Sea Breeze 04 - Just for Now

standing there waiting on me. Any anger I’d felt was gone. It was replaced by a cold, numbing pain.
    “Well?” she asked.
    “I won’t ever see him again, if you agree to never tell Marcus about any of this. I don’t want him to know. If you tell Marcus, I will go back to Preston Drake. You won’t be able to stop me. But I can promise you I’ll never speak to him again if you promise me you’ll never breathe a word of this to anyone. Especially my brother. He doesn’t need to know.”
    Mom frowned. “Does he know about you and Preston?”
    “Yes. He knows.”
    She didn’t like that. “What am I supposed to say to him if he asks about your breakup?”
    I shrugged. “Tell him I changed my mind and realized Preston wasn’t good enough for me after all. Or tell him I’m seeing Jason Stone now. Just don’t tell him the truth.”
    Might as well lie about how it all ended. The entire relationship was one big fat lie. It seemed fitting. I walked past my mom and up the stairs. I wouldn’t get much sleep tonight, but I wanted to be alone. My broken heart needed privacy to grieve. Hearts don’t realize they’ve been lied to. They still love anyway.

Chapter Twenty-Two
Preston
    Rock was leaning up against my Jeep when I walked out of the gym. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was wearing black aviators. I hadn’t seen him in over a week. Other than going to classes, to the gym, and to my mom’s to check on the kids, I hadn’t seen anyone. I hadn’t worked and I was almost out of money, but I’d never be able to go back to what I’d been doing.
    “You hunting me down?” I asked, throwing my gym bag into the back of the Jeep.
    “Seeing as how you’re hiding out, I had to come find you.”
    I jerked open the door. “Well, you found me.”
    Rock opened the passenger-side door and sat down. He wasn’t about to let me drive off. What did he know? I had been expecting Marcus to barge into my apartment and beat the shit out of me all week. But other than a text from him saying my tux fitting was next Thursday, that was all I’d heard from him.
    “Heard Manda broke it off with you,” he said, studying me to see my reaction.
    “You heard right.”
    “The thing is, I don’t believe the reason why. Doesn’t make sense to me. Marcus believes it, and it’s probably good he does, but I’m not buying it.”
    I wasn’t sure what the reason she’d given Marcus was. Obviously, it wasn’t the truth.
    “I can’t help what you believe.”
    “It just seems to me that the guy I saw so fiercely determined to take a stand against his best friend over a girl wouldn’t just stand by so casually while she up and moves on to another guy.”
    I gripped the steering wheel tightly. That hadn’t been what I was expecting. Manda was seeing someone else already? That didn’t sound like her.
    “I’d expect you to go hunt down Jason Stone and beat the shit out of him like you wanted to do to Marcus. I’m finding it real hard to believe you’re okay to just let him have her without a fight.”
    Jason Stone? Fuck.
    “Guess she wanted things I couldn’t give her,” I clipped out, and cranked the Jeep. I didn’t want to listen to any more of this.
    “Or maybe that ain’t what is really going on. Maybe she found out about your job, and she couldn’t handle it.”
    How did he know?
    “What do you mean?”
    Rock shrugged. “You know, the job that allowed you to take care of your brothers and sister and pay your bills too. The one you kept a secret. The one I had to do some serious badass detective work to figure out.”
    He’d followed me. Bastard.
    “Why didn’t you tell this to Marcus?”
    “Marcus ain’t my only friend. I don’t got favorites.”
    I let my head fall back on the headrest and sighed. “How long have you known?”
    “Since the Friday after the engagement party. I was sure you were dealing drugs, and I was tailing you.”
    “So you knew before I started dating Manda?”
    Rock nodded. “Yep.”
    ‘Then why the hell did you let me get away with it? I couldn’t stay away from her. Someone needed to stop me.”
    “Because I was pretty damn sure you were in love with her. I’d never seen you in love. And Manda is a sweet girl. I figured if anyone could make you walk the straight and narrow, she could. But you never stopped working. I couldn’t figure that out.”
    “I have mouths to feed.”
    “There are other jobs out there that don’t require illegal activity.”
    I