Chapter Thirteen
Gazes moved from Harrison to me, curiosity piqued, brows raised.
“You two know each other?” the woman asked.
“He’s—”
“Her husband,” Harrison finished when I hesitated.
“Husband?” the woman asked, her gaze going pointedly to my left hand.
“Yeah, about that,” Harrison said, smooth charm oozing from his pores as he reached into his pocket. “You left these in the kitchen.”
He set the rings down toward the center of the table as he sat down across from me.
“Because I want a divorce,” I said, lifting my chin. And refusing to admit even to myself that I was happy to see those rings again.
One of the men at the table whistled. The movie star mumbled “drama” under his breath in a tone that suggested he was delighted about it.
“They’re yours regardless,” Harrison said, unbothered by my airing our dirty laundry out in public.
The woman took the rings and moved them close to me. “When a man says to keep expensive jewelry, you keep it,” she said, her voice only for the two of us.
I snatched them off the table and shoved them on my finger, annoyed with how relieved I felt with the weight of them there again.
“Let’s just play,” I said, glancing over at the dealer.
I imagined if I left, he would simply follow me.
Aside from that, I didn’t want these players to complain to my contact who wouldn’t tell me about future games because of it.
Someday, this whole ordeal would be done. Court would have occurred. Papers would be signed. And this ridiculous marriage would just be a story I pulled out at parties.
I wanted to keep my life the way I liked it: with tournaments, with casinos, with back-room games.
I wasn’t surprised when I lost the first hand to Harrison. My head wasn’t in the game. And he was the best player at the table aside from me.
But when the second hand went his way, then the third, my heartbeat started to hammer in my chest, in my ears.
What was going on?
When there was a quick refreshment break, Harrison and I stayed seated.
“You have a tell,” he said, making my spine stiffen.
“No, I don’t.” If I had a tell, I’d have lost every hand at a professional tournament.
“You didn’t,” he clarified. “But you do now.”
Before I could ask anything else, everyone filed back to their seats, the cards whispered together as they were shuffled, then we each reached for our hands.
I watched everyone else before checking my cards.
As I did, though, I saw Harrison’s gaze slip from my face to my hand.
My own followed.
And, damn him, he was right.
My thumb was turning my wedding band around my ring finger.
A nervous tick.
My hand was crap. Not so bad that I wanted to throw it all away, but not likely a winning one unless there was a small miracle.
If he hadn’t given me the rings back, if he hadn’t shown up it never would have happened.
It wasn’t enough that he’d been screwing with my mind since Vegas; now he was messing with my livelihood.
Alright, fine, this was just a game for fun. But real money was involved.
It was just the point.
Annoyed, I pulled my ring off my finger when it was my turn to ante up… and tossed it in the pot.
To his credit, Harrison had no reaction to the move even as others at the table made comments or noises.
We both knew I was going to lose my hand.
I was going to lose that ring.
But I still played my bad cards with a rolling feeling in my stomach and a strange ache in my chest.
Eventually, after trying and failing to turn my hand around, my only choice was to fold.
But Harrison?
He kept playing his.
I had no idea if he had the cards or if he was bluffing until it was time for everyone to show their cards.
And that bastard won.
“I’m out,” I said, leaving my chips, my half-finished pizza, my untouched champagne on the table, grabbing my bag, and rushing out the door.
“Ugh,” I grumbled when I was outside.
I just wanted one night of fun where I wasn’t thinking about this stupid accidental marriage, the long annulment process, and a man who—despite all this—I still found myself unbearably attracted to.
The night swallowed the sound of my footsteps almost immediately—the streets too wide, too empty, the kind of quiet that wasn’t peaceful so much as inattentive. Like the city had looked away.
I exhaled hard, shaking the tension out of my shoulders, and started walking.
Quickly, but not running.
The warehouse block stretched ahead of me, long and unbroken. Metal doors were rolled down tight. There was no reason for anyone to be out there unless they had somewhere specific to be. And I did. I just needed to get there.
I dug for my phone, ready to search for a driver.
I slowed near the corner beneath a streetlight that buzzed faintly, the glow uneven and jaundiced. It wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t bright enough either. It was the kind of light that lied about how safe things were.
Five minutes, the app said.
That was fine.
I could do five minutes.
I shifted my weight, back half-turned to the wall. I had a clear line of sight down the block as I waited.
I tucked my phone away, knowing it was always best to have my hands free in case of a bad situation.
I sucked in a deep breath.
Then I heard it.
Footsteps.
My first thought was that it was my freaking husband following me to force me to take back the stupid ring again.
But no.
Something was wrong.
They were too unhurried.
There were too many of them.
I didn’t turn immediately. This was not an abandoned area. There was a bar a few blocks away. People could be coming or going.
But I tensed.
I listened.
I took a few steps down the cross street, not wanting to look like a stationary target, someone for drunk guys to annoy.
But the footsteps slowed when mine did.
I clocked it.
Tensed.
But didn’t escalate first.
It could still be nothing.
I glanced over my shoulder casually as I stood at the end of the curb, like I was checking traffic before I crossed.
There they were.
Two men.
No, three.
One was further back, his shape indistinct against the shadows between buildings.
