Chapter Thirty-One #2
My skin itches when I reach the door and I whip my gaze to find Carson smirking at me. “Funny how I’m the only one in cuffs after what you did. Maybe I should tell them, huh?”
I think I’m going to be sick.
Roman curves around me, shielding my body from Carson, but he can’t block his words. “Does he know?” Carson shouts. “Does he know you’re a frigid little bitch?”
Roman spins, his fist smashing into Carson’s face. He cries out, crumbling against the sidewalk and screaming assault but O’Connor just flicks his chin at the police car. “Get him out of here. Now.”
O’Connor turns back to us and half of me expects him to take out his cuffs and slap them on me right here and now, but he just meets Roman’s gaze. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that.”
Roman nods and O’Connor holds the broken door open and steps aside. “I’ll give you a minute, then I need to take your statement.”
Roman’s hand settles on my shoulder. “Can it wait till morning? You’ve caught the fucker and it’s been a long night.”
O’Connor dips his chin. “Yeah, alright. Swing by the station first thing.”
“Thanks, man.”
O’Connor ducks outside, leaving Roman and me to step into the trashed coffee shop. My lungs fight for oxygen inside my chest. Short, shallow rattles of air.
I thought the outside was bad.
Inside, the light shades I hung sway, slashes cut through the material casting haunting shadows on the pure destruction below. My hand comes up to my mouth as I take in the damage.
Broken pieces of the tables Roman and I put together are strewn across the room, the counter dented like someone launched them into the wood. Dark red paint mars every surface, a sick adults version of a toddler with a crayon.
And my wall of T-shirts… A sob slips from my lips, and I lean back against Roman’s chest. Rob fucking Carson. He’s taken a knife to the T-shirts, long slices cutting through the soft cotton.
It’s ruined. Everything I built, all those hours I spent painting and decorating and dreaming. Gone.
Roman curls his arm around my waist. “I’ll kill him for this.”
I tear away from him. “No. No.” Panic flares in my chest. This is what Roman’s dad was talking about.
I’m going to drag Roman down with me. “He’s already been arrested, just leave it be.
” I swallow shards of glass and stare at the scratched floorboards before finally looking up at Roman. “This— It’s my fault anyway.”
Roman steps towards me. Strong. Firm. “None of this is your fault, Lola.” He tries to take my hands, but I let them hang limply in his as I shake my head.
“That’s the thing though, it really fucking is.
” I pull away and turn my back on him. The T-shirts hang in tatters in front of me and I curl in on myself, hugging my arms to my chest against the sudden cold that chills my skin.
“Six years ago, going off with Carson after we kissed, wasn’t the only stupid thing I did. ”
“Lola…”
I screw my eyes shut at the softness in his voice.
“Just, listen. Please.” When he doesn’t say anything else I breathe against the band around my chest. “I wasn’t the first person he drugged, and I wasn’t going to be the last. And I hated that.
” I shake my head and spin around to face Roman.
“I hated how un-fucking-fair it was that Rob Carson raped me and was going to get away with it.”
Roman’s hands clench into fists by his side. The edges of his jaw stand in sharp relief beneath his trimmed beard but he stays quiet. And somehow, I find the nerve to carry on, to tell him the worst thing I ever did.
“I went to one of the other biker kids at school and I bought a load of GHB off him. Then I snuck into Carson’s trailer, planted the drugs, and called in an anonymous tip.
It was the most stupid, reckless thing I’ve ever done.
And do you know the worst part? I don’t even regret it.
” The laugh that slips out is half crazed, more of a sob than anything else.
I wave my hand around the carnage of the shop.
“Because of that night, Rob did this. Because of that night, your father is trying to blackmail me into giving you up. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who told Carson what I did, and I still don’t regret it.
” I hold my arms out wide as I look at Roman.
“So, what kind of person does that make me?”
Roman’s steady gaze meets mine. “A fearless one.”
I shake my head, tears stinging my eyes. “I broke the law, like actually broke it. We’re not just talking about trespassing or underage drinking. I framed a person, Roman.” The shame I’ve been carrying drapes around me like a cloak, heavy and dark.
I’m glad Carson went to prison, and I may not regret it, but I’ve never forgiven myself for planting those drugs. Never managed to run away from that constant fear that someone would find out. That I’d pay for what I did.
Roman keeps his eyes on mine. “I know,” he says.
I stare at him. “You know? That’s it?” I throw out my arms. “I tell you I’m a criminal, that your father’s blackmailing me, and that’s all you have to say?” My voice pitches high, hysteria creeping in.
“No, Lola.” Roman cuts towards me, grabbing my wrists and pulling me in close. “I’m telling you, I know. I have always known.”
I blink. Tears slip down my cheeks. “What, what are you talking about?”
Roman’s smile is pained. He palms my neck as he threads his fingers through my hair and presses his forehead to mine. “You think anyone in this town would sell you drugs without Mase and I hearing about it?”
My palms press against his fancy shirt. “I don’t understand.”
“We knew what you were doing, Lola. Hell, we followed you the entire time.”
My hands still on his chest. Brainwaves glitch. I push away from Roman, my mouth dropping open. “Are you serious right now?”
Roman’s lip twitches. “You’re not as sneaky as you think, Firebird. And you don’t need to worry about my fucker of a dad blackmailing you. The only prints they’d find on that bag of drugs are mine, not yours.”
