Chapter Twelve
Haley
I stared at my best friend, jaw hanging open.
“He…?” I trailed off, struggling to comprehend it all.
“Yes.” Kay was standing above me, dressed in a black dress that clung to her body, stopping at her knees.
She was wearing Christian Louboutin’s. She had makeup on, including blood red lipstick.
Her straight blonde hair was smoothed back into a high ponytail, making her blue eyes seem fiercer.
She looked like a different person, but at the same time, she was still Kay.
Bella had opened the curtains today, allowing the sun to break through the glass and shatter the stiff darkness of this room.
I ached to get out of this bed and after enough begging, she let me earlier this morning.
She stood close as I swung my feet over the bed, and she was overjoyed when I stood up on my own.
It was painful. I wouldn’t lie to myself about that; my torso stretched fully for the first time in weeks, and the weight of my upper body pressing down on my sore hip wasn’t fun either.
Apparently, one of those assholes kicked me in the hip as well.
Everything about that night was a blur, but the memory of that morning was the first thing that entered my mind every time I woke up here. James over me, enveloping me in his warmth and love as he thrust into me, telling me how much he loved me over and over again.
“Princess…”
Tears pricked my eyes at the thought of him as a sharp pain stabbed at my heart. God, what he must think of me after I betrayed him? Of course, I knew he was going out of his mind right now trying to hunt me down, but…when I was home safe, I knew that would be the end of us.
I betrayed him. He trusted me with that file, and I had so carelessly left it out—and it fell into the wrong hands.
“Haley.”
Kay’s voice drew me away from thoughts of my lover, and I looked up at her from the chair I was curled up in. I had been here most of the morning, staring out the window onto the water, nursing a cup of lukewarm tea.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I just…I'm having a hard time comprehending this,” I admitted.
A feeling of gratefulness settled around mem much like the night Collin saved my life. He could have killed me or worse…sold me. He could have waved me off without so much as a second glance, but he didn’t. He saved me.
Kay broke down his wall—one of many—last night. She came to me in tears, covered in flour, with a plate of cookies. The questions I had weren’t asked until this morning, when she woke up. No, instead, I just opened my arms to her, and she cried for three hours.
I couldn’t help but smirk when I met her eyes as she looked at me from the side. When she told me she was going to confront him this morning, I feared for her. It was part of the reason that I wanted to get out of bed—just in case this went the other way.
My best friend was looking out the window, watching the man in the speedboat.
“How was it?” I asked, curious. She couldn’t blame me. Out of our little college group, Collin was the most attractive. Girls were drawn to him like a moth to a flame, and I knew it irritated the shit out of my best friend.
Kay whirled, facing me full on, those baby blues wide with shock. “Haley!”
I held my hands up. “Don’t blame me, blame the drugs!”
That was a pathetic excuse. I stopped using the pain meds two days ago.
My body was healing, and it was time for action.
The news of Romano being here yesterday had me on edge.
My eyes never left that door as I clutched a butterknife in my hand underneath the blanket…
just in case that old, evil man decided to barge in.
I knew a butterknife wouldn’t kill him, but I was not going down without a fucking fight.
She rolled her eyes and began to nibble on her thumb nail. “Am I crazy?”
“Considering that you're in love with a serial killer…yeah, probably,” I deadpanned, leaning over to set the teacup on the window ledge. The pain was there but bearable.
“He wants me to come to Boston with him. Apparently, the mayor invited him to some dinner event.”
I raised a surprised brow. That was some fucking wall she broke down this morning. “Did he tell you this?”
“Yes, but I have a feeling he isn’t telling me everything. Haley, something is happening between him and Romano. There is a wedge,” she said, looking down at her feet with a furrowed brow.
“What do you mean?” The information had me sitting up a little straighter than before.
She dropped down onto her haunches in front of me, looking back at the door before turning back at me. “He answered Romano’s call.”
