Page 25 of One Night Collision

“It’s nothing,” I insist.

“Bullshit. I’m not leaving till you tell me what this is about,” he says.

I look across the way and see some nosy neighbors poking their heads through the curtains. This isn’t a conversation I can have with him in the front yard. Not when everything I say and do is being reported back to the very person who is causing every bit of my problems. “You better come inside… It’s gonna be a long story.”

—-

I’m in the kitchen, pouring iced tea into two glasses while Quinn is sitting at my kitchen table. My hands are trembling as I turn back to face him, the tea sloshing precariously in the glasses with each step. Before I dump it on him, me, and the floor, he takes both glasses from me and puts them down.

“Do you remember Evan Salyers?” I ask him.

Quinn’s expression darkens. “Yeah, I remember that ass.”

“Well, about five months ago, he came through the ER where I was working. Pill seeking. The doctor knew it. Everyonefucking knew it, but they gave him what he wanted and he left. High enough to sit on Wednesday and see both Sundays… so I called to report it. Evan was going to kill somebody on the road if I didn’t. Anyways, Troy James pulled him over.”

“Troy’s a good guy,” he says. “And you did the right thing. If Evan is as stupid now as he was back then—and it sounds like it—he’s too damn dumb to operate a vehicle anyway.”

I laugh at that because it’s true. “Yeah, well, I should have called Troy directly instead of going through dispatch. That’s a mistake I’m paying for… Lucy Carpenter works in dispatch.”

That just gets an eye roll from him. “Jesus Christ. What a pair that is. So she tells him you called it in and now he’s resorting to petty vandalism to get even?”

And this is where shit starts to get complicated. “Not exactly. Troy busted him for the DWI, but what they found in the car was a little more of a big deal… fentanyl and meth. In large quantities. So he got busted for trafficking, as well.”

Quinn whistles softly at that. “So who slashed your tire? Cause if he got busted with that much fentanyl, he’s not out here running around.”

“No… but Jenna Stevens is. While he and Lucy might have had a thing going on the side, he and Jenna have been together for a long time,” I tell him. “And you know what the Stevenses are like!”

I said it as a joke, but I can tell from his expression that he’s not taking it as one. “Cecily, these people are dangerous.”

“I’m aware, Quinn.”

He shakes his head. “Is that why you’re selling? Because you’re afraid?”

It’s not exactly untrue, but it’s not the whole of it. Still, that’s less humiliating than telling the man I’m quasi-married to that I can’t afford to pay my bills. “Yeah. Just gonna get outsomewhere that nobody knows me and start fresh.”Living in my car, probably.

“These assholes don’t get to run you out of town. No. Not while I’m here.”

“I’m not your responsibility!” I snap. I’m so goddamn sick of men thinking they get to run my life and make decisions for me.

Then he levels that look at me, the one I know. The one that says he’s digging in and not letting it go. “According to the laws of the great Commonwealth of Kentucky, that’s not true. Legally, I’m still your husband… and you, Cecily, are still my wife.”