Page 31 of Burning for You

“Jesse, can you be on my side just once? Be an understanding brother?”

“I’ve always tried, Levi,” my brother says. “How about you? Have you ever been on my side?”

“Look, I never had sex with my clients, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

A burst of laughter flies from Jesse’s mouth. “You think I’m stupid? Sex always comes with the territory.”

“I didn’t!”

“Did you advertise yourself with strictly no sex?”

He’s really filling me with shame now. “If you must know, yes. I put that in my ads.”

Jesse guffaws. “You’re so irresistible that those women wanted you anyway? So you didn’t even have to take your clothes off?”

I pause while he blabbers on, “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. So they just salivated over you? Groped you?”

I’m exhausted. Jesse better behave, or I’ll kill him first, before there’s a possibility of me killing Carolyn Meyer or her fiancé.

“Just drop it! Okay?” I say. “Go and find your new drug lord. Watch porn. I don’t fucking care. I stink, and I need a shower right now.”

“Alright,” Jesse says and turns on my laptop. “Password.”

I punch in the digits.

“We’ll talk about plans tomorrow. If you’re sober.”

In the bathroom, there’s nothing else swirling in my head beyond Carolyn’s name.

How do I get through one night like this? There’s still tomorrow, too. Then there’s the next day, and the next day. And the time will come when we’ll kidnap Carolyn. How will we do it? How much resistance will there be? Will we hurt her?

When I get out of the shower, my brother is gone. I scour through his browsing history, and the bastard was indeed looking for drugs. But disturbingly, he’s found out that Carolyn is having a gala dinner tonight.

This time I pray that Jesse is having a good time getting high somewhere—anywhere—as long as it’s nowhere near Miller Hall.