Chapter Six

Chapter Six

It took me halfway through to realize

my life story has an unreliable narrator.

—True fact

I couldn’t tell if the incessant pounding came from the door to my motel room or my head. It was probably the door since it woke up the furry creature at my side. Either way, it was unwelcome and unwanted.

I tried to ignore it, but the visitor was annoyingly polite. Three knocks, just loud enough for me to hear, and then a few seconds of blessed silence before they tried again. Eventually, one of us would give in, and I vowed it would not be me. Until I heard a lyrical voice calling out my name.

My eyes flew open, and I tried to sit up, but pain shot through every molecule of my body. I suddenly remembered why I’d downed half a fifth the night before—well, one reason I’d downed half a fifth the night before. Several different types of pain had set up shop in my extremities. And my intremities, come to think of it. Shooting, stabbing, throbbing, and just plain excruciating. I now had a deep understanding of adjectives I never knew existed.

Just then, I heard the locking mechanisms turn, and the door opened, spilling a harsh and excessively bright stream of sunlight into the room. I squeezed my eyes shut to block it out as Halle hurried over and sat beside me on the edge of the bed. She felt my forehead before sliding her hand to my cheek, then my neck, then my chest. “Eric?”

Lower.

“Are you awake?”

Just a little lower.

A male voice interrupted our moment. “Do I need to call an ambulance?”

“Do it and die,” I said, my voice hoarse and unrecognizable.

Halle spoke softly to him. “No. Thank you, Nolan. He had a rough night. Now, he’s cranky.”

“I don’t know. That’s a lot of blood.”

My leg wound had opened up at some point, but I stopped the bleeding with a little pressure and a lot of cursing.

“And we don’t allow dogs.”

I had a dog?

“It’s okay,” Halle said.

Oh, right. The furball.

“I’ll take care of it. I’ll pay for the sheets and have the mattress and carpet cleaned.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, his tone suddenly flirtatious. “The boss doesn’t need to know everything, but he should probably check out soon.”

“I’ll take care of it,” she repeated.

I tried to look at her, but I just couldn’t focus on anything other than the backs of my eyelids. Either that fifth had hit me harder than usual, or my subdural hematoma was acting up again. Of course, her hand resting on my rib cage wasn’t helping. I had focus issues as it was. Her ministrations were only making them worse.

Darkness fell over the room when the man closed the door, and I asked in a gravelly voice, “Who’s Nolan?”

“A friend from high school who works here. Who’s this?” She picked up the pitch-black furball. It whimpered excitedly in her arms. Halle laughed, the sound curative.

“Her name is Buttercup.”

“Does she have a collar with a tag?”

“No, but she reminds me of a hellhound named Buttercup.”

“You know a hellhound named Buttercup?”

“She’s a cuddler, too.”

“Well, this little sweetheart needs her own name. How about Fluffy? Or Flavia? Or Flutura the Warrior Queen?”

The horrified expression I flung at her was more than warranted. “What is wrong with you?”

She hmphed and continued to snuggle the pup, cooing and crooning. I’d never been so jealous of an animal in my life.

I threw an arm over my eyes, realizing I probably looked like death warmed over. The longer the night wore on, the more swelling appeared, and the worse my scrapes, bruises, and the deep abrasion across my jaw got. Then I remembered my arm looked just as bad, so I gave up and went back to admiring the view.

She wore a peach sundress with a pale-yellow sweater like a summer breeze come to life.

“Why aren’t you at work?” I asked.

“I was on my way, but I thought I’d stop by and check on you.”

“How did you know where to find me?”

“You texted me seventy-three times last night and invited me over.”

I bolted upright, ignoring the onslaught of pain as I scrambled for my phone. If I texted anything to her about Paul, the security guy, he would know. No way he didn’t have some kind of surveillance on both Halle’s and her father’s phones. How could I be so careless? And only hours after I’d promised Donald he could trust me with his daughter’s life.

“Kidding,” she said in a sing-song voice. She buried her face against the furball’s neck. “Jason told me. Where did you get Flutura?”

After squelching a burning desire to throttle her, I scooted up on the bed and swung my legs over the side, careful to keep the sheet covering my most pertinent parts. “First, we’re not calling her that. And second, she was outside my door last night, whimpering in the rain.”

