Chapter 6
CHAPTER
SIX
ADAM
Standing in front of Austin’s closed front door, I don’t pick the lock the way that I did in the middle of the night. Instead, I lift my hand and knock. I stand there for just a few moments, then clear my throat as I wait for her to open the door.
She does. Her eyes are wild, and she is still wearing her pajamas from last night. My lips twitch into a smirk as I brush past her and walk into her apartment. She watches me, closing the front door after me.
“Why are you here?” she asks.
Instead of answering her, I turn to face her fully. Sliding my gaze up and down her body, I take in her whole fucking being. From head to toe and then back up to head until my gaze catches hers and holds her own.
“Adam,” she exhales.
Fuck me, but Austin is sexy as shit. She’s all long, lean legs and long blonde hair. I’ve always gone after brunettes, but there is something about this long, tall blonde that makes my cock hard as goddamn nails.
“I’m here because I visited your mother. What a treat that was.”
Her eyes widen, and I can see the panic cross her face before she schools her features. Then she clears her throat and takes half a step backward. She appears uneasy, and I don’t think it has anything to do with me. Instead, I’m positive it has to do with the fact that I met her mother.
“I haven’t been able to get ahold of her in almost a year, and here you are. You’ve already found her after just a few hours.”
My lips twitch into a small smile. I decide that this isn’t the time to be a cocky asshole. That can happen later. Right now, I am more concerned with earning Austin’s trust than earning her body before I start being cocky.
“I did. I’ve got connections that regular people don’t. It took some digging, but I found her.”
“Do I want to know where?” she asks, chewing on the corner of her bottom lip.
She wants to know where, and she wants to know why her mother left her with this astronomical debt and even more astronomical interest rate. But I have a feeling that she already knows.
Instead of just making her guess or not telling her, I decide that Austin deserves to know everything. I don’t know her well, but she’s doing something she loathes and has given up her dreams for this shit. She has the right to know every detail about it.
“Your mother is living with some guy. I didn’t really pay attention to his name because he wasn’t important and wasn’t who I was looking for,” I say.
Austin snorts, then walks over to the sofa and sits back, nestling herself in the corner before she brings her feet to the cushions and her thighs close to her chest. I watch as she lowers her chin to rest on top of her knees, her eyes focused on mine, and she waits for the rest of the story.
“Why am I not surprised that she hooked up with some guy for a place to live?” Austin asks. “Sounds like my whole childhood,” she murmurs, but I can tell that she’s thinking about the past. She’s got a faraway look in her eyes.
I don’t ask her to elaborate on that. Although I have more questions now than I did earlier. Lifting my hand, I walk over to the coffee table and assume my position from last night of sinking down on the edge and placing my forearms against my thighs.
“What are you not telling me?” she finally asks.
“I’m going to go ahead and assume that you know she’s an addict,” I begin. “But wherever she has been in her addiction, it’s probably worse now.”
Austin’s face falls, her expression becomes haunted, and I know that she is, without a doubt, aware of how bad her mother can get. I’m thinking that it’s the worst of the worst because even I felt sorry for her when I first walked in on the scene of her strung all the way the fuck out.
But then I remembered that she saddled her daughter with a hundred grand of bullshit debt, and my sympathy went right out the goddamn window.
But there is no way in fuck that she will ever be able to get Austin that money, not even if she worked the streets every minute of every fucking day until the day she died.
“She won’t be paying me back, ever, will she?” Austin asks.
“No, baby, she won’t.”
I watch as a single tear slides down Austin’s cheek, and I decide at that exact moment that I’m going to take care of it all. Every fucking part of her that needs to be taken care of, starting with paying that shit off.
AUSTIN
Adam’s words sink in about my mother, and for the first time since all of this happened, I feel a combination of helplessness and hopelessness. I don’t think that I’ve felt complete hopelessness before now, but I do, and my chest hurts.
“You’re going to be okay,” Adam murmurs.
Am I, though? Seriously? Am I going to be okay? Because I do not feel like I am. I feel like this is the end of my world—my financial world and my ballet world. There is no way that I can get this debt paid off and then start all over again for myself.
My entire body begins to tremble, and I have to close my eyes to keep the tears from falling down my face in heavy streams. I absolutely hate myself at this moment.
I hate who I am right now.
I’m weak.
Crying over an addict.
Someone who has been in and out of recovery for a decade. Someone that I thought was clean, so I did something really fucking stupid and cosigned for a loan for her. I can hear Adam moving around, but I can’t bring myself to open my eyes and look at him.
Then, before I realize what’s happening, he has his palm against my cheek, his thumb glides beneath the underside of my eye, and he’s wiping away the wetness that’s escaped.
“Open your eyes, Austin.”
It’s a soft-spoken demand, but a demand, nonetheless. Slowly, I open my eyes and am met with his. We connect and stay that way for a silent moment.
Then he leans forward.
My breath hitches with the anticipation of a kiss, but his lips don’t touch mine. Instead, he rests his forehead against my own.
Slowly, my eyes open when nothing happens. I can feel his breath brush against my face, but he doesn’t kiss me. He doesn’t speak. He just stays close to me. Then his hands shift, and I feel his arms wrap around my shoulders as he holds me close.
“Adam,” I whisper.
“I’m going to fix this for you, baby. No more tears.”