Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
Davis
It’s a little after four fifteen when I wake up, and Sophia’s still dead to the world asleep, so I figure now’s as good a time as any to do a little snooping through her shit.
I carefully slip out of her bed, taking a second to really look at the way it’s set up.
Her mattress is tucked into a wrought-iron frame, with only one side open; the side that I slept on.
The side that she slept on is pressed up against the wall, tucked into the corner of the room.
It’s not a huge space, but there’s enough room that she could have put the frame in the middle and left it more open.
She needs the security.
It makes her feel safer.
I grab the blankets bunched near her waist and pull them up, tucking them in around her shoulders before moving to the nightstand next to her bed.
I crouch down and open the top drawer, met with a glass dildo and a bright pink vibrator, a bottle of Astroglide, the remote to her TV, and a book.
In the drawer underneath it, she’s got a little glittery journal with a couple different colors of equally-glittery pens sitting on top of it – she doesn’t like glitter, my ass - and another tube of lotion like the one sitting on top of the nightstand along with the lamp and the box of tissues.
There’s a bundle of tangled up hair elastics I’ve never seen her use, and a check for one hundred thousand dollars from yours truly.
She never deposited the fucking thing.
I look over at her, curled up in that bed, and all I want to do is wake her up and drag her little ass to the bank – after I rip her a new asshole for not taking the damn money. But I decide to let her keep sleeping and I slap the check onto the nightstand instead, then I head for her desk.
She’s got a couple of plants up here that look like they probably haven’t been watered in a couple weeks, some figurines of animals with cartoonishly large heads, and a few framed photos; some with Ava, others with people I haven’t met, and a couple with people who look like they could be her parents.
Her laptop sits next to some brochures for a couple of those nail schools that she’s been talking about in the middle of the desk, closed, and I fight the urge to flip it open and see what she’s been up to.
I spend the next two hours sitting next to her in her bed, watching crappy TV with one hand resting on her hip.
I don’t dare move my hand for the next two hours, until her alarm goes off.
Even then, I keep it on her while she takes her time waking up.
She’s so fucking cute when she’s barely awake.
Her eyes flutter open about halfway as she slides her arm across my body and snuggles into my chest with a satisfied sigh.
We spend another half hour like this, just fucking holding onto each other with General Hospital acting as background noise, before we finally decide it’s time to get up and have some coffee and something to eat.
Sophia grabs a bag of coffee grounds and works to set up the machine while I pull up a delivery app on my phone and load up an order of probably too much food for the two of us, but I think her roommate’s still here, so he can have some, too, if he wants.
“You didn’t deposit the check,” I finally say, slipping my phone back into my pocket.
“You went through my stuff?”
I shrug. “You were sleeping. I had time to kill.”
“Insufferable,” she grits out, pouring coffee into her mug. “No, I didn’t deposit it, and I’m not going to.”
I strut around the counter, pressing my chest against the back of her, and I pull her hair over her shoulder.
“That leaves me with a couple fun options, then,” I tell her.
“I can work my magic to get it into your account, with a few extra zeroes just to make you real mad, or I can have you put onto my account and get you a card. Maybe I’ll even buy you a house or two. ”
“I’m not taking any more of your money,” she tells me, throwing her ass against me to shove me away from her, and I laugh. “It’s yours.”
“Everything of mine’s gonna be yours one day, anyway—”
My heart fucking stops and I freeze. I feel her freeze, too.
Fuck me.
It feels like an hour goes by while neither of us move, or breathe, or fucking speak.
I fucked up.
I knew I fucked up the second it came out of my mouth. I didn’t mean for it to, it just shoved its way out of there like a fucking bat flying out of hell.
God damnit.
“I’m not depositing the check,” she finally tells me, shoving me backward with her ass again. “And your threats don’t scare me, giant.”
“They’re not threats, Sugar,” I smile at her. “They’re options.”
·
Sophia hasn’t said anything about my slip up this morning.
I watched my phone all damn day for a call or text calling off our plans for tonight or telling me that this is more than she wanted to sign up for; any sign of her running.
As grateful as I am that she’s been quiet, for the first time in my entire fucking thirty-seven years of life, I’m nervous about a woman.
I keep one eye on the road and the other on her while we cruise down the road, watching her like she’s a bomb about to blow and take my fucking head off.
The most beautiful bomb I’ve ever seen, but a bomb all the same.
She left her hair alone tonight; she didn’t straighten it like she normally does.
Instead, she’s wearing it in the natural, deep waves that it’s meant to be in.
The dress she’s wearing hits the floor and hugs her body like skin, the top of it tied into a small bow at the base of her neck.
I call it white, but she insists it’s ‘cream.’
When we get to the restaurant, I help her out of the Aston Martin, hand the keys to the valet and drop a hand to the exposed skin between Sophia’s shoulder blades while I lead her into the building.
“Holy shit,” she calls out when we walk in, and her hand flies up to her mouth, like she’s embarrassed.
“I come here all the time,” I chuckle, “they’re used to a little swearing.”
“Mr. Davis,” the maitre d’ greets us as we get closer to the host station, “lovely to see you again, as always. We’ve taken the liberty of preparing your usual table.”
“Thanks, man.”
We follow him to the same table I always use; tucked near a back corner of the room, next to a stone column covered in sculpted grapes and vines.
They only left two chairs at the table, like I asked them to, one on either side of it, and a bottle of wine is already waiting for us.
I’m not normally a wine drinker, but I can make an exception every now and again.
