Sweetest Taboo Read Online Free Page B

tear traces a path down the side of her nose. “I just can’t believe it.”
    I pull away, stretching to cover the motion. I don’t want her touch. For that matter, I don’t want anything from her. Maybe that’s not fair, but I don’t care. Right now, I’m too raw to care about propriety.
    She seems entirely unaware of my hesitancy, because she continues to stand right beside me, fussing with the bedding, then dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Adele is Colin’s ex-wife, though they married when I was an adult, so even had Colin still been my legal father, I don’t think I would ever have considered her my stepmother.
    But it’s not the relationship between Colin and Adele that puts me off. Instead, it’s her past relationship with Dallas. I don’t think she’s aware that I know she slept with Dallas before he and I were together. But I do know that she’s understood what Dallas and I are to each other for years, even before we revealed our secret to the press. And that fact makes me feel just a little bit too exposed.
    “This city has just gone crazy,” she clucks. “Attacked and left in Riverside Park like so much garbage.” Her voice climbs with outrage. “Your mother told me all about it. I called her looking for Colin a few hours ago, and she told me the whole story.”
    The Deliverance guys have pieced together some of what happened, and Dallas relayed the chain of events to my mom. Well,
I
know it was the Deliverance guys. Mom thinks that Liam and Quince have pooled their resources. Which, in a way, they have.
    Apparently, the woman who attacked me had an accomplice. A man who picked me up off the sidewalk and hauled me into the back of a white cargo van while the woman slid behind the wheel. The guys found three witnesses. A couple who were walking at the far end of the block and didn’t realize what was going on until the van sped away. And a fourteen-year-old who was sitting by his window in one of the townhouses texting his girlfriend. He didn’t see the attack. He didn’t even see the man pick me up off the sidewalk. But he did see the bastard shoving me in the back, and then the van disappearing down the street.
    But my assailants didn’t bring me to the hospital. Instead, I was dumped—my veins pumped full of a narcotic cocktail—near one of the entrances to Riverside Park. Someone made an anonymous 911 call, and the paramedics whisked me away to the ER. None of which I remember, and the fact that I was completely unconscious and doped up on god-knows-what during all of that is more than a little freaky.
    I pull the sheet up to my chest, feeling suddenly exposed. Adele doesn’t seem to notice. She glances around the room, frowning.
    “I expected Colin would be here,” she muses.
    “No,” I say simply. “I haven’t seen him.”
    “Well, that’s odd. I just assumed your mother would have reached him by now. I’ll start calling some mutual friends. Maybe he’s tucked away in someone’s hunting cabin or off on someone’s yacht.”
    Before I have a chance to comment, my mother steps through the open door carrying two cups of coffee. “This stuff is as thick as sludge,” Mom says, “but at least it’s hot—oh! Adele!”
    “Lisa, oh, Lisa.” She deftly takes the Styrofoam cups from my mom and sets them on my hospital tray, then pulls my mom into an awkward hug. Awkward because my mother is as stiff as a board.
    “Are you doing okay?” Adele asks once she’s broken the embrace. “I know Jane is—I practically interrogated her attending before I came in here. But is there anything you need?”
    Mom shakes her head and manages a smile, then looks between Adele and me. “Did I interrupt?”
    I almost tell her that she did, just so she’ll have an excuse to leave. Adele has never been on my mom’s favorite-person list. Even though Mom’s the one who walked away from Colin, I think she’s always felt like Adele was an interloper.
    But I just can’t toss her that bone. I