I’ll get control of the Underground. I’ll be smarter, better organized, I’ll make sure my mother is safe, and as for Melanie . . .
I tap on the car roof and lower the partition separating us from Derek. “Drive over to get her friend, the happy one,” I say with sarcasm.
Mumbling some sort of protest under her breath, she shakes her head. “Don’t go. I’ve been dreaming about you.”
“And call one of the guys,” I tell Derek. “I’ll need you to stay with princess while someone drives me to the airport.” I pull up the partition between us and Derek and groan. “Don’t say that now,” I whisper.
She grabs my hand and puts it on her tits. “When I see you, my boobs hurt.”
God. She’s so fucking drunk. “When you’re sober, I’m going to tell you some shit you won’t like,” I whisper, a gruff warning. “Don’t say anything now.”
“Greyson . . .”
“I’m going to tell you something about me but I don’t want you to try to fix me. I can’t be fixed. You either need to accept who I am or tell me you want to leave, and I give you my word I’ll let you go if you ask for that.”
She stops and blinks, her voice emotional. “You sound like you think you’re bad for me.”
“I am.” I glance out the window and grind my molars, tightening my hold because this might just be the last time I hold her like this.
“You’re not. What you did for me in the rain is one of the nicest things anyone has done for me.”
“Fuck. Stop saying that; you’ve said that before and that pisses me off.”
“Why?”
“Because you should be inundated with people doing nice shit for you. To you.”
She smirks. “I don’t like them doing nice things to me, I like it when they’re a little bad. Like you.”
I laugh. “Yeah, you’re so drunk. You wanted to kill me just now. Then fuck me. Now you want to canonize me?”
“Because you’re a bad boy, but a good man, and I’m in fucking lov—”
I shut her up with my mouth because I can’t take it. I can’t take her sincerity, the thought that she might seem to have forgiven me now, but she won’t when I tell her what I do, is something I can’t take. It’s grown too big, the way I feel for her, the way I respect her, like her, admire her, the way I want her to be happy and the torment of knowing that every moment I’m with her, I could be putting her at risk. I can’t risk her. She has to know.
And Greyson King will have zero future with her.
? ? ?
SHE’S ASLEEP BY the time Derek brings her angry friend, who’s fucking fuming as he loads her and Melanie’s suitcases into the trunk.
She slides into the car. “What the fuck did you do to her?” Immediately she signals to Melanie’s neck. “She never takes off her precious necklace. It’s always under her shirt and today it was right on top of it. So, what did you do to her?”
For the first time I notice.
Melanie did take off my necklace.
There’s a roiling in my gut, a feeling like I’m sinking as I brush my fingers regretfully over her bare throat. I wanted her to use it, didn’t I? I wanted her to sell it.
It shouldn’t hurt like this, it shouldn’t even fucking matter.
“I’m driving you two to a suite at a better and safer hotel,” I say in a cold, emotionless voice, low and keeping my eyes on Melanie. “I’d appreciate if you kept her company until I can return.”
“I’ll do it for her because it’s her birthday but not because you asked me to, asshole.”
TWENTY
* * *
CONFUSED
Melanie
I wake up disoriented, and then, like a brick to the head, it hits me.
I’m drunk, still.
More like hungover.
A fierce pounding in my temples makes me squint my eyes as I try to place myself. I groan and shift in bed, and I realize that I have a braid and I don’t remember doing my hair. To think that Greyson may have put his hands on my hair makes my stomach hurt.
I push to my feet and peer around the room. It’s three a.m.
I fell asleep in the car?
There’s an enormous bathroom and I feel so filthy, I go around the room in search of my stuff—and see my suitcase. Quickly I tear off my clothes and pull out a T-shirt and cotton undershorts, then walk around, parched. I guzzle a bottle of water and peer around. I’ve never been in such a big room. It’s lavishly decorated, and very cozy. There are pictures on the wall of wildlife next to wooden boomerangs.
Books run from side to side on one wall in a living room, and there’s another closed room. I see Pandora’s shoes by the bar and I frown in confusion.
I hear a noise from a third room and peer inside, and I see him.
My insides tighten when he doesn’t see me.
He’s got glinting silver things spread out over the bed. He looks freshly showered and is slipping into a shirt, sleek black slacks hanging low on his waist.
The lamps to both sides of the bed are made of onyx, each with a lightbulb glowing warmly at the center, filtering through the onyx in an incredibly elegant way. It kisses his skin golden, it runs through his hair, it touches him in a way that makes me fist my hands at my side.
The sight of him reminds me so much of other mornings. In his huge, empty apartment. When we were fooling around, sometimes taking a bath together. It felt like he was mine.
But he’s not.
Instant emotion swells inside me when I think of him and that woman.
Then I remember Riley.
Our fight.
What else happened?
As I try to decipher what’s on the bed, I notice he’s begun observing me with a quiet, narrowed stare, and something passes across his face, a wistful kind of longing that makes my own yearning slice me up in quarters.
“Where are we?” I croak.
“A hotel.”
“Not my hotel.”
“It is now.”