Halle turned the full force of her admiration on me with a single, heart-stopping smile. “And you brought her inside?”

It was admiration I didn’t deserve. I ducked my head and checked my phone for messages. “She was shivering.”

“And then you let her sleep with you?”

I stopped and stared yet again. “She was shivering.”

She stared back. For a really long time. Long enough that my lungs began to burn, and I realized I’d stopped breathing.

While I sat there like an ass, struggling to provide my cells with oxygen, she was apparently more worried about the mutt. “Flavia!” she shouted, shifting her focus back to the tiny creature.

“No.” I lurched to my feet, dislodging her when I took the sheet with me.

She squeaked out a protest and jumped up, cradling the pup to her as though its life were in danger.

I wrapped the sheet tighter and stepped around her to get to the bathroom and, more importantly, the shower. But when I passed, I caught a glimpse of her expression in the mirror, the distress that flickered across her face when she scrutinized every visible inch of me. I certainly didn’t mind the attention, but the concern was unwarranted.

“It looks worse than it feels,” I lied.

Busted, she met my gaze in the mirror and shook her head. “I doubt that.”

I paused before disappearing into the bathroom and asked, “You worried about me?”

As though unable to admit it, she pulled the pup closer and headed for the door. “I’m going to take Flo for a walk.”

“Flo?”

“Short for Florabel,” she said, so matter-of-factly I laughed out loud.

It hurt.

So did washing and shampooing and moving in general. I decided to preserve what energy I could and forego shaving for the time being. The scruff would help disguise the abrasions, too. Win-win.

The shower helped with the soreness, but painkillers were still on the breakfast menu. As for the rest of the day, I needed to get Halle to trust me. To open up. If she knew something about Paul Meacham that would help us figure this out… But what? Had he assaulted her when she was a kid? Was she afraid of him? Her secretive behavior would suggest an absolute yes to both of those questions, but I didn’t want to assume anything. And I didn’t want to risk her mental well-being.

Unless I absolutely had to.

Halle’s signature knock sounded at the door.

I strolled over and asked through said door, “Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

“Me, who?” Yes, I was a five-year-old trapped inside a thirty-three-year-old’s body.

“I got breakfast burritos.”

I swung the door open. “Way to bury the lead.”

She stood there, food in one arm and the furball in the other, as I walked back to the mirror. I’d been in the middle of trying to tame the mop that grew wild on the top of my head—a testament to the never-ending struggle of man versus nature.

I was brushing my hair with my fingers when our gazes met in the mirror mid-fluff. She was still standing at the door like a deer in headlights. I looked down and realized the massive bruise that ran from my lower left abdomen up to my right shoulder must’ve surprised her. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Promise.”

She blinked back to life and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got a couple of options.”

“Always a good plan. You didn’t happen to pick up a bottle of morphine while you were out, did you?”

“No, but I have some ibuprofen.”

That’d work. Hopefully.

She put the furball on the bed. It yipped and ran in circles, as excited about the burritos as I was.

I gave up on my hair and sat at the small table by the window as she put a box on the floor and unpacked the bag. I wondered about the box. Not enough to ask, but… She lifted out a cup of coffee. “Coffee, too?” I stole one and took a sip. Lukewarm but mouthwateringly delicious. “You must really like me.”

She paused, cast me a sideways glance, then continued her work. “I got one with bacon, one with ham, and one with sausage. And can I just say, for the record, you look really good in a towel?”

I stilled. Was that a compliment? Did she just compliment me? And, fuck, I was in a towel.

“I’m sorry.” I jumped up, grabbed an armful of clothes, and headed back to the bathroom. “I live in a kind of compound,” I said through the door, “with like a thousand other people, and none of us were gifted with an overabundance of manners.”

Even when I stepped out in a Cruisers T-shirt and jeans, she continued to avoid eye contact. Fucking hell, I could be an ass. Unless I was greatly mistaken, this woman had been the victim of a malicious criminal for a long time. She’d very likely been assaulted at a young age and then stalked for years, possibly worse. And here I was, walking around half-naked.

I sat again, stretched one leg under the table, and draped an arm over it. She didn’t flinch or back away. A good sign. Hopefully, I hadn’t scarred her for life.

