Falling for her best friend's brother was NOT a part of her summer plans...
Karma Fitzgerald never saw Nathan Jenkins as anything other than the womanizing big brother of her best friend, Lanie. That all changed during a summer trip to the beach, wh...
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"Why can't we see him? I don't understand why you won't let us back there so we can just see him and know he's okay." Brief silence. "Can you just answer my damn question?"
The shrieking sound of Lanie's voice had me turning my head to the left. She was standing with her parents next to the officer's desk, trying and failing again to get the answers they wanted regarding Nathan.
Five hours.
We got here five hours and still haven't seen him or even gotten an update. Five hours since I got some of the worst news of my life. And five hours since I called my parents to let them know what happened. Of course, my mom had a thousand questions of her own.
"What was he charged with?" "When did this happen exactly?" "Where did it happen?"
Blah, blah, blah. I didn't respond to her questions because I did know the answers. At least, I couldn't answer most of them. I honestly didn't know the specifics of what happened. But my gut told me it had to be related to the night of Halloween at that party. Nathan found something out. There was no other explanation for it.
"Well, are you going to answer us or not?"
I didn't bother looking at Lanie again. Instead, I glanced across the dirty laminated floor at Nick, who was stoically sitting with his parents in a plastic chair that was identical to mine and probably just as uncomfortable.
He knew. I absolutely knew that he knew. For one, he wouldn't look at me. He would look everywhere except at me. Two, the same officer that Lanie was still berating already spent some serious alone time with Nick and his parents. I saw him get escorted back to the area where we were waiting.
Sure, I could go and try to get the information I wanted out of him, but that wouldn't change what I already knew. What I needed was to see Nathan. I needed to hear what happened from him. Shit, I just needed to see him.
But I couldn't do that without a little help from—
"Hey, Fitz." Mike sat down in the vacant chair beside me. He kept his voice low to not wake up Harper who was asleep in the chair on the other side of me, elbow propped against a table and her head resting in her hand. "How you holding up?"
"You know how I'm holding up," I said sharply. "And you know what I'm waiting for."
"I do."
"So? Where is he?" Finally looking at my best friend I asked again, "Where is he, Mike?"
Mike glanced around the waiting room a little frantically. "Will you keep it down, please? Before the wrong person hears you?"
"Well?" I pressed. "Are you helping me or not?"
He held my stare for what felt like hours before cursing under his breath. "Okay, listen carefully. Go down the hall to the right until you get to the elevators. Take the elevator up to the third floor. When you get off, there's a vending machine to the right. That's where he'll be waiting for you. Go now."
