couldn’t fight back. Ann, you may be right. They may well kill David regardless of what you do—but you can still fight back. You can still try and stop them from winning. Don’t give up without a fight.” Ann’s eyes narrowed. “I bet you wouldn’t be so quick with your speeches if they’d grabbed your boyfriend. I’d be willing to bet you’d do whatever they asked you to do, even if the chances were next to zero. So don’t preach to me. We both know it’s a crock of shit. And if you hadn’t convinced me to withdraw my plea, David wouldn’t be in this mess. So fuck you, Erin McCabe. Fuck you!” Ann’s words stung. They came from a place of anguish that Erin knew she wasn’t privy to. What would she do or say if Mark’s life hung in the balance? No, Ann was right. Had Mark been taken, Erin would do whatever was necessary to try to save him. “Ann,” she said softly. “I won’t pretend that I know how you feel, or what you’re going through. I don’t. I do know that you’d trade your life for your brother’s in a heartbeat. But you can’t—it’s |
wasn’t cleaning up. If he wanted to barge in, so be it. Twenty minutes later her intercom squawked and she buzzed him in. She waited at the door, her hands suddenly clammy as she heard him bounding up the stairs. When he reached the landing outside her unit he stopped. It looked like he was carrying enough food to feed her entire floor. Seeing him again made her heart dance. He hadn’t changed. At six feet, he had jet black hair, disheveled in a way that suggested he combed it with his fingertips. Somehow he always managed to have just enough stubble to be sexy, without looking grungy, and his green eyes still sparkled. God, she’d missed him. “Hi,” he said, a goofy smile on his face. “What did you get?” she asked, eying the bags and stepping aside so he could come into her apartment. “Just a few things. I remembered you liked the chicken satay and the pork dumplings, so I picked up some of them.” He walked into her kitchen and put the bags on the counter. “Let’s see what else—there’s some curried sea scallops, fried rice, noodle soup, and”—he reached into another bag and took out a six-pack of Sam Adams—“something to wash it down.” She looked at everything spread across the counter. “You do realize it’s a school night, right?” “Yeah, but to paraphrase one of my favorite philosophers, life moves pretty fast. If you don’t have Thai food and a beer |
