“I’ll start your shower. You relax.”
He couldn’t. Even when she led him to his bedroom and sat him on the bed. He listlessly pulled off his boots and shirt and watched her move around his bathroom, starting the shower, warming it up, getting towels from the cabinet. She came back to him smiling, but he couldn’t muster the will or the strength to return it from the deepest depths of his soul right now, no matter how far inside he reached.
Lifting his gaze to hers, he had but one question. “How?”
Starla’s jubilant expression began a slow fall. “How what?”
“That…him. How?”
She seemed to be struggling with some inner turmoil—maybe she was trying to convince herself he didn’t mean what she thought he meant.
Except he did. He held her gaze steadily while the slow dawn of understanding spread across her features and, with it, despair.
“What the fuck, are you serious right now?”
All his exhaustion fled in a burst of rage. “I can’t even imagine you with someone like that, or hanging out in some of the places I’ve been tonight. He’s a goddamn drug dealer, Starla. Jesus! What the hell is your problem, getting hooked up with someone like him?”
“Don’t you do this to me right now,” she ground out, her voice trembling, her eyes like dark ice. She backed away several steps. “Not you too. I can deal with this shit from anybody else, but not you.”
“I have a family—” he yelled at her, surging to his feet, but she cut him off.
“Oh, fucking good for you! I didn’t ask for you to take me in either, did I? You jumped up all knight-in-shining armor and did that on your own! You ran out in the middle of the night to find him yourself. What, do you think I do any of that shit he deals in?”
“Do you?”
“I can’t believe you would ask me that. I really can’t. Have I ever seemed high to you?”
“Not that I could see, but there must be some reason—”
“No, I don’t do drugs. I don’t even smoke weed. Brian wouldn’t have it.”
“Oh, Brian wouldn’t have it—”
“For fuck’s sake, he tried to murder Brian. I thought that established for you that he wasn’t a good guy. And now you’re freaked out?”
“It was plainly established for you that he wasn’t a good guy from the start. It’s one thing to get mixed up with someone who turns out to be scum, but to go into it knowing he’s that dangerous is insane.”
“Come on, say it. I was asking for it, right?”
“No, but why…just why? I don’t get it.”
She gave a defiant toss of her head. “Maybe he’s a great fuck. Get that?”
The words wouldn’t even compute right away; his brain wouldn’t accept them. He stormed blindly past her, almost reaching the bathroom door before he turned back. “Congratulations. I hope that fuck was worth it. I really do.”
She only blinked at him, looking small and lost. And he wished as he stripped off his jeans and stepped under the hot shower spray that the water would wash away some of this chaos in his mind. Standing with his hands braced against the wall, he let the stream hit the back of his neck and the tension between his shoulder blades. Nothing would melt the knot there, not for days.
Was that all she cared about? Living wild and free and doing whatever she wanted, damn the consequences? That was fine for her. But if that was the way it was, she need not try her luck here. He’d been through too much shit to waste his time on someone like that. What he could use was some time away—maybe Shelly would let him take the girls to his parents’ lake house for a few days. They could fish, hike the trails, take the boat out. The outdoors never failed to clear his head.
He’d believed in her. Stood up for her.
“Jared?”
Turning his head and peeking over his arm, he could see her vague outline standing on the other side of the fogged shower door. He didn’t answer her, instead grabbing his bottle of shampoo and squeezing out a dollop into his palm. If she wanted to talk, she could talk.
“I know, okay? I’ve heard it all from everyone. Brian and Ghost and Jan and…everyone. You know that. I didn’t listen, I like to think I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself, but this time I got in over my head. What do you want me to say? I’m sorry and I’ll never do it again? I won’t do it again. But I won’t apologize to you, because I didn’t do anything to you. You got involved in this all on your own.”
“That explains why you came here when Brian got attacked.”
“I told you why I did that! I didn’t ask you if I could stay. You told me to stay.”
“You knew I would.”