He was too far for details.
But close enough to matter.
Someone said something, but I didn’t catch the words. The tone, though, the tone had my spine straightening.
“Back up,” I said. Calm. Clear. Not loud, not hysterical. In control.
The nearest man laughed.
My stomach tightened. It wasn’t fear, per se. Not yet. It was that flinch that told me to prepare, to draw up my years of training, to calculate my best moves.
They kept approaching.
I couldn’t run.
Running brought out a prey drive in predatory men like this.
My choice was to stand my ground and wait for my damn ride-share.
Three minutes?
Something like that.
I widened my stance, my heel shifting on cracked pavement to balance my weight, my knees loose.
I felt my body settle into something old and familiar, something that lived deeper than my nerves.
A hand reached for my arm.
And I moved.
Fast.
Sharp.
Below up, pivot, strike.
Bone gave under impact.
A loud curse filled the quiet air as he stumbled back, hand clutching his nose, red blood sliding from between his fingers.
“Get the bitch,” he snarled as he tried to stem the flow of blood.
The second guy was bigger. He came in too high.
I ducked then drove my shoulder forward. I felt the jolt all the way through my spine.
My blood ignited, adrenaline burning hot and bright.
I’d spent countless hours training to get myself out of sticky situations.
But no amount of training could beat odds.
And three against one?
Those were not good odds.
But the third one… where the hell had he gone?
Even as I thought it, I heard a breath behind me.
Too close.
I twisted fast enough to avoid being grabbed, but fingers grabbed my shirt instead, pulling it tight.
I turned fast, making his weak grasp of the material loosen and eventually break.
No one was laughing now.
The silence was worse.
The second guy recovered faster than I expected.
He lunged.
I cocked and struck.
It landed right on his jaw, but the momentum carried me off balance. I stumbled back a step.
My heel caught in a crack in the sidewalk.
Dammit.
My pulse roared in my ears, thoughts compressing down to essentials.
I couldn’t panic.
It wasn’t over.
Not yet.
I just had to get my heel free.
The third guy made a grab for me again.
Screw the shoes.
I stepped out of my heels and lowered my center of gravity, then struck once, twice, three times.
The first guy, seemingly recovered from the busted nose, but fueled with real rage now, ran at me.
But there was movement right at my side that distracted me. I felt the way the air moved as movement sliced through it.
There wasn’t time to duck.
The hit landed; pain exploded from my lip and jaw upward until half my face seemed to feel the impact.
My eye watered, blurring my vision, but I was moving on instinct, striking out.
But somewhere behind the guy I was fending off, there was a crack, a curse, a loud thud.
Then a sound.
A growl.
Low, feral.
Another crack.
“Run,” a voice called.
The man in front of me short-circuited for a second, half turning away, then back.
He shoved me with everything in him, sending me falling backward, knocking over a metal trash can as I went down hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
It was only from that position that I saw the first guy on the ground, bleeding once again—worse.
The big guy grabbed him under the arms and started to drag him.
My gaze tracked up his shirt, seeing the deep red blood staining it, gushing, it seemed, from his lip and nose.
A shadow fell over me a second before I saw legs in front of me.
“It’s me,” Harrison said even as my brain put the pieces together.
My gaze slipped up.
His shirt was askew.
A button had been ripped off.
His knuckles, though, looked bloody.
“Not mine,” he said, catching me looking.
“I could have handled it,” I insisted as he offered me his hand.
“I know,” he agreed, his hand closing over mine when I placed it there, then pulled me to my feet. “But I hate an unfair fight.”
As soon as I was on my feet, his hand went to my chin, gently turning it toward the light so he could assess the damage.
“I’ll live,” I said, shrugging it off.
But as the adrenaline faded, the pain settled in. Sharper, harder to ignore.
Harrison dropped down, and I was so focused on the top of his head for a second that I didn’t realize what he was doing until I felt his hand gently on the back of my calf, pulling up, as his other hand held my shoe in place.
I stepped in, and we repeated the process for the other.
It was right then that I noticed a car slowing, the driver craning his neck to look at us.
Harrison stiffened.
“It’s my ride-share,” I told him, taking in the make and model that matched what the app had supplied. Then, softening a bit, I asked, “Do you want a ride?”
His lips tipped up, not quite a smile, and he reached for the back passenger side to open it for me.
When I opened my mouth to say something to the driver, who was looking at Harrison like he was the one to bloody my lip, Harrison offered an address that wasn’t to my hotel as he passed cash to him.
“Don’t worry,” I said as the driver took the cash but kept casting worried glances at me in the rearview, “he wasn’t the one to ugly up my face. That was some assholes who saw me waiting for a ride.”
It was a short ride to Harrison’s hotel, which, no surprise, was much nicer than my own.
“What?” I asked when he turned to shoot me a look.
“Will you just come with me so I can clean you up?”
Those warning alarms?
Yeah, they were going off again.
But the other part of me that was aching for a little comfort after a bad night moved out onto the sidewalk with him.
“Okay, but I still want an annulment,” I said.
His smile was soft, almost as soft as the look in his eye as his hand went to my lower back.
“Yeah, sweetheart, I know you do.”