“Other days I know she needs to be in a facility with nurses who can care for her around the clock. Who have locks on the doors and a button to press if she needs something.”
Sympathy is clear on Honor’s face. “Can I help? I have some money saved up from the Grand.” Her mouth twists in a wry smile. “Kip still refuses to let me help pay the bills with it. I think he’d rather burn it.”
A few months ago she was just like me, stripping and struggling to get by. After she met Kip, things changed quickly. Her past caught up to her—and Kip was there to protect her. She was there to protect him too. Since then they’ve been living together in his home.
“Oh hell no,” I say. “You worked your ass for that.”
She laughs. “Literally. I’ve gained a size since I stopped dancing.”
“Well, you look fabulous.” It’s not a lie. She’s practically glowing. It could just be general happiness—or maybe a kind of sex glow, since I know how much Kip was into her. Her stomach still seems pretty flat, but I wonder if there is another cause for that happy glow.
Her shoulder lifts. “Well, it’s just sitting there, so if you needed…”
I make a face. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think so. I looked into a few places, and the costs are just crazy. I could work at the Grand every night for a year and just cover the cost of a month.”
“Damn.” She glances at Mrs. Owens, who seems to have drifted off to sleep. “And she didn’t…”
Have savings, she means. “Just the house, which she owns. But it was in major disrepair when I found her again and moved in. I’ve been fixing things up when I can and keeping up with the bills, but that’s about it.”
I’ve been drowning, that’s what I mean to say.
From the sober look on Honor’s face, she knows it. Her next words come out slow and careful. “What about Blue?”
Alertness zings through my body, just like every time I hear his name. “What about him?”
“It seemed like you two had a thing.”
My laugh is hollow. “Yeah, I guess you could say we had a thing. A long time ago.”
“Oh.” Her gaze hits the table before meeting mine. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“There’s nothing really to talk about. I ruin everything good I ever have. Which was really only him. He was the only good thing I had, and I broke him.”
Her eyes fill with concern. “He doesn’t seem broken to me.”
“Not anymore.” I remember how he looked the last day I saw him five years ago. Hurt, angry. Like a man vowing revenge. I had a feeling he’d be getting that someday soon.
“I don’t think you could have hurt him, Lola. Not if you cared about him. That’s not you.”
“I didn’t want to hurt him,” I say, my throat raw, my chest tight. “But I did—and the worst part is, I wasn’t even sorry. Even now, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
*
“Hold still.”
The words are whispered into my ear, hot and faintly wet. I close my eyes. Tears squeeze down onto my cheeks. I’m bent over the bed, inhaling the dank scent of the bare mattress. There are stains I don’t want to contemplate.
Some of them probably came from me.
There’s a hard thrust, and I can’t help but whimper. I clamp my mouth tight and taste blood.
“Do you like that?” comes the breathless voice from behind me. “Does your boyfriend do it like that?”
I shudder at the stabbing pain, holding myself still and closed. I only have to get through this. I only have to survive.
“Hannah?” The voice comes from outside the room—familiar and beloved. No.
He can’t come in here. He can’t see my like this. I try to call out, to tell him not to come inside, but only a croak comes out. I’m too broken to even speak, too lost.
The door opens, and I only have seconds to glimpse the surprise in his eyes. And the rage.
Then he’s flying across the room. There’s no more invasion in my body, no more hands holding me down. Only the smack of flesh on flesh, the grunt of animals locked in battle.
I know this is a fight to the death.
Chapter Nine
I stare at the glass doors that open and close. Of all the places I could imagine Blue living, it’s not here.
I would have thought a run-down apartment building with rent by the week. I would have imagined sour milk and a stack of empty pizza boxes for a coffee table. Not that I think he’s broke. Ivan takes good care of the bouncers, just like he does for the girls. If my money wasn’t getting sucked into dialysis and a gas bill for a forty-year-old house with no insulation, I’d be rolling in the dough too. As it is, there’s a twenty in my pocket that’s going to be cab fare home.
It’s just that Blue seems like the quintessential bachelor—down to work and to fuck.
Not the kind of man who has a doorman who nods to me as I step up to the desk. “Ms. Bowman?”
My heart jumps in my throat, and it doesn’t go back down even when the kind-eyed old man smiles.