FIFTY-TWO
DINNER WAS A different affair that night. On purpose or not, the call came to say room service was on its way up. At the sound of the main suite door opening, she went out to find only Darroch waiting with the guy unloading his cart.
As soon as that guy was gone, she snagged her plate from the table and ignored her roommate calling her back, choosing to eat in her room.
The next morning, she lingered in the shower. Usually she found peace there. With water cascading through her hair, somehow her thoughts would order, she’d emerge refreshed.
Not that time.
Breakfast had probably been and gone; she couldn’t hide in her room forever. Darroch spent most of the previous day with his brothers, or out of the suite anyway, she hadn’t asked. They hadn’t spent that much time together. Any time together.
Maybe he’d been right. She’d used him and no one deserved that.
Opening her bedroom door quietly, she peeked around. Resting her forehead against it, only one half of her face would be visible to the room beyond. Either he had supersonic hearing or he could sense her, because he zeroed in immediately from his place behind the laptop at the dining table.
Darroch Breckenridge.
She didn’t fear him. So why was she avoiding him? Because she didn’t want to have the fight? Why not?
No pressure. No rush. No rage. They just scrutinized each other from opposite corners.
“I didn’t mean to use you for sex.”
Her voice was small, matching how she felt.
“Never had a problem with the sex,” he said, the smooth cadence of his voice so calm that she envied him. “I’m here for whatever you need.”
“I can’t forgive myself for causing this.”
“You aren’t causing this.”
“I told you if you getting hurt was anything to do with your connection to me I’d never forgive myself.”
“That’s not why you’re pushing me away.”
“Are you Darroch right now or Jacob?”
In the time he took to shift position, his tongue met the center of his top lip. “I can be whatever you need me to be.”
“Is that what you think of me?” Given her behavior in the last couple of days, he could be forgiven for it. “I’m not a callous user only interested in taking what I can get.” Her confidence waned fast. “Am I?”
“No,” he said and actually smiled. “Far from it. You’re a woman with her eye on the prize.” Devotion. Which was what he said he wanted. “I can give it to you, Savanna. I can give you everything.”
“That’s not what I wanted. I never wanted that.”
“What do you want, baby?”
And he just didn’t get it. “What do you want?” she asked. “What did you think you’d achieve? Lying to me every day, every minute. You’d have to know how I’d react. I told Jacob upfront that I—” Closing her eyes, she appealed quietly to the powers above. “We can’t have this conversation.”
“Why not?” he asked and rose to dart around the dining table, maybe enlivened by the apparent in.
She immediately pulled the door closer. “Don’t come over here. Stay there.”
“Because you don’t trust yourself to be near me?” he asked, though did stop. “That’s exactly how I felt. Every time we were together, I wanted to tell you, then I got scared.”
“Men like you don’t get scared.”
“Want to bet?” he asked. “I might’ve said the same until I met you, Savanna Mayden. I feared seeing the light in your eye fade. The way you looked at me then, the way you look at me now. Cherry, I—”
“Don’t call me that. How many times do I have to—”
“Why not? You never had a problem with it before.”
“I thought we had a chance then. That we were partners.”
“Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed!”
The door burst open and Roxie came running in. “Come! Come with me!” Grabbing Savanna, the woman attempted to reverse course.
She resisted. “What are you—”
“They got him! You’ve got to come! Come! Come!”
Got him? Oh, God, they—Roxie’s urgency fueled hers.
They got him? The guy? Her… Oh, God!
Running down the corridor, the elevator opened automatically to swallow them both. Roxie stabbed at the button then tossed the hair from her face.
“How did the elevator know we—”
“It knows when I’m coming.”
Wow. “How—”
“I don’t ask questions, I just get the perks,” Roxie said, smoothing both of them as they descended. “Are you okay? How’s your heart rate?”
Yeah, wow, her chest was rising and falling fast. Because of this news or her conversation with Darroch?
“Where are we going? How did they get him?”
“Trying to get in here!” Roxie scoffed in affront. “Can you believe it? Asshole. Not a chance in hell.”
She shivered. “He was here?”
“Is here! It’s happening right now!”
“Happening right—”
The moment the elevator doors opened, Roxie grabbed her again, dashing out to weave them around a half dozen obstructing people into a long, windowless corridor. Suddenly, they stopped. Roxie turned right into the wall. Except it wasn’t the wall, a secret door gave way and they were in a room. A small room with what had to be one-way glass.
