Chapter Twenty-Seven God, he was a dumbass. Nicole had sounded genuinely upset—even anguished—on the phone. And he’d believed her. He’d wanted to believe her. So where was she? Alone at the bar of the Last Chance, Kai checked his phone for the hundredth time in the past hour. He didn’t want to send her a text while she was driving, but maybe there was a reasonable explanation for why she wasn’t here yet. Unless—something else was going on. Now that she was busted, maybe she’d taken the opportunity to slip away. Maybe that whole spiel about wanting to explain in person was designed to throw him off. Because she knew how much he still wanted to believe in her. That was what people like Nicole did. They played with their victims’ emotions. Like this alternating fury and hurt that kept ram