But she didn’t. “If it’s not the business, it’s the club, and if it's not the club, it's the business. When is there going to be time for me in this equation?”
“You? It was all about you not two minutes ago!” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“That’s all nice, but I’d like a hard cock from time to time.”
Luke bit down on his lip to keep angry words from spilling out. It was true he wasn’t as attentive as he should be, but damn he was trying the best he could. “This isn’t a good time for this conversation,” he warned.
She stood and smoothed her skirt down. “Fine. Call me when it is.” With some words muttered under her breath, Deirdre left.
The door shut with a solid thud.
CHAPTER THREE
Caught and Snared
WHEN EMILY WOKE THE next day, the shadow of her argument with Evan seemed a distant memory. She had a dream, a good one, where she and Luke were talking, sitting in a summer meadow, the sky overhead clear, and a light breeze singing through the trees. Emily woke feeling warm and happy. The dream seemed so real she thought for a second it had happened. Then Reger swatted at her from the side of the bed, with a plaintive meow, and she landed with a thud back into her life.
“Yes, I’ll feed you,” she mumbled to the cat. He meowed impatiently, and she left her bed, leaving her dream behind. Reger led her to the kitchen, his tail held high, and stared at her until she opened the cat food can and gave him half the contents. He set on it immediately, as if she never fed him. Then after devouring that he looked up and meowed again.
“You’re such a liar,” she scolded him. “I just fed you and you act like I haven’t.” She covered the can with a plastic lid designed for cat food cans and placed it in the refrigerator.
Reger meowed again.
“No,” she said. “I have to get ready for work.” She noticed she hadn’t flipped her wall calendar from March to April, so she did that now.
She swallowed hard when she saw the date.
April six.
The last time she was with Luke.
She closed her eyes. No wonder things were going wrong. They always did this time of year. For a few moments, she was tossed back into time, where she was tumbling in the air. Luke clutched her furiously, as she and Luke were thrown off his bike. His bike screeched sickeningly into the guardrail, but she and Luke were falling into the ditch. Somehow, Luke twisted in the air so she was on top, and he took the brunt of the fall, the sliding on gravel that paved the slope into a small pool. At the bottom of the grade they stopped, and Emily rose shakily on her legs. But Luke only lay there, blood welling between the gashes of the cuts and scrapes on his face, hands and legs. His leather jacket protected his upper body, but his jeans were torn and his left leg lay angled to the side.
Sniffing, tears falling, Emily took her phone from her backpack, and with shaky hands made the hardest call she ever had to make.
“Daddy,” she said. “We were in an accident. Please come. Luke’s hurt.”
Reger meowed again, jolting her to the present. He stood by his litter box and gave her a plaintive look.
“You are the most spoiled cat in the universe,” she teased. But she cleaned the box while the cat watched. Then, as soon as she was done, he jumped in and scratched around.
“I don’t even want to look,” she said. It never made any sense to her why the cat insisted on dirtying the box immediately after it was cleaned.
She glanced at the calendar again and shook her head. It still shook her; the police, the questions, her parents yelling at her.
“What happened, miss,” said the policeman.
“Obviously, he was drinking,” her father said.
“No! No! Luke wasn’t drinking! A truck came by. It was going too fast, and didn’t get out of the lane we were in. Luke steered onto the shoulder, but when the truck went past, it knocked us around, and the bike slid.”
The policeman believed her, but her parents didn’t.
“What were you thinking getting on that bike?” said her mother. “It’s not safe!”
“You’re supposed to be grounded!” said her father. “You’ll never see him again, Emily Rose Dougherty.”
“Daddy!”