“I’m really sorry about that.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just, I’ve never seen a body like yours in real life. I wasn’t sure they really existed.”

I frowned and surveyed my body parts. Apart from a few tattoos that were filched from various Asian criminal organizations—and would probably get me killed as a result—the rest of my ink was pretty average American biker. But if someone grew up very sheltered, my inked-up physique could be quite the eye-opener.

“You live in a compound with a thousand people?”

I laughed softly. “No. It just feels like it sometimes. I live in a compound with about twenty other people, but it’s not a cult. I swear.” I was always worried about our image.

She nodded and gestured toward the spread. “Pick your poison.”

“You first.”

“Oh, I’m not hungry. You can eat one now and save the others for later. You have a fridge.” She pointed to the small apartment fridge beside the dresser.

Her behavior was beginning to worry me. Did my negligence bother her more than she was letting on? Did I trigger some residual PTSD? I needed to figure out a way to make Halle trust me and, so far, my technique sucked.

She poured a tiny pouch of puppy food onto a napkin, set it on the floor, and put the furball in front of it. The pup dove in like she was starving. As if I hadn’t just fed her half of a cheeseburger three hours ago.

“How about Florida?”

“I’m game,” I said after swallowing another sip. “When do we leave?”

A dimple appeared at one corner of her mouth. “I meant for the puppy.”

“That seems like a long way to send her, but okay. Do you think she has family there?”

She giggled. “For her name.”

“Ah. You like F-L names, I take it?”

“No more than any other combination. She just seems like an F-L kind of dog.”

“Okay, then.” Hard to argue with that kind of logic.

“You’re not eating,” she said with a frown.

“I’m letting the coffee burn a hole in my stomach first. Food always dampens the hallucinogenic properties of caffeine, and I need all the hallucinations I can get.”

She forced a fake laugh—tough crowd—and sat across from me. Keeping her gaze downcast, she stuck a nail between her teeth before catching herself and folding her hands in her lap.

Now was my chance, but how much should I tell her? How much could I tell her? Then I remembered, not a whole damned lot. Again, her phone was almost surely being monitored. While I didn’t know for certain security guy Paul was involved in any of this, I just couldn’t risk him, or whoever was behind it, overhearing our conversation.

I could ask her to take the day off, ditch our phones, and head somewhere isolated. She worked for her father, after all. Surely, she could get away with playing hooky for one day. The trick would be to explain why we were ditching our phones and going to an isolated area without tipping off my number-one suspect, and putting her, or anyone else, in even more danger.

“Can I ask you something?” she said, dragging me out of my thoughts.

“Okay, but I think it really was to get to the other side.”

“I was wondering, and you can absolutely say no,” she qualified, showing me her palms as proof, “but I was wondering if you would like to have sex with me.”

She could have slapped me with a flyswatter, and I would’ve been less stunned. I sat there gaping at her like a fool as she chewed on a nail.

She dropped her hand and continued. “It’s just…I’ve never met anyone like you.” Her gaze traveled the length of my mutilated body. “I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful in my life. I didn’t know people like you existed outside of magazines.”

Clearly, she’d never looked in a mirror.

“And I’ve never met anyone who can do the things you can.”

She needed to get out more.

“Not to mention the fact that you’re a good person.”

I felt the need to stop her right there. “Why? Because I brought a puppy in from the cold?”

“And you saved Zachary.”

“I saved Zachary because I didn’t want that on my conscience for the rest of my life. That doesn’t make me a good person. It makes me selfish and self-absorbed.”

“Ah. Well, that explains everything, but there’s more.”

“Yeah?”

She drew in a deep breath—I got the feeling it was for courage—and let the words leave her mouth as fast as her tongue would carry them. “I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than I want your body.”

And that was my undoing. At first, she’d shaken me so hard I couldn’t move. But it didn’t take long for my baser instincts to kick in. I started forward, only to find out she wasn’t finished, and her next words would flip my world off its axis.

“Besides a Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse, but I was seven. And I just figured I’d take a chance, I’d quit being a wet noodle and ask for what I want for the first time in my life since, as you know,”—her gaze met mine at last—“I’m going to be dead in two months.”