We sat on opposite sides of the table, both of us glaring. Clint had his iced coffee pressed to his face, and there was a bag of ice resting atop my hand where it lay on the table. Elizabeth kept fidgeting with it, changing how it lay to try to cover my knuckles as well as possible. I didn’t have to heart to smack her hand away.

And I had much more important matters to deal with.

“Why in the hell did you crash my book signing, exactly?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

Clint made an ugly sound. “I would have thought that was pretty obvious. I fucking told you why, before you laid me out. What the fuck, Joe?”

“Stop swearing before I punch you again,” I growled, my injured hand protesting as it curled into a fist.

Elizabeth started to put a hand on my arm, but pulled back when I flinched away. “Don’t punch him again, you’re going to hurt yourself. Let me do it,” she said with a fierce smile.

“Shut up already. Haven’t you done enough already?” Clint asked harshly, his glare even sharper when he directed it at the angry woman. She flinched back slightly, and my eyes narrowed.

“What… are you talking about?”

“You mean you don’t know?” Clint seemed surprised, his glare falling away for a moment. Then he started to laugh, a bitter and angry sound. “That’s just fucking priceless. You mean to tell me you had no idea your little ginger has a whole shit list of people that she gives to the security guards? We’ve been trying to get to you for months. But this bitch keeps us all out. Helena can’t even get in, and if you had seen the way that made her cry…” Clint trailed off, shaking his head.

My breath was stuck behind my heart in my throat. My fingernails dug into my palm, my knuckles white. Taking deep breaths, I reminded myself that causing a fight in the middle of Starbucks was a bad idea. “Is that… true?” I asked slowly, making sure all the words came out clear past my clenched teeth.

Elizabeth’s head dropped. “I just thought…”

“I’m not lecturing you, Elizabeth. I’m thanking you,” I said, smiling grimly at her shocked expression. “I don’t want to see any of them. Though you could let Helena in. None of this is her fault. Though this sorry son a mouse, I never want to see again.”

Clint had the gall to look surprised. “What the fuck has happened to you, Joe?”

It was my turn to use that bitter laugh. “Who do you think you are to ask that question, when you’re one of the people that caused it?”

“One of the people that caused it? Shit, Joe, are you talking about that day you saw me with Kisten?” He leaned forward eagerly, a bright smile on his face. “That’s what I came to talk to you about. Look, Joe, you don’t understand what happened-”

“I don’t understand what happened?” I repeated, disbelief thick in my voice. “Alright. Tell me if I get something wrong then.

“When I was gone, for a week, Kisten got himself drunk as a skunk and lounged in his room until you showed up. And he screwed you first chance he got, just in time for me to show up and see you going to buy the underage kid- who you had, by the way, just technically raped according to the age laws- you were going to buy him more alcohol. Does that sound about right, Clint?”

“Well I mean I guess it’s sort of right... but Joe you really don’t understand-”

I held a hand up. “Don’t even try that with me. Do you know how many times I’ve heard that in my life? Oh, you just don’t understand, my foot. Screw you, Clint. Screw you, and Kisten, and everybody else that was involved in that. In case you couldn’t tell, I don’t need any of you anymore.”

I stood up, letting the bag of ice fall to the table. “So if you’ll excuse me,” I said, my voice frozen, “I have a book signing to get back to.”

Elizabeth was grinning as I turned my back on Clint. Her smile fell when my shoulders slumped; it turned into a scowl when Clint called my name and I hesitated.

“Just do one thing for me, Joe. Just one last favor.”

I wanted to say no, but I felt like I owed them a little. If they hadn’t broken my heart so thoroughly, I never would have worked up the courage to drop my pen name. “What do you want?” I said it softly, hoping he wouldn’t hear me and I could walk out without promising anything.

That was a lost cause. Clint was standing behind me, so close I could feel the warmth of his body. “Just listen to your voicemails.”

“I do that every day,” I said, my frown starting to come back.

“Do you really? Have you heard the hundreds of voicemails Kisten has left for you, then? The ones where he cried about how he loved you? And apologized so many times I thought it was all he was ever going to be able to say again? Have you heard those voicemails, Joe?”

My hands were shaking; I clasped them together in front of me, poorly hiding it. “He can’t have left me any voicemails. He doesn’t have my number.”

“Doesn’t he, Joe? Then you tell me what fucking cell phone he’s been calling for the past year that has your god damn voice on the messaging system.”

I stiffened. He couldn’t have the one I had texted Kisten with the day I got it with Elizabeth. I gave it to her and told her to throw it away when I got a new one that nobody had the number to. Clint couldn’t possibly mean that one.

“Elizabeth,” I breathed her name, on the brink of losing my temper.

Her face was ghostly pale. “I-I-I didn’t think he’d… I kept it so that… it was like a memento… I didn’t think all those calls-

“Damn it Elizabeth!” I slammed my fist against the wall, making the closest teenagers and hipsters jump and complain as they spilled coffee on their hands.

There were tears running down her face when I turned to face them both. Clint’s eyes were hugely wide. I must have been a sight, my face flushed and my eyes narrow, my mouth pressed into a thin line. Elizabeth always told me my glare could frighten a stone to pebbles. I used that glare on both of them.

“You’re both coming with me. And if I don’t have the whole fucking story by the time this is done, I swear by all that is fucking holy that I will string you both from the balcony. Understand?”

If the glare hadn’t done it, the uncharacteristic swearing would have. They both nodded emphatically, eager to go along with whatever the hell I wanted as long as I didn’t hang them. I held my hand out, and Elizabeth dropped the car keys. I turned my back on them, and the door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass as I headed out onto the street.

I could hear them arguing behind my back.

“I thought I told you to stay the fuck away from us,” Elizabeth hissed. “Do you think that restraining order is just a bullshit piece of paper?”

Clint snorted at her. “I bet you didn’t tell Joe about that, either, did you?”

“No, she didn’t,” I said tightly, the door to the car slamming with a deadly finality. I was going to find out the truth that afternoon, even if it meant skinning them piece by piece until they begged to tell me what they had kept hidden. It was the final straw- and if I didn’t have my answer soon, I was going to use that straw to burn the city down.