Claimed Hard by My Best Friend novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Forty-Six

Malachi comes back after close, takes her slap and refuses to explain why he left, and holds her wrist until she finds her father gone and a photo from the Gilt.

Malachi didn't say a word to me.

He looked at Dane and tilted his head toward the door, one inch.

"Out," he said.

"Mal, I'm collecting." Dane was still wiping tea from his collar. "Dad gave me the Flanagan file."

"Dad can't hold a pen. He can tell me himself."

The two men beside Dane stepped back from Malachi without being asked.

Dane looked at them, then at the room, then at me. He was smiling again, but only with his mouth.

"The night's still young, Kate," he said. "Think about my offer."

He walked out, and his men followed.

Malachi went last. He stopped at the door, nodded once to my father and said, "Mr. Flanagan."

"Mal," my father said. He did not sound surprised.

I noticed that, and I held on to it.

Then the door shut, and Lucy said, "Okay. Who was the tall one? Because I need to sit down."

"That's Malachi," I said.

"Malachi Malachi?"

"Yes."

She sat down on a stool. "Oh, I'm going to need a drink."

At eleven o'clock the last regular went home, and Lucy left with a hug that lasted too long.

My father had gone upstairs to bed without saying anything.

I was flipping the sign in the window when somebody knocked, slow and heavy, the same as before.

I opened the door.

Malachi stood on the boardwalk under the streetlight with his hands in his pockets.

"Can I come in?"

"No," I said, and I stepped back to let him in.

He came in and stood by the jukebox. The bar was small, and he took up a lot of it.

I walked right up to him and slapped him across the face.

It rang off the walls. His head turned with it.

He didn't touch his cheek. He turned his head back and looked at me.

"I thought you'd hit harder," he said.

"Forty-three voicemails."

"Forty-six."

I stopped.

The room seemed to get very quiet, and I could hear the beer cooler humming.

"You counted," I said.

He didn't answer.

"I called you from that dorm room all night," I said. "I told you he said no. I told you I needed you. You were on the stairs, Malachi. I saw you."

"I know where I was."

"You heard him say it. You heard every word. Two hundred people laughed at me, and you stood there above all of them and didn't come down."

My voice cracked on the last word. I hated that.

"Then he hugged me for his friend's phone," I said, "and when I looked up, you were gone. You didn't come down once. Why?"

"My reasons stopped being yours four years ago."

"Don't." I hit his chest with my open hand. "Don't give me a line like that. You were the only person who knew every stupid thing about me."

"I know."

"Then say something real."

He looked at the floor between us. A muscle in his jaw moved.

"I can't," he said. "Not yet."

I swung at his face again.

He caught my wrist.

He did it without effort, in the air, and then he just held it.

His fingers closed around my wrist. His thumb sat on the inside of it, right on my pulse.

I could feel my heartbeat knocking against it.

I pulled once, and he didn't let go.

On the inside of his wrist, below the cuff of his shirt, there was a small tattoo in script. It was a single letter, and it was an N.

I didn't ask about it.

His chest was rising and falling too fast, and he stood perfectly still while it did.

I told myself he was angry.

"Let go," I said.

"Say it like you mean it."

I didn't say it.

We stood there. The neon sign buzzed over the door and put red light on his arm.

Then he let me go, carefully, one finger at a time.

"Dane won't come back tonight," he said. "He'll come for your father."

"My dad is upstairs asleep."

"Check."

Something in his voice made me go cold.

I took the back stairs two at a time. The apartment door was open.

My father's bed was made. His shoes were gone, and his jacket was gone.

On the kitchen table, under the salt shaker, was his bar towel, folded.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

It was a photo from an unknown number. My father sat in a leather chair, in a room with gold lamps and a green felt table behind him.

He was looking at the camera, and he looked old.

Under it was a message.

Your dad is a guest at the Gilt. Come get him, Flanagan. Come alone.

Behind me on the stairs, Malachi read it over my shoulder, and his face went still and white.

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