“Were you close to him?”
I shook my head. “Not really. He wasn’t that kind of man.” I pulled into the parking lot of my old apartment building. “I lived here with him and my mom from the time I was five until I moved in with Andrew.”
I tried to keep to facts, but these facts were what made me. I’d always have the imprints of sequins in my skin, a tinge of despair in my blood, the shadow of violence and poverty following me. If I wanted to stop fighting and start living—and I sure as hell did—I had to accept that. I was made here, but this wasn’t the end of me. It was barely the beginning.
The apartment was yellow stucco, cracked and crumbling—it was pretty much the neighborhood aesthetic—with an outside staircase that was rusted, and from memory, piss filled. Two stories tall, it looked slumped and haggard, as though it was as tired of existing in this violent place as much as the residents.
“Is your pops still here?”
“No.” I took her hand and rolled it against my cheek. “He died right before I started college.”
Her fingers tensed. “So, when you came into Savage Wheelz…?”
“Mmm. Deacon got it into his head that weed would help me work through my grief. He didn’t really get that you don’t grieve for a man like my pops because he never allowed anyone to love him. He was just there, taciturn and detached. He taught me about engines, how to change oil and rotate tires, but everything else...I don’t think I even knew him. He was more like that random roommate you find on Craigslist than a grandpa.”
“Is your mom still here?” she asked carefully.
“Nope. She’s probably dead, but I don’t know. She took off when I was ten, left me here with Pops. After a year, I stopped expecting her to come back.” I inhaled deep, one final taste of this poisoned air. “I’m never coming back here again.”
“You didn’t have to bring me here.”
“I haven’t been here since I moved away, but I wanted to see it one last time. This is a needed reminder, Tiger. I don’t have to live like Andrew Whitlock. I don’t want to. But I don’t want to live like this either.”
“There’s an in-between.”
I looked at her, finding her peering back at me in the softest, most open way she ever had. She was watchful, taking me in, but also the surroundings. Helen got what it meant to come from a place like this. No matter how deep our conversation was, we both knew not to forget where we were, to stay on edge and ready to roll. This was one of the many reasons she was the only person I could have shared this with.
We weren’t exactly the same, my girl and me. We were more like warped reflections in the same mirror. When she said she understood me, she meant it on a bone-deep level. Once I got my head out of my ass, I understood her the same way.
Holding her gaze, I pressed my lips to her palm. “I get that now. I’m finding it.”
“Can I come along?”
“Baby, there’s no way I’m taking another step without you beside me.”
I drove away from my old home for the final time and didn’t look back. I’d never forget where I came from, but that was just it: where I came from wasn’t where I was going. There was nothing there for me, and there never had been.
“To the lights?” Helen asked. “Are we going to see the lights?”
“Yeah, baby. That’s where we’re going.”
What I didn’t say was I’d already seen the light, and she was a red-lipped, bat-carrying, badass beauty.
Chapter Thirty
Helen
I’d been to embarrassingly few places, and nowhere outside California except a couple quick trips into Mexico when my mom dragged me to her favorite special pharmacy to pick up her special medicine. Theo didn’t make fun of me for absolutely gawking at the bright lights and massive hotels on the Strip. He held my hand and indulged my every whim, ducking in and out of hotel after hotel.
After the intensity of his revelations, I thought he needed this, the easiness of being tourists without much care in the world, as much as I did. We ate dinner and walked around until midnight, then we left the Strip to check in to our room at a nondescript hotel. When the clerk asked if we wanted a room with two double beds or one queen, Theo deferred to me. I answered “queen” without missing a beat. I had missed this man badly in every way. I wasn’t sleeping without him.
Theo had given me everything. More than anyone ever had. He’d shown me his ugly, an ugly I never would have guessed by looking at him, by knowing him, by falling for him. I saw his ugly, and it made who he was that much more beautiful.
By the time we walked into our hotel room, I was nervous. I wasn’t the kind of girl who got nervous, not about sex, or really anything besides my sister’s safety. This was new, the things I was feeling for Theo. It wasn’t like how we were before. Now, we were stripped down and raw. Two people who’d revealed themselves and dared each other not to look away. I would never look away from him. It was Theo seeing me in the same way that made me want to hide.
I wouldn’t. I had a feeling if I wanted to, he wouldn’t let me anyway. But the urge was there.
I threw my bag down. “I need a shower.”
Theo made sure the door was locked, then sat on the corner of the bed to toe his shoes off. “I probably do too.”
My stomach swirled. God, he was hot, even with his Elvis glasses on the top of his head. Maybe him being willing to wear them made him even hotter. Those glasses on his head and the blooming warmth in my chest chased away some of my nerves, leaving room for blatant desire.
“We’re in the desert, Theodore.”
His brow furrowed, but he gave a little laugh. “I know that, Tiger.”
I slanted my head in the direction of the bathroom. “So, shouldn’t we conserve water?”
Theo didn’t need more of an invitation. We were undressed and under the hot spray of the shower within minutes, washing each other, embracing and touching like it was our hundred-year reunion instead of weeks.
I’d said I had missed him, and that was true. I missed all of him, including this. The way he touched me, like he’d never get enough, like he’d never had anything better, like I was both precious and sensuous.
We dried off hastily, then we were on the bed, kissing, stroking, sucking. Theo rolled me to my back, moving slowly down my body. He stopped at my breasts, cupping them to his mouth to suck the beaded tips. His tongue swirled around my nipple, then his lips closed over it, pulling it deep into his mouth. My back arched and knees tried to press together, but Theo was between them, keeping them open.
“Theo,” I sighed. “Please.”
“Mmm. No. Let me have you, Helen. Give me you.”
I glided my fingers through his wet hair, opening my eyes to watch him travel down my body. “You have me.”
He met my eyes from between my legs, and the look he gave me made me stop breathing. It was fierce and possessive, with kiss-swollen lips and fire in his eyes.