Completely Consumed (Addicted To You, Book Eight) Read Online Free

me?”
    “Everything,” Driscoll said from over Nick’s shoulder. He came striding up next to him now. The two of them were facing me like a couple of threatening parents scolding a little kid.
    “I don’t see how it’s any of my business,” I said. “I train at his gym but we’re not friends and he doesn’t tell me anything about what he does.”
    “If only it was that simple,” Driscoll said.
    “I think it is that simple,” I told him.
    He chuckled. “Maybe we know better than you how this stuff works, seeing as how it’s what we do for a living and all.”
    “Listen, if you’re just going to try and intimidate me, you probably should stop wasting your time.” I looked at them both, my eyes unwavering. “My job is fighting. I knock people out for a living. So I’m not going to piss in my pants because you come into my apartment and flash a couple of badges in my face.”
    “That’s cute,” Driscoll said, looking at his shorter partner. “We should write that one down, huh?”
    Nick Cairns was still watching me though. And he wasn’t smiling. “Yeah, we can write it down on the list of dumb shit that people say right before they get brought up on charges of racketeering, drug trafficking, and extortion.”
    A jolt of electricity went through my spine when he said that I could be charged with those kinds of crimes. It felt similar to when I was about to fight, and the adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream. Suddenly, it was as though I could see everything in crystal clear detail: the green flecks of brown in Nick’s pupils, the lines in his forehead—
    I could even make out every pore in his skin.
    He had slightly yellow teeth, probably from drinking a thousand and one cups of coffee over the years, sitting at his shitty desk while he figured out ways to hurt innocent people like me.
    I stared at him, feeling the first signs of pure rage in my body as I watched him looking back at me with his smug face.
    “You can’t charge me with something I didn’t do,” I told him. “I’ve never done a single dose of any kind of illegal performance enhancing drug.”
    “Justin,” he said, “you must know that everyone—I mean everyone—says that to us. Lance Armstrong denied it for a decade before he finally admitted it.”
    “That doesn’t change the fact that I’m telling the truth. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
    But then I thought about how Quarry had watched me shoot up yesterday. Sure, I hadn’t actually done the steroids—I’d switched it out to water. But Quarry didn’t know that, so he could possibly testify at some point against me.
    The realization seeped into my bones.
    “You okay, Brown?” Driscoll asked.
    Nick Cairns was still staring at me, like a hawk watching a worm that it was about to snag. “You look really pale. Was it something I said?”
    Suddenly, for no reason I could understand, I pictured Lindsay’s face. Just thinking about her calmed me down. For a brief moment, I wished that I’d let her stay here for this. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to afterwards. “I’m fine,”
    I said, quickly regaining control of things.
    “Let me grab you a glass of water,” Driscoll said.
    “I’m fine,” I told him, more serious this time.
    He went to move past me toward the kitchen and I blocked his path.
    “What’s the problem?” he asked.
    “I said we could talk. I didn’t give you permission to walk around my house.”
    His forehead crinkled up as if he was surprised that I was behaving this way, but he dropped back a few steps. “Suit yourself, Brown. You seem pretty eager to be pissed off at the world.”
    I turned back to Nick once more. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
    We looked at one another for what felt like a long while. Maybe he sensed I was telling the truth. But then he just shrugged ever so slightly. “It doesn’t matter.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, it doesn’t matter if you did anything wrong or not, Brown.