Carter Reed

Carter.”
    He looked to me as if to ask if I should believe him. I didn’t do a thing. I couldn’t. I had no idea what Theresa would do or what she would think a month away, or even a year, or ten years, if she would remain silent. So I gave him no answer.
    The corner of his lip curved as if to say ‘thanks a lot’, but his eyes were still flat.
    “Carter?” Noah pushed.
    He stepped back to let them through. That was the only response he gave to the unspoken plea from his friend. Noah’s shoulders sagged in defeat and he hurried them out the door. A car was outside.
    When they shut the door behind them, I commented, “He thinks you’re going to kill the woman he loves.”
    Carter watched me. “Should I?”
    Twenty-four hours earlier and I would’ve been pleading for her life. She was innocent. She was pure. She meant no harm. But now I had changed. Theresa had become a friend, but everything shifted last night. Carter was my lover. He was my family. He was my only ally. And because of that, because she held a threat to his life, I told him, “I can’t lose you.”
    Then I picked up the tongs again and turned off the stove. The bacon was burned by then so I removed the pan and left.

Carter never did anything with Theresa. I asked him one night what he intended to do. He had men watching her, but that was his only response. When I asked what would happen if she contacted the police, he shrugged. “I don’t see it coming to that. She cares about you and if she did anything, I’d take it to Noah first. I’m not completely heartless, Emma.”
    She never did anything, which I had to admit made me relieved. After two weeks, nothing happened regarding Franco Dunvan either. He went missing and my gut told me that his body would never be found. There were no reports on the news about the upheaval that happened that night. It made me wonder how many other mob events happened that the general public had no idea about. I never asked about Franco, but I figured I was safe when Carter told me that I could go out with only two guards. That was fine by me. So much had changed, myself included. Work wasn’t the same. I had never chatted much with the other girls, but I chatted with them even less now. When I would go for coffee, I never looked to see who was in the breakroom. I got my coffee and returned to my office.
    The new promotion was nice. I had more freedom over my hours and I didn’t have Mr. Hudson breathing down my neck. In fact, I was his boss now and he had to report to me. I was lenient with him, but I knew there’d be a day when I would enforce those duties. However, that day wasn’t now.
    I worked closely with Theresa on the new account. Her excitement had waned, which made sense and I didn’t take offense to it. That meant that she had listened to Noah’s pleadings. One time I asked Carter if he still sparred with Noah in the mornings and he surprised me when he said he did. I thought their friendship would be strained, but it seemed like they went on as if nothing had happened.
    It was the end of a week and I was about to leave. But as I stepped outside and saw the car waiting for me, I turned to Mike. He and Thomas stayed with me. They were the regulars. There were others, but I liked knowing who guarded my life the majority of time.
    His hand fell away from the car door. “Maybe coffee today?”
    I nodded and turned back inside. I went through the front lounge and headed for the café. Carter was gone again. Unlike the last couple times when he never told me where or why he was leaving, he explained to me the night before that he was going to Japan. He was brokering another business merger for a new website program. I nodded. I only cared about when he was coming back and I knew it would take at least a full day. It would be the longest we had been apart since the night he killed Scott Graham.
    When I went inside the cafe, Amanda was behind the register. She signaled for someone to take her place and gestured towards a back booth. It was our old booth. When I saw that she grabbed two mugs and a coffee pot, warmth flooded me. It felt good to be falling back into our old routine. It made me feel like I still had one other friend.
    “New threads?” she asked as she slid into the booth.
    I waited as she filled both mugs. “I got a promotion. It requires better clothes.” That was half true, but I wore the clothes Carter bought for me when I first went to live with him. After making love