“Do you see him?”
“Do I…?”
As the whiplash subsided, she peeked through the people beyond and out to the street. A dozen police vehicles crowded around the chaotic scene. A guy, dragged down the sidewalk, fighting, objecting.
“It’s amazing,” Roxie said, clearly buzzed. “Want to know who he is? He’s—”
“I know who he is,” she said, chilled.
Roxie’s adrenaline faded fast, and then she was stroking her arm. “You know him?”
“Yeah, he’s the guy from Breckenridge. The guy who came in and—”
When her voice broke, Roxie gathered her into a hug. “Oh, honey.”
For a minute, it was nice to relax into the comfort.
Quickly, she cast it off. “Sorry, I—”
“No, don’t be sorry. This is a huge thing. You need all the support you can get right now.”
And somehow that took her back to Roxie’s comment about forgiveness being a choice.
“I’m sorry you’ve had to put up with this.”
“Put up with what?” Roxie smiled. “You’re my friend.”
Except she wasn’t. Not when this started. This had been foisted on her. How could Roxie be so patient? With all the money and charisma in the world, Roxie Kyst could write her own ticket.
She had to ask, “Why do you care?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why do you care about me?”
“I care about you because I am you, we’re all you. People come into our lives for a reason. You’re a good person. I like surrounding myself with good people.”
A commotion attracted their attention back to the street. When she saw Darroch out there, storming right past the cordon, pushing cops out the way—cops!
“What is he doing?” she asked and tried to head for the door.
With an arm around her, Roxie pulled her back. “Oh no, you’re not going out there.”
Darroch came up against a line of cops, forcing him back when the perp was his clear target.
“I can’t leave him out there with—”
Breaking from the others, Tripp and Ballard got hold of Darroch to drag him back.
“There you go, see,” Roxie said with a happy smile. “All’s well.”
They tossed the asshole into the back of a police van and the door was slammed. The press crowded in from the other side, and she lost sight of Darroch and the others in the crowd nearest the door.
For a beat, she just breathed. “Is it over?” she asked, appealing to Roxie after the words escaped. “It’s finished?”
“You’ll have to talk to the cops. They’ll want background.”
They’d find it in their own files, but she’d talk to them. “Then I can go home?”
“You can stay here as long as you want. Don’t rush right out—”
“I need to go home,” she said. “I need to just…”
“Get back to being you,” Roxie said, intuiting it. “I get it.”
Linking her fingers with Roxie’s, she cherished the woman’s understanding. “Will you stay with me? They’re going to ask all kinds of personal questions about—”
“No, they won’t,” Roxie said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Not while I’m there, and I won’t leave you for a second. This here is my house, baby.”
***
FOR HOURS, law enforcement questioned her. Roxie did as promised, sticking by her side the whole time. And her friend brought in a lawyer too, just in case. Imagine that. Having the ability to conjure a lawyer from thin air at a second’s notice.
Darroch probably had questions of his own to answer. What was he thinking of storming out there like that? How could anything good come from a confrontation with a crazy person? She’d object to the asshole seeing Darroch’s face, though she was sure he was responsible for the attack on Darroch too. Meant he’d seen Darroch’s face already. He’d seen all their faces.
With her essentials, she’d got in the car provided by Roxie and promised to call the following day. Roxie wanted her to call that night, but she just wasn’t sure she had it in her. So they’d settled on a text.
As promised, after crossing her threshold and ascending the stairs, she texted Roxie to say she was back home safe. The driver, who’d walked her all the way to her front door and checked out the apartment before she went inside, would tell Roxie that too. But a promise was a promise.
The place was so… foreign. Yes, it was hers, but had she stayed there long enough to really feel safe? Her head was such a mess.
She just stood there, taking it all in. When her phone rang in her hand, she jumped. Would it be Darroch or Roxie or—no. Yvette.
Her friend hadn’t stopped calling since she quit.
For the first time, she answered. “Hey.”
“Oh my God! Savvy, what the hell! Where have you been? What happened? I’ve been calling and calling—”
“I know. I know, I’m sorry.” She closed her eyes. “Life’s been a clusterfuck and I… I don’t even know what to say.”
“What happened? Why did you quit work? Why did you stop taking calls? Why did you—”
“Can I come over?” she asked. “I have a lot to tell you.”