My blood runs cold. I stumble back another step, my heel grazing a broken chair leg. “What?”
Roman slips his hands into his suit pockets and shrugs. “We made sure you weren’t going to get caught but just in case we missed anything I left my prints on the drugs.”
“Are you insane?!” I shriek, panic vibrating the very atoms inside of me.
Another shrug. Like he didn’t set himself up to take the fall for me. Like he’s not confessing he risked his entire life for me. “I wasn’t about to let you go to prison.”
“Oh, but it’s okay for you to?” I scoff, almost losing my balance as my heel catches on the floor. I tear the damn things off and point one of the pointed bronze shoes at Roman. “You shouldn’t have done that. It was my decision, my choice.”
“You could have gotten caught.”
“I was willing to take the risk.”
“Yeah? Well, so was I.” Roman closes in on me, snagging the heels from my hands and dropping them on the floor before gripping my hips.
“I let you do what you needed to do because if you didn’t, I would have done far worse.
But if there is ever anything I can do to protect you, then I’m damn well going to do it. ”
Maybe it should be romantic, but his words terrify me. I untangle myself from Roman’s grip, my bare feet scraping on broken debris. The ruins of my shop blur in front of me. Everything is broken.
This is what I do to my life, but I refuse to do it to Roman’s. “You need to go,” I whisper.
“If this is about my father—”
“It’s not.”
“I won’t let him hurt you.”
I spin around. “I don’t care about the fucking blackmail, Roman and I don’t need you to fix everything. I don’t need your protection! I didn’t ask for it. Not then, not now. You can’t throw your life away to save mine.”
Roman’s jaw sharpens. Eyes of stubborn fire. “I can do whatever the hell I like.”
My breath breaks inside of me as I shake my head.
“Look at this place. This is my life. But you… you have the entire world at your fingertips. Hell, you could buy a whole chain of coffee shops and still have more money than you know what to do with. You’re a billionaire, Roman.
A literal billionaire. What the hell are you doing here? With me?”
Roman spears his fingers through his hair, mussing it up in ways I’ve fantasized about.
“Because this is where I want to be,” he argues.
“The fancy dinners and private jets? That’s not me.
You know that.” He shakes his head in disbelief.
“I’ve never wanted that life. All I’ve ever wanted, since I was fifteen, is to be a part of your family. ”
I put on a good front most of the time. I wear confidence like it’s make up but maybe that’s all it is, a mask.
I keep pretending that Richard’s words didn’t hurt me, that I didn’t believe him when he said I wasn’t good enough, but maybe I do believe him.
Maybe I believe everything everyone has ever said about me because I can’t help my first thought from slipping free.
“And what if I ruin that too? What if this thing we’re doing ends? ”
Mase is like a brother to Roman, my parents better parents to him than his own. I can’t be the reason Roman loses them.
He glares at me. “So, what? You’re ending it now instead?”
I wince. “No. I don’t know. I just… I need some space.” I wave a hand around the wrecked shop. “I need to figure out how to fix all of this because right now, I’m not sure I can.”
“You can. You will.”
“This isn’t a damn sign Roman, this is my entire fucking shop,” I snap, whirling around and only narrowly side stepping a splintered chair leg.
“For fuck’s sake.” Roman demolishes the space between us and then I’m in the air.
“What are you doing?” I squeal, clinging to the forearm anchored around my waist as Roman strides across the shop and dumps my ass on the counter. “Roman, I’m serious—”
“Yeah, well so am I, so shut up and stop walking on the damn broken bits of wood in bare fucking feet.”
I gape at him.
Roman brackets his hands on either side of my thighs, caging me in as his glare blazes through me.
“I’ll give you tonight,” he says, his breath warm against my face.
“But for the record, what everyone else calls reckless, I call brave. What they call stubborn, I call knowing your own mind. You don’t ruin anything, Lola, you breathe the world around you to life.
So I’ll give you tonight, but when I tell you tomorrow that the only thing I need in this world is you, you damn well better believe me. ”
“Roman…” his name falls from my lips like an oath. “I don’t want you giving up your life for me.”
He hangs his head before looking back up at me, emotions flicking through his eyes like an old film. “How can I possibly be giving up my life, when you are my entire life?”
His words hollow my heart. I know how he feels because I feel it too. My love for Roman is all encompassing. I would do anything for him and maybe that’s just what love is but if that’s the case then loving me is dangerous.
My fingers cling to Roman’s pristine white shirt. It’s all wrong on him. He should be in a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Reading his book in his house filled with plants. I don’t want to ruin that.
I storm through life like a tornado, the eye of the storm while everything around me gets destroyed. It takes all I have to let go of Roman, to not claw my fingers into his chest and hold him close, but I refuse to let him take the fall for my mistakes.
A growl rumbles in his chest as my hands fall away. He spears his fingers through my hair and stamps his lips on mine in an angry kiss. “We’re not done, Lola. Not by a long shot,” he swears, but then he lets me go and strides out of the broken shop.
My eyes shutter, exhaustion tugging at my mind.
I slip off the counter and sink to the floor.
The dust sheet is rough under my bare feet, debris from the trashed furniture stabbing at my skin.
The tears I’ve been holding back all evening fall and my breaths come in sharp gasps.
I feel like I did the night they pumped my stomach, my skin cracking, my insides hollowed out.
I made the biggest mistake of my life that night and I can’t help thinking I’ve just done it again.