Instantly, I felt color rise to my cheeks. "Oh. That." A few weeks earlier, my car had been towed away to some unknown garage. From what I learned afterward, Joel had been planning to steal it back, until Jake beat him to the punch.
I asked, "Is that why you stole it back, to keep Joel out of trouble?"
"Me?" Jake said. "Nah. I did it for kicks."
I studied his face. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or being sarcastic. I looked to Luna for clarification.
She said, "Don’t let him fool you. He'd do anything for his brothers."
Next to her, Jake muttered, "Yeah, right."
Ignoring this, Luna gave me a solemn nod. "He would." She smiled. "Just like I'd do anything for mine." Her smile faded. "When I don't want to strangle them, that is."
My mind was racing. Recalling the original reason for my visit, I looked back to Jake and said, "So, let's say someonewantedto cause trouble for Joel, could they resurrect that court case? Like if they knew the prosecutor or something?"
Jake didn't hesitate. "No. When I say it's gone, I mean it's gone for good."
I stared at him. "So why didn't you say something?"
"To Joel?" Jake gave a humorless laugh. "Lemme ask you something. You know him, right?"
At the moment, I wasn't so sure. But I nodded anyway.
"Soyouknow whatIknow." Jake leaned back on the sofa. "If he knew I was behind it, he'd probably get himself arrested just to piss me off."
I started to object, but then thought better of it. I couldn't honestly deny what Jake was saying. For whatever reason, Joel seemed to truly despise him.
After meeting Jake in person, I couldn’t really see why. The jerk he played for the camera seemed nothing like the guy sitting across from me.
But that was something to think about later. Now, all I could think about was Joel and the original reason for our breakup. It was all because of that stupid suspended sentence – which meant it was all for nothing.
The sentence wasn't just gone. It had been gone for months, long before Derek's threat, long before I'd given Joel up, long before everything went so terribly wrong between us.
Stunned by everything I'd just learned, I sank back on the sofa and let a horrible realization sink in.
I'd given Joel up for nothing.
I felt like throwing up. True, I'd been feeling that way for a while, but now, the vague queasy feeling had morphed into something worse, something that made me stand up and blurt out, "Can I use your bathroom?"
