Текст книги "The Rocker Who Betrays Me"

Автор книги: Terri Browning

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

C HAPER T WO

Zander

My shirt was soaked in sweat when I walked into my grandparents’ house that evening. Spending all day in the sun had become my way of life since graduation. Devlin Cutter and I had been working for the county from practically the start of summer and we both knew that it would be our career if OtherWorld didn’t take off like we hoped.

I’d spent the day patching potholes on a back road with Devlin and two other guys for most of the day. The September heat had beat on me all day and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ready for the cooler weather that fall promised. I couldn’t complain too much, though. My job paid well, and I had benefits, plus evenings and weekends off, so our Friday-night gigs at Floyd’s Bar were still possible.

Bending, I unlaced my steel-toed boots and kicked them off before entering the kitchen. I could smell Gram’s cornbread baking and my stomach grumbled in protest. It seemed like lunchtime had been days ago instead of just hours, and I was starving. Glancing at my watch, I figured I had time to take a quick shower before we sat down to eat.

“Zander?” Gram called out as she left the pantry with a can of peas in her hand. Seeing me in her kitchen, her eyes softened and she smiled at me. “I thought you were going to be late.”

I smirked at her as I dropped a kiss on her wrinkled cheek. “Nah, Gram. You know I would never be late for your supper.”

She patted me on the shoulder and then grimaced when her hand came away covered in sweat. “I don’t know how you can stand being in the sun all day, honey. Your poor face is going to get as wrinkled as Gramps is before long if you keep it up. Did you wear sunblock?”

I shook my head at the little old lady who had basically raised me. “I put some on, but it sweated off after about an hour. We were so busy I didn’t bother putting more on.”

She made a disapproving noise in the back of her throat and I quickly excused myself to go take a shower before she used one of her wooden spoons to tan my hide for not listening to her. She was always worrying about me. If I’d thought that my graduating from high school and getting a real job would have made her stop, I’d been wrong. Not that I would admit it out loud, but I liked that she still worried about me.

In the shower, I let out a relieved groan as I let the lukewarm water wash away the sweat and grime of the day. I took my time washing, since it was a Friday and we had our usual gig that night. We were going on earlier than usual that night because I’d requested it, so I didn’t have much time after supper to get out to Floyd’s Bar.

The reasons for my request had gotten all of my band-brothers pissed off. Not because we were going to be in and out of the bar sooner than usual—meaning our pay wasn’t going to be nearly as good—but because they wouldn’t get the pussy that came with the later show. My jaw clenched and I leaned back against the shower wall as I thought about Annabelle.

I didn’t mind her coming to me every night. I knew as long as she was in my room, she was safe. It was how scared she was every time she came to me that messed with my fucked-up head. Jacob Malcolm was a hair’s breath away from getting buried in one of the potholes on one of the back roads that I had to fix every day. It took all my willpower not to fuck that bastard up, but I’d refrained from doing so because Annabelle had begged me not to do anything that would land me in trouble.

Blowing out a frustrated breath, I raked my hands through my dripping hair, pulling on the ends like the mad man I was. All my life I’d fought with my OCD, but I knew it was more than that. My mind was broken and there was nothing I could do to fix it. But when Annabelle was around, when I had her to smile at me and flash those damn blue eyes up at me, I felt like I wasn’t nearly as broken.

That the one person who brought me peace was scared to even sleep in her own bed was not helping my sanity any.

Muttering a curse, I beat my fist on the shower wall, imagining Jacob’s face as I destroyed it. It was only when my hand started to ache that I turned off the water and reached for a towel. My knuckles were swollen, but at least I hadn’t busted them open. It was going to be a bitch playing later, but I’d deal with that. I’d rather play hurt than have my rage for that fucker so close to the surface.

I was still distracted from thinking about Annabelle, though. So much so that Gram kept asking me if I was alright during supper. I knew I was worrying her, but couldn’t manage to reassure her. She knew that if I wasn’t laughing and joking around that something was wrong, but Annabelle had pleaded with me not to tell my grandparents about what was going on in the house next door.

“You gettin’ sick, boy?” Gramps asked as he swallowed a bite of the apple pie Gram had made for dessert.

