My voice is hoarse. “That was to say I’m sorry. It’s over now.”
He shakes his head slowly. “No, gorgeous. You gave yourself to me because you wanted this as bad as me. It’s not ending now. It’s not ending ever. It took me five goddamn years of fucking my hand, of dreaming of you, of hating you, to find my way back. And now that I’m here, I’m not letting go.”
“It can’t work,” I say, but that’s a lie. I want it to work.
I want him to make me be with him.
“It will be hard. It kills me to see another man look at your body, your breasts. To watch you dance for him. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. All I know is that I need you.”
My breath catches in my chest. “I hurt you, Blue. I lied about you. I sent you away.”
He’s silent for a long moment, his eyes dark with pain and fury. And regret. “I held on to the anger, but I think in some way I was holding on to you. Anything was better than letting go.”
“So you’re just going to forgive me? How can you?” Especially when I haven’t forgiven myself.
“I think I already have,” he says, almost thoughtful now. “I know what things were like, how hard things were for you, moving from house to house, all the asshole foster kids fucking with you. Including me.”
“You weren’t like them,” I say, fierce.
“Wasn’t I?” he says sadly. “Every boy in that house wanted under your skirt. I wasn’t that different.”
He was completely different. “You didn’t deserve what I did to you.”
Even if I’d only done it to save him.
“I don’t want to live in the past anymore. Give me a future, Lola.”
I shove against him, but he’s immovable. A mountain. “You don’t deserve a stripper for a girlfriend. You don’t deserve a shitty job at a strip club either. You’re better than all of this.”
His eyes take on a painful light, a raw intensity that’s reflected in his voice. “That’s where you’re wrong. All this time, all these years, I’ve been nothing. Only when I’m near you am I anything at all. I don’t deserve you, but not because you’re a stripper. I don’t deserve you because of what I did to you, how I’ve treated you. But even knowing that, I can’t let you go.”
“I can’t,” I say brokenly. I can’t be with him, can’t pretend we’re okay. I can never tell him the truth about that night long ago, and that means we’ll never be together. “Please. Let me go.”
For the first time, doubt enters his eyes. He can be demanding and forceful. He can be cold. The one time he asks for something, when faced with the answer no, he doesn’t look mean. He looks at me with longing, as if I’m miles away instead of trapped by his body. As if I’m years away—because really I’m still just a scared little girl with no one to turn to.
*
The sun is already high by the time I reach home. In broad daylight it’s clear how much I haven’t done. I can pay the taxes and the water bill, but I can’t bring the plants in the flower box back to life. I can’t turn this run-down house in a scary neighborhood into home.
For now.
Blue’s parting words echo in my head, relenting for the moment, promising so much more. I don’t know how to tell him why we can’t be together. And sometimes, when his hands are on me, when his scent is in my lungs, I don’t know myself. But then I see this house and the Grand. I remember who I am again. I’m the unwanted child and the cheap slut.
I’m everything men told me to be. All the men I’ve known except Blue.
The sidewalk has a thousand cracks, the concrete pieces slanted. It’s like there’s been a tiny apocalypse on the ground of this neighborhood, leaving only rubble. As many times as I’ve walked home, I have to watch my step. I have to choose each step carefully, gaze trained to the ground.
I see the shadow first—something swooping in. A bird overhead, that’s my first thought. Only there’s a hand on my wrist. There’s a rough voice in my ear. Then I’m tripping, falling, landing in the rubble where I belong.
“Little bitch thought you could ignore me?”
I gasp as a hand circles my throat. It’s hard to speak, to breathe, but I force out the words. “What…are you…”
“Then you sent your guard dog after me.”
He drags me along the sidewalk. My feet kick against broken rock.
Attacked. I’m being attacked.
I’m in broad daylight. My gaze whips over the neighborhood, but it’s empty. The middle of the day and it’s fucking empty because everyone here is like me—working nights and sleeping days, hiding inside as much as possible. I think a curtain moves behind a window across the street, but I don’t have hope that they’ll come help.
I don’t even know if they’ll call the police. Cops are crooked enough to bring their own kind of trouble, and the people here know that.
Which means I’m on my own.