“Well, yeah—”
“In front of me,” she cut me off. It was time for my jaw to hang open again. She proceeded to tell me about his body language, how he chucked the phone across the room after that.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“He wants me with him, Haley. I think—I think I'm finally getting through to him,” she said softly. My heart jumped. She was finally getting her Col back. My heart jumped again, this time at the thought of going home and this shitstorm finally coming to an end.
“Do you trust him?” I asked.
She was silent for a long time. “I don’t know. I trust him with me and with you, but I don’t know about anyone else…especially—”
“Gwen,” we both said at the same time.
“This is so fucking complicated,” I grumbled, covering my face with my hands, falling back into the fluffy chair. I had to hand it to the mafia hitman: he picked out great furniture.
“Haley.”
Something in her voice made me look at her again. Her heart-shaped face was masked with concern, her eyes filled with regret.
“I don’t think I should…”
She didn’t have to finish the words. She didn’t think she should contact James, at least not right now. I grabbed her hand. “Hey,” I whispered, “I will be okay here. Bella is treating me like a princess. It’s not like I'm rotting in a dungeon.” I said, gesturing to the room.
“This room was already prepared before you got here, Hals. I think I know who it was for, but I don’t want to jump the gun here…” She trailed off, letting the unspoken words hang in the air.
“You already jumped his bones,” I teased, ignoring the sadness building up in my body, clashing with the small fraction of hope this conversation had created.
She gasped and shook her head. “Haley!”
“S-sorry,” I laughed. It was short lived, ending abruptly as she put her hand on my knee and her other hand into my hair. She rose up slightly, bringing her forehead to mine. My eyes closed as she whimpered my name.
“Don’t be stupid, Kay,” I whispered harshly, my lip trembling.
She chuckled. It was forced. “I’m a dumb blonde for a reason, right?”
Years ago, when Gwen introduced me to Kay, it was on a day where everything in our lives had gone to shit.
So, we decided to get drunk. That night, Kay poured her heart out to me, told me she was bullied in school for her hair.
She was always called the “dumb blonde,” and later, when she filled out, she was called “the blonde whore.” She always brushed it off, but Gwen and I knew those insults suck with her.
“Nothing about you is dumb, Karina Jones,” I hissed, wrapping my arms around her shoulders as tears fell down my cheeks. She hugged me back, her hand smoothing down my hair.
“I’m going to contact them,” she whispered into my ear, so low that I almost missed it. My hold on her tightened.
“Kay, no.”
She pulled away from me, her hands squeezing my shoulders. Those sky-blue eyes met mine, and there was a new fierceness behind them.
“Don’t be a hero for me,” I stammered, shaking my head.
“You would do the same for me, and we both know it,” she said gently.
“He could kill you.”
“He won’t.”
“Kay—”
“You need to go home. I have a gut feeling that your agent is set to burn the world down if you aren’t in his arms soon,” she explained, her thumbs rubbing up and down my shoulders.
“James will kill him, not to mention that murderous baseball player…remember him?” I half-yelled. Her palm snapped to my mouth, her head turning to look at the bedroom door.
When she looked back at me, there were tears in her eyes. “You aren’t missing your life for me, Hals. You will be happy. You will live.”
I removed her hand as she stood, my eyes following her. “And what about you, huh?”
She tightened her ponytail as she looked out the window, the sun bouncing off the small waves. “I always knew I was meant to be in the dark, Hals. My life has always had a shadow over it. I think—I think that I was meant to love the darkness.” She looked at me then. “Collin is my darkness.”
I swallowed. “Then promise me—promise that you will be his light. Promise me I won’t lose you. That we won’t lose you.”
There was a knock at the door, and she bent to kiss my forehead, and she was gone.
Bella came in a few moments later with a fresh change of clothes. As she was changing the sheets of the bed I had been a prisoner to, I watched my best friend and her demon disappear in the distance a few minutes later. My hands found my body as they always did.
She never promised me.
“Fuck,” I muttered.