“I can try. Now, will you help me outside or not?” She sounded so surly and disgruntled I had to chuckle at her.
“Yeah, I’ll help you.” What choice did I have? “So are you planning on telling Nassir where you’re going or that you’re leaving?”
I put a hand on her waist and let her lean on me as we shuffled to the door. I pulled it open and she grunted in discomfort as the action jostled her.
“I already did. He didn’t believe me.”
The nurses looked up when we hit the hallway. They scowled at Keelyn but she just smiled sweetly as we slowly made our way to the elevator. She lifted an eyebrow at me. “They don’t like me, for some reason.”
I snickered at her and reached out to push the button with my free hand. “Because only you can get shot, operated on, and still look like a goddess. It’s not fair.”
She rolled her eyes. “I paid a lot of money to look this good.”
I’d bet she did. “I saw Nassir when you went down. He wasn’t happy, like really not happy. There is something there with him and you, isn’t there? That’s why he thinks you won’t really leave?”
She slumped back against the elevator and closed her eyes. She was obviously hurting and from more than the bullet wound in her chest.
“Nothing makes Nassir Gates happy. He is a coldhearted bastard and the only thing he cares about is Nassir. What he wants, he takes, and I have had enough of being taken by men to last me a lifetime. He would destroy me.” Her voice cracked on the last part of her sentence, and when she pulled her lids back up to look at me, I saw an expression that was all too familiar. The longing, the yearning, the burn for a man that you shouldn’t want.
“He’s very intense.”
“He’s a killer. There is no good or bad with him like there is with Bax and Race. There’s just this void where he exists in his own world and operates under his own rules, and anyone that doesn’t want to comply is going to be collateral damage. He’s ruthless and the only side that matters to him is his own. He’s all smoke and mirrors and what’s under the reflection of sophistication and humanity is a nightmare. He’s the devil in an Armani suit.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Do you really see, Reeve, because most people I talk to about him only have a vague idea about how dangerous he really can be.”
There were undertones there that spoke to something deeper between her and the exotic-looking club owner but I couldn’t question her about it because the elevator dinged as we hit the ground floor and I put my arm around her waist so that I could almost drag her toward the front doors. She was moving really slowly and I think she was in much more pain than she was letting on. I gave her a little squeeze and told her softly, “I think I see very clearly, Key. You think you can run. You think space, time, and maybe even a different man will get him out of your system because he’s not who you should want. You think that maybe, just maybe, you can be a different person, leave all the shit and mess here in the Point, and be someone you always thought you should be. You think you can replace him, lose him, and I’m going to tell you from firsthand experience it’s not that easy. Just like the city is in you, so is he, and you will always be you, so that part of you that hungers for him, aches for him even though you know he might be the end of you, it’ll still be there.”
A battered yellow cab was waiting for her, so I pulled open the back door and helped her into the backseat. The cab smelled gross and looked like it had bullet holes dotting it, but that was pretty typical for a taxi in the Point. She looked up at me with a scowl.
“Thanks for the hand, but you’re still a bitch.”
I shrugged. “So are you. Good luck chasing down a new life.”
She bit down on her lower lip. “Promise me something.” I lifted my eyebrows up at her and waited to see what she was going to ask of me. “If you see me back here in the next six months, promise me you won’t say ‘I told you so.’ That’ll really piss me off and I might have to swing at you again.”
I smiled at her and grabbed hold of the door so I could swing is shut. “Good luck, Key. I wouldn’t want to be you when Nassir finally catches up to you, but I promise not to rub it in when he brings you back.”