The one that would do anything to save me.
Chapter 9
Lola
I can’t stop staring at him. He’s here and alive. He’s breathing, his solid chest rising and falling beneath his grey shirt. His eyes look full of life as he watches the street and drives toward the unknown, his grip firm on the steering wheel. He looks just like I remember, sexy as hell with his dark, messy hair; tattooed body; and long, lean arms. Although his hair is the slightest bit longer, his jaw a little scruffy, and his eyes carrying even more darkness within them. Whatever he’s been up to for the last couple of years has taken a toll on him.
“Do you still have the tongue ring?” I ask, rotating in the seat to face him, my face pressed against the cool leather, my legs pulled up to my knees.
His gaze slides toward me and the intensity burning in them makes me miss a breath. Instead of answering me, he slowly sticks out his tongue, as if teasing me. The silver stud glimmers in the moonlight and I bite down on my lip. “I’m still the same person, Lolita,” he says. “Nothing’s changed except for the fact that I don’t work for Frankie anymore—I don’t work for anyone.”
“And that I thought you were dead.” I don’t mean to sound bitter but I do. “That’s different now. You seem like a ghost me… not even real.” God, he’s actually real. Right here with me. I start to choke up over it, but shove it down, bury it, not ready to go there yet.
“Everyone thought I was dead,” he explains me in a emotionless tone, returning his attention back to the road. We’ve been driving for about an hour, in what direction I’m not sure since I’ve been too distracted to pay attention to anything but Layton. “Even my parents—still do.”
“But why? Why would you fake your own death? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It doesn’t?” he questions and I start to think of reasons why someone would fake their own death.
“To escape. To disappear,” I say. “But why not run away.”
He’s quiet before, his breathing calculated as if he’s battling to get oxygen into his lungs. When he finally does look at me, I can tell he’s on the verge of losing it. “You remember how you were always asking me about why I started working for Frankie?” he asks me.
I nod. “Yeah, it never made sense to me, not when he was the enemy to our families, at least I always thought so.”
“You’ve always thought that?” he questions with doubt. “That the Catherlson’s and the Everett’s were enemies?”
“Yeah… well, except for the day my….” I swallow the massive lump rising in my throat as tears start to well in my eyes again. It’s been too much of an emotional day. I need to get my shit together. `“The day my mother died and you guys got into the SUV with Frankie. I was so confused… and honestly felt kind of betrayed. But ever since then it never seemed like it was a problem again, not until a few months before… before I was kidnapped and you suddenly started working for him.”
“I had to,” he tells me through clenched teeth. “I didn’t have a choice, Lola. You have to believe that.”
“If that’s true, then tell me why,” I practically beg because I need to know so I can trust him.
He shakes his head, looking as though he’s in physical pain. “It’s so much more complicated then just telling you why I did it. It has to do with so much shit that’s happened since we were fourteen.” He turns the car off the road and into a gravel parking lot, pulling off to the side of a rundown motel where we’re hidden.
I sit up in my seat. “You mean since my mother died?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He puts the car in park, then turns off the headlights “Come inside with me and I’ll try to explain it to you the best that I can. But let me just say I don’t have the answer to everything. I’m still trying to figure stuff out myself.”
“How do I know you’re not here to kill me?” I ask, eyeing the sketchy looking building. There’s not a person in sight and it’s eerily quiet. Not to mention the thick forest within waling distance, convent for hiding bodies if needed. “How do I know that I’m not going to walk into that room and be bombarded by the Dellefontes? Or maybe you’ve take me here to shoot me—make it a discrete kill.”
He gives me a tolerant look. “And why the hell would I do that?”
“To get yourself off the hook with the Dellefontes.” I shrug, pulling off my hood and tousling my fingers with my hair as I glance around the area. “Honestly, I can think of a ton of reasons. And I have to be careful… you know how these things work.”
He exchanges a look of mutual understanding, because he does get it. Cautiousness and paranoia have been breed into us since we were born, otherwise we probably wouldn’t be living in this moment. “I understand you need to be careful… it’s good that you are.” With that he moves his hand around the back of him and takes the gun tucked in the back of his pants. He gives it to me then reaches down to his boots to retrieves his other weapon—a switchblade knife.
Boots.
Wait boots?
Suddenly something dawns on me. “You were there that night, weren’t you? That night with Tenner? You came storming in and pretty much…” Saved me from getting raped.
He gives me his knife, his fingers grazing against the palm of my hand and sending a shiver down my spine, a good kind of shiver, one that gets my blood pumping in a way it hasn’t done for since I took off. “I’ve been around a lot… been watching you for the last couple of weeks.”
He saved me that night from getting raped and I have to shut my eyes for a moment just to see past the emotions stirring inside me, ones I felt when I thought he died, ones that are hard to feel because there so potent and go against everything my mother tried to instill in me. “But how did you find me? I thought I was being careful?”
“A lot of searching,” he says, stuffing his hand into his pocket and taking out his brass knuckles, giving me the last of his weapons, giving me all the power. “I would have found you sooner, but you’re a hard person to find. Which is good, Lola. You did exactly what I wanted you to. I just wish you wouldn’t have went to work for someone that knew who you were.”
“I didn’t know he’d know,” I protest. “I thought he was just… Well, a pimp pretty much.” It feels so weird talking to him about this.