I forced a smile for the old man. He was the only father figure I’d ever known, and I knew I could have done a hell of a lot worse when it came to having a male role model to show me how to be a man. Gramps was a gruff man, who rarely showed any emotion, but he’d always treated Gram like she was a queen. That was good enough for me.

“Nah, Gramps. Just tired. Been a long week.”

Having worked his entire life for the county before retiring ten years before, Gramps understood just how tiring it could be. With a nod, Gramps went back to eating his pie and I hurried to finish my own so I could get out the door. Devlin was already waiting in his driveway two houses over when I called a ‘goodnight’ to Grams.

Seeing me headed toward the old truck I’d bought with my first paycheck that summer, he came over and climbed in beside me. He had his own truck, but it was a waste of gas for us both to drive when we were going to the same place.

Normally Devlin and I would have been joking the whole way to Floyd’s Bar, but neither of us was in a laughing mood that night. I’d told him that Annabelle had climbed through my window again the night before and he’d been brooding about it all day just as much as I had been.

We knew what was going to happen if things didn’t change for Annabelle at home. Her brother had moved out at the beginning of the summer to live in the apartment above the garage his family owned—the only real garage in West Bridge Tennessee. He knew what was going on at home, but I don’t think he really understood the real danger his sister was in. Annabelle hadn’t told him everything. Once he did, once I told him all of it, things were going to change for all of us.

Noah and Annabelle were closer than any siblings I’d ever known. He would want to protect her even more than I did. My jaw clenched and I shook my head as I stopped at the only stop sign in the county. Maybe more than I did. Maybe. I wasn’t sure if that was possible, but what-the-fuck-ever. Noah would put Annabelle first. He would want to get his sister as far away from their mother and stepfather as possible. I knew he would quit OtherWorld.

My gut clenched at that thought. Not just because I would miss Noah, who was like a brother to me, but because I would miss Annabelle.

So fucking much.

I would miss her climbing through my window every night. I’d miss her burying her face against my chest and holding on to me until she fell asleep. I’d miss the way her soft little body felt against my own. And I’d miss waking up beside her every morning.

For fifteen years I’d thought of Annabelle as a sister and one of my closest friends. But two years ago those feelings had shifted and I’d started looking at my friend in an entirely differently light. Annabelle wasn’t just a friend any longer. She was a hot chick who I wanted. Bad.

Mostly I’d been able to keep a leash on my feelings for her, but that was getting harder and harder to do now. I’d been fighting with myself since that first damn night she’d tapped on my window. My fucked-up head didn’t understand that wanting Annabelle Cassidy was a bad thing. Not only was it wrong to want my best friend’s little sister, but she was two years younger than I was.

Two years might not seem like that much of a difference, but when you were nearly nineteen and the girl wouldn’t be seventeen for a few more weeks, things got tricky. I was considered an adult while she was still technically a baby. Jailbait was what Liam had called her one night.

Yeah. She was definitely jailbait.

“You gonna go, bro?”

I blinked, realizing I’d been stopped at the stop sign for several minutes. Letting a few curse words loose, I pressed on the gas and drove through the intersection. Devlin chuckled for the first time that day and I felt a little of my own tension ease slightly at the sound of my friend’s laughter.

By the time we got to Floyd’s Bar, I was relaxed enough that I didn’t feel like a homicidal maniac. I played like shit when I was pissed and didn’t want to mess the night up even more than I already suspected it would be. Finding a parking spot, I jumped out of the truck and spotted the trailer that Wroth and Liam pulled with Wroth’s Ford. We kept our stuff in the trailer and since Wroth was always so worried about his guitar getting fucked up, he was the only one who pulled it.

And since the fucker scared the shit out of me, I didn’t protest. Seriously, not much in the world scared me, but Wroth Niall was at the top of that short list. Second only to my fear of something happening to Annabelle.

Noah, Liam and Wroth were already carrying our gear inside so Devlin and I jumped in to help. Mostly I played bass, but because my Gram had been forcing me to play the piano since I was three, I had some skills with the keyboard as well. Of course her version of skills was playing Mozart whereas mine was learning to play Metallica and actually making it sound good while being played on a cheap-ass keyboard.

Because I loved my Gram so much, I’d learned to do both, but she didn’t need to know about the Metallica part. It would probably break the old lady’s heart and that would only lead to my broken mind getting that much more fucked up.

