Back and forth. Back and forth. Stop abruptly. Tug the hair. Scowl. Mumble profanity. Turn. Repeat.
I watched Wes pace the floor, figuratively burning the tread off his shoes in the process. He stopped suddenly, clenched both hands into fists and faced me. “I’m going to fucking kill him. I’ll ruin him. Political career”—he made a slashing gesture with his hand—“over. He’s going to pay in blood!”
“He already did.” I glanced up when the chill in the room turned white hot. Wes’s eyes were dark, pitch black with only a tiny ring of translucent green around them. “Mason beat the hell out of him,” I whispered, the words trailing off. Gulping down the dry ball of newspaper that had built like paper Mache in my throat, I tried to speak, but the look in his eyes kept me silent.
Wes’s eyebrows narrowed so severely a gnarly pair of eleven’s worked its way above his nose. “Mason? Who the fuck is Mason?”
I blinked at the grating tone of his voice. “Uh...uh, Mace is an ex-client…” Wes’s eyes went dead flat, devoid of feeling then widened. “Friend,” I amended.
Back to pacing.
“I can’t believe this. My girlfriend gets attacked, by a scumbag”—he turned on a heel and kept walking—“and ends up in the hospital, and I’m not told jack shit about it! Jesus Christ, Mia! This is so fucked up.” It probably wouldn’t do any good to point out that we hadn’t officially determined the status of our relationship until yesterday, but I thought it might go over worse than a hole to the head. He stood still, his eyes closed, jaw ticking with the extreme way he was holding his mouth so tight. “I don’t know what to do.”
Jumping up, I grabbed his hands, brought them up between us and rubbed out the tension until they loosened. “Baby, there’s nothing you can do.”
He bit down hard on his lip, so much so that I worried he’d break through the tender flesh until he drew blood. “Mia, I’m so angry.” His voice was raw and pained. “I need to do something.” His eyes opened and found mine.
“No. You need to see to me. Help me. That’s what you can do. It’s over.”
And it was. I had spent the last hour going over in excruciating detail what happened, the moments leading up to the assault and the fallout. Through it all, Wes held my hand, sat patiently while I retold the horrific experience, and caressed my back, wiped my tears and more. He listened and didn’t react until afterward. Once I’d told him an acceptable version of what Aaron did to me that night and the time before, when he inappropriately touched me while I slept…that’s when Wes started the pacing. And profanity. Next came anger.
Wes shook his head and clutched at his hair for the umpteenth time. “It’s not over. There’s a god damned whole in my gut. Sweetheart, the only thing that’s going to fix this is me taking that fucker down. Don’t you see?” His eyes blazed as his hands shook. “He hurt the woman I love. Badly. He needs to feel that pain.”
“Like I said, he is. He has to go to a therapist, AA, and more. Baby, if this hits the news or anyone finds out about what happened, the ramifications will hurt a lot more people than just Aaron. Hundreds, possibly thousands more in other countries. Warren, his Dad, he’ll have to pull out of the project. His investors would never support a man whose son is a sexual predator and a drunk. Please try to understand.”
And back to the pacing. I knew by the slump of his shoulders that he got it. We’d already been over it. I told him about Warren’s business, about the work he was doing, about the contributions pouring in and how all that could very well stop if something this heinous came out. The good ol’ boys club would crucify him and take their money with them. Weston knew that. He agreed to it because, if faced with the same circumstances, he would pull funding.
“Wes, there’s also the backlash…” I tried to broach the very sticky subject of my work and how the rest of the world would view me.
His eyes narrowed, and he leaned against the edge of the chair across from me. “Backlash?”
I nodded. “Yeah. On you, on Alec, Mason, Tony, Hector, the D’Amico’s, Tai, Anton; it’s too much to risk to go for a full-court-press-style justice for what he did.”
“Sweetheart, you’re losing me. Who are all those people?”
And that was when it got real. Very real. The kind of real that either made couples stronger or broke them forever. I had no choice.
“Wes, you know I’m an escort. The general public thinks that means I’m a well-paid hooker, and in some instances, that information could be inferred as correct.” He huffed and let out a long breath. “Also, securing me as an escort means that the people who can afford me are all big in their own right.”
“I’m not following. Explain it.” He spoke in a way that I found rather ruthless. He wanted to go there? Fine. I’d take him.