Settling into our seats, a server comes by to pour us each a glass of wine and he gives us some time to go through the menu.
There aren’t a ton of options, but every single thing is fucking awesome.
I’ve been here enough times over the years to have one of everything, at least once, and I’ve always been happy with it.
Like it usually does when I come in here, the food is brought out pretty quickly after we order it; a good sized spread of shit that I mostly ordered for us, because Sophia tried to keep her own order small and that just isn’t gonna work for me. Food is meant to be enjoyed, not stressed over.
Sophia is distracted while we eat. Her eyes keep flicking between her plate, me, and something off to the side of me; and whatever it is, it’s making her nervous.
I watch her for a few minutes, snacking on an appetizer without taking my eyes off of her, until her body shifts.
Her head dips and she pulls her body to the side of her chair opposite to the direction she keeps looking.
I don’t think she even notices when she does it, but I sure as shit do.
I turn in my chair, following her eyes to a man sitting at a table diagonal from ours, toward the opposite end of the room.
He’s a stubby little man, with mostly silver hair cut close to the scalp, except for the patches at the sides of his head that are missing.
The woman sitting across from him is the nicer dressed of the two, with long hair pulled up into a twist at the back of her head.
I jerk my head in the direction of the man Sophia keeps staring at. “He one of them?”
She nods, using her fork to push her food around her plate. “Yeah.” She looks the same way she did when I found her that night in Envy.
I’ve seen that look on too many people in my life, and I don’t think many – if any – of them even realize they’re wearing it, but it’s always the same look. It’s a look that says someone’s hurt them before, and whatever they did to hurt them, it’s still deep in there.
And it makes my blood boil.
“What’s his name?”
“Let’s just eat our dinner,” she tells me. “I’ll be fine.”
“What is his name, Sophia. I won’t ask again.”
She lets out a sigh, like she can already tell where my head’s at. “It’s Leonard. But don’t—”
I push myself to a standing position and toss my napkin onto the table, between my plate and glass of wine. My eyes lock onto the balding man and stay on him with a laser focus while I stalk toward him and the woman sitting with him, who I can only assume is his wife.
“Leonard!” I greet him, grabbing the back of an extra chair at the table to spin it around. I throw a leg over the side of it, leaning my chest against the back of the chair. “Can I call ya Lenny? I’m gonna call you Lenny. This your wife?” I say, gesturing toward the woman sitting across from him.
“Excuse me, do I know you?” He asks me.
I shoot him a wide grin while I reach for the steak knife on his plate, pressing the tip of it into the top of the table, spinning it in place by the handle.
“I know you. Here’s the problem, Lenny,” I say, pulling the knife upward and bringing it back down to slam the point of the blade down into the table.
The wife-lady jumps, and I feel a little bad about that, but not bad enough to leave.
“You’re making my girlfriend pretty uncomfortable, so we’re gonna need you to head out so we can have our supper in peace. ”
“I’m enjoying a meal with my fiancée,” he tells me – I was close. “I’ve done nothing to your girlfriend. You’ve gotten me mistaken with someone else.”
“Take a good look at her.” I lean to the right, gesturing behind me toward Sophia. “You know her. She knows you pretty well, too. Should we talk about how?”
“Leonard—”
“We can chat real quick about all the things you made her do with you, if you want,” I continue. “Not real pleasant conversation for such a nice place though, is it? Let me guess, Lenny – three inches hard on a generously warm day?”
His date turns in her chair, flagging down a server. “Excuse me, can you please get us a—”
“Sorry, ma’am, I’ll be done in a sec.” Turning back to Lenny, I smile while I tell him, “I really don’t wanna make a mess for these people to clean up, and it’s been a long time since I had a cut of Kobe as nice as the one waiting for me on my plate.
So like I said, we’re gonna need y’all to haul off, otherwise your options are gonna be story time with my girlfriend, or turning this nice white table cloth into a Jackson Pollock. ”
“Excuse me, did you just—”
“Yes I did.” I pull my wrist up to look at my watch. “I’ll give you thirty seconds to decide.”
I keep my eyes trained on my watch, making a ticking sound with my tongue right along with every second that passes; but I can see the two of them out of my peripheral.
They’re panicking. The woman wants to get away from me, and I don’t blame her for that.
I’m a big dude, and when I’m pissed off – like I am right now – I can probably be scary.
Old Lenny boy keeps his eyes flicking between my watch and his date, so I add a little tap to the face of the watch in time with my ticking.
“Ten...nine...eight…” I count down. “Seven...six…”
“Leonard!”
Their chairs squeal in unison while the two shove themselves away from the table, the legs of them grating against the floor before Lenny and his would-be bride fly out of the restaurant fast as greased lightning.
While I stand, I grab my wallet out of my back pocket and pull a check out of it as I approach their server.
“Got a pen?”
“Uh—” he stammers. “Y-yeah. Yes, sir.”
He digs through his apron until he lands on a pen and hands it to me. I scribble out a couple thousand bucks for him and fold the check, patting it and the pen against his chest with a smile. “For the trouble.”
Walking back to our table, I shoot Sophia my most innocent grin and pull my chair out, dropping into it. I reach for the bottle of wine on the table and refill her glass while she stares me down.
“I never told you what he made me do,” she says, keeping her voice low.
“Didn’t have to.” I pick up my napkin and drop it back into my lap, smoothing it out. “It was all over your face.”
“And so you just had to go over there and talk to him?”
“I told you, Sugar,” I shrug. “I’ll make a day of it.”
“Insufferable.”
I could almost swear I see a smile pull at her lips.