I sighed as I tried to sit up on my bed, my muscles achy from lack of use. My head still groggy from all the sleeping I’d done. I debated on what to say but in the end decided I didn’t have it in me to act like I wasn’t wrecked.

“No,” I croaked, glancing up at the clock on the wall, which was telling me I’d been in bed for almost fifteen hours.

“Did something happen with you and Patrice? I called him after I read his thread about the stop, but he didn’t pick up. Just texted back ‘I’m fine.’ Like the broody asshole he is.”

She sighed again and I could tell she was trying to gauge how much to push. “I didn’t even bother asking him how you were doing, because those tweets about the stop were at an eleven, so I figured at the very least you and him got into something.”

I scoffed at that major understatement and slumped against the headboard, completely at a loss about how to make things right with Patrice. Because no matter how much I hedged, he had been right about me. I’d chosen to let an issue that at some point would end in a tragedy slide until it came right to my door. Because it would piss people off.

I swallowed hard thinking about the thread, of what he’d written about the humiliation and fear he felt last night, the things I never got to hear. I opened my photo app and pulled up the screenshot with the tweet that had almost made me weep for him.

That feeling that no matter what I do, how hard I work, how far I climb... It can all be taken away in a moment.

No matter how much I tried to act like Patrice overreacted to my calling Day last night, I understood that it felt like I was adding insult to injury. “He ended things last night. After.”

“What? Why?” Pris asked, sounding exasperated. She let out a long harsh breath. “Patrice cannot be so fucking unreasonable that he’s blaming you for this?” I appreciated her outrage, but I didn’t have the energy to be mad.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and confessed to Priscilla. “He got mad because I reached out to Day to call off the deputy who stopped him.” Pri gasped at that. “I can see how that could land badly with him.”

I ran my palms over my face, feeling exhausted. “Especially when the DA’s office and everyone else in town have been tiptoeing around this stop and pretending there’s no reason to be concerned.”

“But that’s not just on you to figure out, Easton,” Pri said in my defense, and I smiled at her loyalty.