7
SHIT.
Her head tilted to the side, and her eyes squinted. I froze. She recognized me. That’s what that expression had to mean. Maybe she hadn’t been as trashed that night in the hostel showers as I thought.
She released the VIP guy’s hand and started down the small set of steps that led to the dance floor.
My heart didn’t hammer. It beat in slow, heavy beats like a bass drum. It had the same kind of echo, too. I could have turned away. It wouldn’t have been hard to melt into the sea of buzz cuts and slip off the boat. She’d be confused for a little while, but eventually she’d assume it was the alcohol or that she’d been imagining it.
That’s what I should have done.
Instead, I kept my feet planted. I pulled my hands from my pockets, flicking my fingers with anticipation. I wanted her to see me. If she saw me, I could talk to her. I wasn’t sure what I would say—-what I could say that wouldn’t give away who I was and how much I knew about her. But I could finally get some answers. And maybe help give her some comfort, too.
She walked toward me slowly, one heeled foot in front of the other.
When she was a few feet away, she smiled and my heart abandoned it’s slow and steady beat.
This was stupid and crazy and ridiculous.
My body didn’t seem to care about those things.
I sucked in a breath as she stepped up to me and held it in . . . as she slid past me and leaned up to place a kiss on the cheek of an impossibly tall guy with short dark hair.
“Здраво!” The word she said sounded like zdrah--voh, and based on his reaction, I’d say it was a greeting.
I was positive when he returned, “Hello again, Kelsey.”
I stumbled back, trying to put a bit of distance between us, and tried to place the guy. I didn’t recognize him from the club the night before, so that meant she’d met him when I wasn’t around. Maybe at her hostel. Or earlier in the night when I’d lost her.
The two began talking, but I didn’t hear them over my own berating thoughts about my supreme idiocy.
She laughed, and the guy from VIP grabbed her elbow, tugging her away from the taller guy. I watched her introduce them, calm and cool as though VIP guy wasn’t squeezing her elbow so tightly that it looked painful.
The other guy stepped forward like he was going to do something, but she flashed him a look and then shook her head, laughing. She wrapped an arm around VIP, and it diffused some of his tension.
Now I really hated this guy.
She shot her friend an apologetic look, and then pulled VIP away onto the dance floor.
Before, in the VIP room, she’d danced alone, carefree and vibrant as she always seemed at night, but I could see the cracks in that facade now. She turned her back to him as she danced, and closed her eyes. Her full lips pulled down in a frown, and her jaw clenched like she was struggling to hold something in.
It took me a second to place the expression, but eventually I matched it with her face that first day in the gardens. When she’d said goodbye to the guy she’d been with in the woods, I’d been seated on the stairs watching. She’d passed me, heading off into the woods. But before she passed me on the stairs, I caught her expression as she climbed the stairs. She had a smooth, angular face, but somehow then it had looked almost caved in by exhaustion.
She looked the same now.
From song to song, even that expression disappeared until she was blank, like that first faceless sketch I’d made of her.
Eventually, she pulled away from the guy she was dancing with, only to have him pull her back in, his hands possessive claws at her waist.
She smiled, her blank face long gone. Gesturing off to the left, she peeled his arms from her waist. She held out one finger like she’d be right back, but there was an angry sag to his mouth. She reached up and kissed that gash of a mouth, and he let her go, watching as she wove across the floor to the hall where the bathrooms were located.
I didn’t think as I moved toward him.
I just remembered his ugly frown, and the way he’d gripped her elbow.
Standing in front of him, he paid me no mind, still watching her disappear down the bathroom hallway.
“Go back to your room upstairs.”
He turned toward me, and said, “What?”
“Leave her alone.”
He scoffed and rolled his eyes. He turned and started off in the direction that Kelsey had gone.
“Hey, I’m serious.” I grabbed his shoulder and spun him back around. “Leave her the f*ck alone.”
“She have a golden p-ssy or something? Is that why everyone wants her?”
“She doesn’t have anything where you’re concerned. You’re going to be gone when she comes back.”
“No, a*shole. You will.”
That was really all the provocation I needed. I’d been itching to break something since this morning, and this guy had irked me from the moment I saw him. Maybe I couldn’t hold a real one--year chip in my hand to distract me, but his face against my knuckles should do the trick.
He shoved my hand off his elbow, and I let him. Only then I brought it back in a fist and rammed it as hard as I could across his jaw.
Pain burst across my knuckles, followed by a shot of adrenaline that burned up my veins and set a fire in my chest. He swung back at me, and I ducked, ramming my shoulder up into his midsection. He coughed out a breath, and stumbled backward, his sagging mouth now an ugly, gaping hole.
He spit, and then came raging back at me. His punch was slow, and I leaned back, letting it pass in front of my face. I threw a left cross, letting my hips and shoulder push through until impact.
He went down hard, carving out a hole on the dance floor as he sprawled out beneath the flashing neon lights.
It felt fantastic. Until I turned around to find the bouncer who had been stationed out front when I came on board.
I WAS NURSING a bruised jaw and a busted lip of my own, courtesy of the bouncer, when my own phone rang. I was hanging out just down the riverbank from the club, keeping an eye out for Kelsey, and I hit answer.
“Hello?” I closed my eyes against the sting of my split lip and heard Kelsey’s father on the other end.
“Hunt?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I didn’t expect you to answer.”
“Why not, sir?”
“It’s four in the morning there, isn’t it?”
So it was. He was becoming accustomed to Kelsey’s altered schedule.
“I’m a light sleeper,” I answered.
“Good. Where are you now?”
“Belgrade, sir.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“Serbia, sir.”
“Why in the world is she in Serbia? What do you even do in Serbia?”
I really didn’t think he wanted to know. “Sightseeing. The usual.”
“That stupid girl is going to wind up kidnapped or something, and I’m not paying the ransom just because she decided to go off gallivanting in Third World countries.”
I winced. Serbia might have been a little rough around the edges, but it was far from Third World. I knew that from experience. And though I didn’t think Mr. Summers was serious about not paying a ransom, it didn’t make me any more inclined to spill Kelsey’s secrets to the guy.
“She’s not going to get kidnapped. Serbia is much safer now than it was a few decades ago. Belgrade especially is as safe as most other European capitals. And I’m watching out for her. She’s fine.”
“When’s she coming home? That’s what I want to know.”
“I don’t know, sir. I don’t really get close enough to her to have a conversation.”
Ignoring that moment tonight when I’d wanted to.
I added, “You could always call her. Let her know you’re worried. Maybe she’ll come home sooner or choose a more familiar destination.”
She clearly missed home.
Mr. Summers only gave a low grunt in response.
“Just don’t let her pull any stupid stunts.”
“Stunts, sir?”
He sighed, exasperated. “She’s dramatic, like her mother. She does something stupid, and then always finds someone else to take the blame. She’ll come home pregnant or gay and it will be my fault.”
“How would that be your fault, sir?”
“It wouldn’t be. It would be yours.”
Now I was holding back a sigh.
“Of course, sir.”
“Good. Good night.”
He didn’t wait for my reply before he hung up, and maybe I was still looking for a fight, but I really didn’t like him either.
I wanted to be relieved when Kelsey left the club a few minutes later without VIP guy, but that deflated look was back, and that didn’t make me feel any better.
I followed her as she walked home alone, actively fighting the urge to jog up to her side and say hello.
There were a lot of things I didn’t know about Kelsey Summers. But I did know that I was getting really tired of living on the sidelines.