Chapter 37: A familiar Spark.
"I’m okay,"
No, I wasn’t okay. I had gotten off the call with Eric, he kept talking—going over what I was supposed to wear, what to say, and what to avoid, his voice started to fade into the background. My chest tightened, and I gripped the phone harder. I stared blankly at the car seat in front of me, my mind drowning in fear.
Faith was in the car now, she was sitting next to me in the backseat and she kept asking me what was wrong.
Initially, I just kept saying nothing was wrong, although I wanted to tell her... to tell her everything but I couldn’t, what else could I have said? Eric made it clear that I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about it.
The real question was—how?
Even if I wanted to tell her, how the hell would she react to the fact that I was trying to extort her ex-boyfriend’s father? Yeah... I couldn’t.
I met her gaze, my mind scrambling for a believable lie.
"A friend of mine is sick, actually. It’s pretty serious. That was his elder brother calling to inform me," I said, keeping my face straight, my voice steady like I wasn’t making it up on the spot.
She seemed to buy it. Her expression softened as she reached out, giving my arm a gentle squeeze. "Everything will be fine," she said. I nodded and faked a smile.
I wish I could believe that. But I didn’t.
Silence settled in the car. My thoughts, however, were anything but still. I ran through every possible way things could go wrong, every scenario where I ended up regretting this decision.