Once everything was set up, we had half an hour before we had to start our set. We sat in the back office of the bar drinking the beers that Floyd slipped us. Wroth was the only one who was legal to drink, so if we wanted to drink we had to do it in the office.

I lifted a beer to my lips and swallowed half before blowing out a long breath and finally turning my gaze to the guy sitting on the shabby old couch to my right. “We gotta talk, man.”

Noah’s light blue eyes were so much like his sister’s that my gut twisted when he lifted them to meet mine. “What’s up?”

I clenched my jaw and glanced around at the other guys in the room. Liam was off in the bathroom and I could only guess what he was doing. Since he’d started dating Tawny, his whole personality had changed and he’d been getting deep into the drug scene. Devlin sat on the rolling chair across from me and Wroth was staring off into space like he usually did. The dude was scary as hell without those demons flashing in his unfocused dark eyes; when they did, he looked like he was fucking possessed.

“It’s about Annabelle,” Devlin cut in.

Even from the few feet separating us on the couch I could feel the way Noah tensed up. “What about her?” he gritted out. “Is she okay?”

I tipped my beer up and swallowed the rest in one gulp before speaking again. “She’s been spending the night with me every night for the last few weeks, man. She’s scared shitless of Jacob.”

Light blue eyes narrowed. “What the fuck are you talking about?” Noah snarled. “She’s been spending the night with you? How the fuck has she been spending the night with you?”

“Dude, relax,” Devlin cut in. “It’s not like that. She’s just been sleeping there. Nothing else. Z wouldn’t do that, man.”

I didn’t speak, because I wasn’t sure if I would do that or not. I wanted to, so damn bad. So far I’d been able to keep from crossing that line, but it kept getting harder and harder with each passing night.

Noah’s shoulders dropped with something that looked like relief crossing his face. “Okay, then what the fuck is going on? Why is Annabelle sleeping in your room?”

“Because things are ugly at your house, man,” I told him. “Your mom has been drinking every night. And not just a few glasses of wine, dude. She’s been getting shitfaced. She gets pissed and starts screaming at Jacob. I can hear her from my house.” Thankfully my grandparents were getting hard of hearing and hadn’t heard Wendy Cassidy-Malcolm screaming at her husband like the hag she was. “Then when she’s done screaming and throwing shit, she goes to bed and Jacob takes his frustration out on Annabelle. The first night you know about, but Anna didn’t tell you everything.”

I knew when Annabelle found out I’d told her brother everything, she was going to get pissed at me, but I couldn’t let that shit keep going on without him knowing. So I told Noah about how Annabelle had been woken up one night over the summer to Jacob pulling her out of bed and slamming her against the wall. How he’d slapped her over and over again, splitting her lip and putting bruises all over her arms.

I felt my rage starting to boil up all over again just thinking of how she had looked when she’d knocked on my window afterward. Her lip had been bleeding and she’d had black and blue fingerprints on her soft peaches-and-cream arms. She begged me not to do anything, pleaded for me to just stay and hold her that night and the rest of the weekend. By the time I’d had to go to work that Monday, I’d been a little more sane, but not by much. I’d kept my hands off Jacob Malcolm, but I’d made sure that he knew I was watching him.

Of course he hadn’t heeded my threats for more than a week or so before he’d woken Annabelle with a slap to her beautiful face. She’d climbed through my window that night with a red handprint on her cheek. I’d paid a visit to the fucker at work the next day and given him a few handprints of my own. He’d told everyone he’d gotten his black eye from walking into a door, and Annabelle had been able to sleep in her own bed for several more weeks without having to worry about her stepfather hurting her.

“A few weeks ago he did it again,” I bit out as I glared off into space, flashes of Annabelle holding her bleeding nose making my hands fist on my thighs. “She begged me not to say anything to you, and I didn’t out of loyalty to her. But I made sure Jacob knew I wasn’t playing around. He still walks a little stiff from where I punched him in the ribs.”

“So she’s been scared all summer?” Noah’s voice was hoarse, his blue eyes nearly cobalt with emotion. “He’s been beating on her and she’s been so scared that she doesn’t even sleep in her own bed. Why didn’t she tell me?”

I shrugged. “Probably because she knows that you’ll do something crazy. Like kill the fucker.” It was what I wanted to do to the bastard. But it was the image of her begging me with tear-filled baby-blue eyes not to do anything that would take me away from her that had kept my instinct to destroy that little prick in check.

