“Okay, but I’m not gonna lie. I kind of like Luke. Luke.”
He reaches over and squeezes my knee. “Sloan and Carter. Let’s be Sloan and Carter today,” he corrects again.
“Which one am I?” I tease. “Sloan or Carter?”
He laughs, then unbuckles his seatbelt and leans across the seat. He presses his mouth to my ear and slides the palm of his hand over my thigh. I hold my breath and grip the steering wheel when he whispers, “You be Sloan. I’ll be Carter. And on our way home this afternoon, we’ll pull over somewhere quiet and you can be Sloan in the backseat with Carter. Sound good?”
I exhale with my nod. “Uh-huh.”
CARTER-30
Carter
“When is the last time Asa visited?” I ask her.
She turns off the car and begins gathering her things. “Two years ago. He’s only been here once. He said it made him uncomfortable.”
Of course he’d say that.
“So no one would think it’s odd that I’m walking in with you?”
Sloan shakes her head. “I think the employees are so used to seeing me alone, they’d only be curious that I finally showed up with someone. But they wouldn’t be suspicious or tell Asa, because they don’t even know Asa.” She drops her keys and her phone in her purse and then grips the steering wheel. She stares out over the parking lot in front of us. “That’s really sad, isn’t it? That I have no one? Literally no one. It’s always just been me and Stephen against the whole goddamn world.”
I reach over and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. I want to comfort her-to tell her she has me. But she’s being so honest right now, I don’t want to feed her another lie. She doesn’t even know my real name and the more lies I tell her in moments like these, the harder it’ll be for her to forgive me when she finds out the truth.
Which she almost did earlier. I swear to God, sometimes I wonder how I ever got this position to begin with. I am the worst undercover detective that ever existed. Seriously, they should call me The Pink Panther.
Sometimes I think maybe she could handle it if I told her the truth. That maybe she would be able to help out in some way. But that would only put her in more danger and I already do that enough.
Maybe in time, if I can get her to earn Ryan’s trust, he’ll see the benefit of filling her in. But for now, it’s better she doesn’t know.
She’s still staring blankly out the window, so I pull her to me and hug her. She wraps her arms around me and sighs against my neck, and I wish Asa would fucking die on the way back from the casino.
Shit. That was really harsh.
But can he not see how much better the lives of those around him would be if he didn’t exist?
Of course he can’t. You see nothing outside the realm of yourself when you’re a sadistic narcissist.
“You give really nice hugs,” Sloan says.
I hug her tighter. “I think you just haven’t been given enough hugs in your lifetime.”
“That too,” she says with a sigh.
I keep my grip on her for a moment longer, until she whispers against my neck. “Fifty-six King Crabs ate shoelaces for Easter dinner and then they coughed up Rainbow Brite through their nostrils.”
I laugh and kiss her on top of her head. “You can’t buy illegal butter with a bike wheel or silly string.”
I can feel her smile when she finds my mouth and kisses me.
That’s all I wanted before we got out of this car-for her smile to return.
***
“You said he didn’t like Asa,” I say on our way down the hall toward Stephen’s room. “So if he doesn’t communicate, how do you know if he likes or dislikes someone?”
She’s been filling me in on her brother’s condition during the walk to his room. She listed off about five things he’s been diagnosed with, but I can’t even remember the names of them, so the least I can do is try to understand them.
“We have our own way of communicating,” she says. “I’ve practically raised him since he was an infant.” She rounds the corner and points down a hallway. “He’s down here at the end.”
I still have questions, so I pull on her hand until we come to a stop. “But you’re only a few years older than him. How did you raise him?”
She looks up at me and shrugs. “I did what I had to, Carter. No one else was around to do it.”
I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone like her. I kiss her, partly because I want to get as many kisses in as we can today and partly because she deserves a little more affection in her life. Selfless affection. I don’t mean for the kiss to be anything more than a second or two, but we haven’t been able to kiss like this since our first kiss. I’m instantly pulled into it and everything else fades away.