Page 102 of The Pleasure of Panic

ME: Fuckin’ forget it.

HIM: Cool, forgotten.

And then he told me that Finn was fine and handed me a cheap phone. The kind you can buy in the checkout line at Walmart. Told me to keep it charged and someone would be in touch.

Someone was Finn. And that first conversation went like this:

ME: Were you in on it from the beginning?

HIM: In on what?

ME: The game.

HIM: What game?

ME: Fuckin’ forget it.

HIM: Cool. I’m gonna be home next week. I’ll see ya then.

So I really have no clue what happened last month. The only things I do know are this:

Caleb Kelly might have been unjustly exonerated, but no one in Hell cares.

I met a new man, whom I might be in love with and one day we still might run away to Kansas together.

Izett Gery is gone and Issy Grey isn’t.

Was all this my game?

No, I decide.

This was definitely a game, it just wasn’t my game.

Did Jordan Wells set all this up? Does he have that kind of power?

And what the fuck happened to Senator Walcott? Did Chella know what kind of man he was? Did she set all this up?

And why was Finn taken back to DC, only to be let go five weeks later, his name scrubbed clean from all reports? Did he set all this up?

I have decided to walk away from it. All of it. Zig says, “Regardless of your past, your tomorrow is a clean slate.”

So… bygones, I guess.

Letting it go, I guess.

Oh, no. Not them. Not these people who played the game right along with me.

Not Jordan. Not Chella. Not Finn.

These people are dark.

These people are diabolical.

These people are keepers.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - FINN

“You look good, man.”