“Has he touched her since?”

“She says he hasn’t but she’s terrified that he will. She doesn’t get enough sleep because of it and I think she’s starting to struggle in school. I saw one of her test papers sticking out of her backpack the other day and the grade on it wasn’t one I would expect Annabelle to get.” She was so damn smart. What the fuck was she doing making D’s?

Noah jerked to his feet and started pacing. “What the hell am I going to do?” he muttered, but I knew he wasn’t asking any of us. He was talking to himself, like he always did, raking his fingers through his blond hair.

If you looked at him and Annabelle you would have no doubt that they were brother and sister. They had the same platinum-blond hair, the same light blue eyes, even the same nose. On Noah it gave him a pretty-boy kind of face, one that girls went crazy for every Friday night when he took the stage. On Annabelle it gave her an almost delicate elfin quality and it only increased my instinct to protect her.

“We could kill the motherfucker,” Wroth spoke up for the first time letting us all know that he hadn’t been so lost in his nightmarish memories that he hadn’t been paying attention. “I’m not against slicing that fucking loser up.”

“I’m with you there, dude.” Devlin pushed his long dark hair back from his face, grinning evilly. “You’re a beast. You could hold him down while we took turns slicing him open.”

“We’ll call that plan B,” I muttered. The whole idea would have made me happy, but I knew that Annabelle would be upset. Probably not that we actually did it, but that we would get in trouble. She was always trying to protect us, when that was exactly what we wanted to do for her. “Noah, what are you gonna do, man?”

“I don’t fucking know, bro. I don’t fucking know.”

 

C HAPTER T HREE

Annabelle

My stomach was growling and I still had over an hour to go before I could lock up the garage. I was exhausted after spending all day at school dealing with the drama that went with high school: bitchy girls, boys who thought they were men trying to either get me to notice them or wanted to push my buttons because of old vendettas against my brother and his friends, pop quizzes as well as tests that I should have studied for but hadn’t remembered to, teachers complaining and lecturing… The list went on and on.

On top of all that, I’d come into the garage with plans to study for the exam I was supposed to retake on Monday after turning on the water works with my history teacher. Mr. Wake was in his mid-forties, but he was still a sucker for a pretty face and tears. I’d been desperate enough to pull one of the tricks I hated other girls for pulling. I’d gotten a D on my last history test and the grade I’d gotten today hadn’t been any better. If I didn’t get my grade up, the vice principal would be sending a letter home to my mother and I just couldn’t deal with that crap at the moment.

For the most part, my mother ignored me. She liked to pretend I didn’t exist and I was more than happy to let her. It was how things had always been between us, even before my father had died and she’d married Jacob Malcolm.

My plans to study had been thrown in the trashcan when I’d gotten off the bus in front of the garage and seen the way everything was backed up in the office. We only had one full-time mechanic. Wade Cutter was a freaking genius when it came to anything that involved an engine. His social skills, however, needed some serious work. Noah and Liam had worked part time, apprenticing with Wade up until last year. Liam’s cousin, Wroth, had come back from his deployment overseas and Liam had quit soon after.

Noah had still been apprenticing up until he had graduated this past May. Now he lived in the apartment above the garage and helped out more in the office than in the garage.  When I’d stepped into the office it was to find Noah with grease smeared across his face and hands as he tried to sort through the paperwork on the desk. Six different customers had been standing around, shooting daggers at my brother.

“What’s going on?” I’d smiled politely at a few of our regular customers, but two of them were strangers to me.

Noah nodded his head at the strangers without taking his eyes off the computer. “Idiot number one has been driving around on bald tires for a while now. Thought he could make the long drive from New Jersey to Mississippi on them. Didn’t work so good for him when one blew out and he took off the bumper of idiot number two. Idiot number two needs a new bumper and for some reason a new carburetor, but thinks that idiot number one should pay for said carburetor.”

I looked at the two strangers and forced a smile for them while my brother continued to call them both idiots. Noah had become one hell of a mechanic, but his social skills were nearly as bad as Wade’s when it came to dealing with customers. He had no patience for stupid people and no filter to make him keep his mouth shut. Not that it mattered all that much. My dad’s garage was the only one in the county so it wasn’t like we were going to lose business because of my brother’s rudeness. Still, it helped make things a hell of a lot easier when you were nicer to the customers.

At least it made it easier on me. Since I had to run the office Wednesday through Saturday, I was the one who had to field angry phone calls. Usually because of the way Noah had treated someone, but there was the occasional irate old farmer who needed a new part but had been told to ‘fuck off’ because Noah had been too busy to deal with them.

When Noah continued to glare at the computer, I’d nudged him out of the way and took the invoice slips from his hands. “Go help Wade. I got this.”

Noah grunted something under his breath and slammed the door that led into the garage bay behind him. I gritted my teeth, sucked in a deep breath for patience, and smiled up at the two men my brother had called idiots. “Gentlemen, can I get you to take a seat for a few minutes? I’ll be right with you, I promise.” For extra measure I turned up the brightness of my smile and fluttered my long lashes at them.

The displeased expressions on their faces cleared marginally and they both took seats in front of the window that acted as our waiting room for such occasions. Once they were out of my way, I dealt with the other four customers who had been waiting to pick up their vehicles that had either needed a new part or an oil change. It took less than ten minutes to get them to pay and out the door with their keys in hand.

Once the majority of the chaos was out of the office, I turned my full attention on the remaining two men and started to put their information in the computer. Our system was outdated and needed to be handled with kid gloves. Something that Noah still didn’t understand.

It took over an hour to get everything sorted because I had to call both customers’ insurance agents to make sure we were going to get paid. There was only one problem. There was no way insurance was going to cover a carburetor for a simple fender bender. Explaining that proved to be futile and I took to calling the stupid man Idiot Number Two, if only in my head. It was after five before I had the payment from the would-be conman.

Around six, Noah appeared in the office, freshly showered and changed into his usual old T-shirt and faded jeans he wore to his weekly gigs at Floyd’s Bar. “Wade is almost finished with the Buick. They’ll be picking it up in the morning, so go ahead and start on the invoice for that. If they get here early I’ll just take care of them so you don’t have to.”

I raised a brow at him. “Whose Buick is it?”

“Mrs. Farris.”

“Then I really, really, really hope you have to deal with her.” I’d grinned up at him. “She still hates me.” Mrs. Farris had been both Noah’s fifth-grade teacher and mine. She had adored Noah, but when I’d become her student it had been like night and day in how she’d treated me. I tried not to let it bug me, but it still did. I’d never had a teacher dislike me until that old hag.

“Let’s hope, kid.” Noah had leaned over the desk, brushed a kiss over my cheek and left the office with a grin on his face.

Wade had finished up the Buick and left over half an hour ago, and I still had a mountain of paperwork to deal with before I could lock up.

My tummy flipped at the thought of what was going to happen after I closed the garage for the night. Zander was supposed to pick me up. We were going to get a hamburger and then I would be spending the night in his room again. My heart kept teasing me that this was like a date, while my brain kept scolding me that it was just Zander being Zander. He was looking out for me, making sure I ate and that I was safe.

The inner battle between my heart and brain was distracting and I still wasn’t finished with all the paperwork by the time an old truck pulled up in the parking lot. Groaning, I stacked all the papers together and left them on the desk so I would remember to do it in the morning. It took a few minutes to shut down the computer, but at least I’d put the money in the safe earlier and didn’t have to worry about that. Grabbing my backpack, I locked the garage door and then the front door on my way out.

Zander was already out of the truck. He stood leaning against the passenger door, a tired smile on his sinfully sexy face. It was dark out, but the streetlights made it possible for me to notice that his eyes were green and shooting gold flames. The smile told me he wasn’t raging, though.

Reaching out, he took my backpack off my shoulder and tossed it in the back of the truck. “Long day?”

I shrugged. “I’ve had longer.”

Zander grimaced. “Yeah, I bet you have, babe.” He opened the passenger door and stepped back. “I’m starving. How about you?” Before I could even nod my head, my stomach growled loudly, causing him to grin. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“It’s been a while since lunch,” I muttered as I climbed up into the truck with his help. His hand touched my back and I couldn’t help how I reacted. Goose bumps popped up on my arms and legs, and I shivered. I knew it was just Zander helping me in, not him touching me because he actually wanted to touch me. His grandmother had taught him to be a gentleman where members of the opposite sex were concerned. Well, for the most part. My heart didn’t seem to care because it melted a little more for him as he closed the door and jogged around to the driver’s side of the truck.

He started the engine and shot me a frown as he turned to back out of the parking lot. “You haven’t eaten anything since lunch? That was what, eleven thirty?” I nodded and his jaw clenched. “I don’t like that, Anna.”

Stupidly, my heart gave a little delighted shiver at his calling me ‘Anna’. He was the only one who ever shortened my name, and it made me feel as if I were special to him because of it. Liam Bryant had his own nickname for me, but Anna was so much better than Anna Banana.

“We were busy most of the evening,” I explained. “And then Noah left for the bar so I couldn’t go get a snack or anything. Besides, I knew you were going to pick me up. I didn’t want to ruin my dinner.”

Zander pulled out onto the road, but his hands were clenched around the steering wheel. “I’ll bring you something next time. I don’t like you being hungry and not eating.”

Ah, Z.

I smiled to myself as he continued to drive toward the only burger place in West Bridge. We didn’t have a McDonalds or anything; just a locally owned place called The Burger Shack, which was ten times better than any fast-food chain. It was only eight thirty on a Friday night, and the place was crowded when Zander pulled into the parking lot.

He opened his door and waited for me to scoot across the bench seat to climb out on his side. His hand shot out to take mine as he helped me down, but he didn’t release it once he’d shut the door. Pulling me close, he linked his fingers through mine and we went in.

Inside, it was so full that Zander released my hand and wrapped his arm around my waist, keeping me close as we made our way to the long line of people waiting to order. A few people saw that it was Zander and immediately stepped out of the way. West Bridge was a small town, which meant there were very few places to hang out on Friday nights. Most everyone came to The Burger Shack to hang out more than to actually eat.

“Annabelle!”

I turned at the sound of my name and smiled when I saw my friend waving at me from a back booth. Chelsea made a face and waved her arms again. Beside me, Zander groaned. “Of course they would be here,” I thought he muttered under his breath, but the noise level was so loud that I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him right.

Chelsea turned her head away and I watched her stare dreamily up at the guy sitting next to her. I shook my head at the sight of my brother stuffing a burger in his mouth, seemingly unaware of the adoring way his girlfriend was watching him. Chelsea was probably my closest friend, but she had been Noah’s girlfriend first. I didn’t know how those two had stayed together as long as they had because they tended to argue more than anything else. Still, I figured they would be together forever and my friend would one day be my sister-in-law.

We ordered our burgers with extra chili fries to share and waited for the order before turning to find a place to sit. I figured Zander would want to sit with Noah and so I started walking toward the back table, but he caught hold of my elbow and pulled me down into a booth with him closer to the front. I was surprised but definitely happy that we were sitting alone.

Zander handed over my wrapped burger, his brows raised. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah, Z. This is great.” I took a sip of my sweet tea before smiling up at him. “Thanks.”

“Is it enough?” He sounded concerned. “If you want something else, I’ll order it for you. How about some fried mac and cheese?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “This is plenty, Z. I swear. I probably won’t even eat all of this.”

He didn’t look convinced. “Okay, but we’re getting dessert afterward. Okay?”

Damn it. My heart was going to be a puddle of goo if he didn’t stop. “Yeah, okay.”

I took my time eating my burger, mostly eating the chili fries, which were my favorite. Thankfully it was the extra-large order, because Zander was like a wild animal when he ate. His burger was gone in no time as well as half of the fries. When I was full I offered him the rest of my burger and it was gone within a few seconds. He licked his lips before wiping them with a napkin. “You want a slice of pie here or should we wait and get ice cream?”

I blinked, coming out of the daze I’d been in after watching his tongue swipe across his full bottom lip. “Um… ice cream sounds good,” I murmured before taking a gulp of my sweet tea in hopes of cooling myself off.

Zander grinned. “Good. That means we can get out of here before your brother comes over to ruin our night.”

My heart jumped. He didn’t want Noah interrupting us? I couldn’t help wondering why. Was it because he was having a good time with me and didn’t want my brother getting all big-brother on him? Was this really a date? My heart and head were both confused and hoping, but I didn’t want to act stupid so I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from blurting out something I’d regret.