Freefall (12 page)

Clutch really looked at him for the first time. “Jeez, did you get run over by a bus?”

“Close to it,” Dray said. “I vote for pepperoni and sausage, but I’m going back to my couch. Everything hurts like hell.”

Cassie went online to order lunch.

“Jason told me his parents are planning to ship Taylor off to some strict boarding school for her last year of high school,” Clutch said. “I told that kid she needed to rein it in or she’d get into trouble.”

“For someone who finds Taylor
irritating
, you sure looked bummed about it.”

“Yeah? Well, you aren’t exactly the picture of happiness yourself this morning.” He went and sat on the waiting room couch.

“Look, Clutch, she’s not going to be seventeen forever.”

“Five more months,” he supplied the time quickly.

I smiled. “You know it down to the last hour, huh?”

Clutch looked annoyed. “No, she keeps telling me, that’s why. Look, she doesn’t listen to me anyhow. Maybe boarding school will be good for her.”

“You keep telling yourself that. Besides, she would listen to you if you talked to her without an angry scowl on that giant face of yours. Just remember, if she does go, you have a big chance of never seeing her again.”

That statement of cold fact got to him, but he was sticking to his story. “That’s fine. I’m not interested Taylor. She’s a wild, little brat. I’m looking for someone more sophisticated.” His tone sounded as if he was trying to convince himself that his words were true.

I shrugged. “I’m wrong then. I thought you might be into Taylor more than you let on, but obviously I was imagining it.”

Clutch leaned back and the couch creaked. “Enough about me. How was the tattoo session last night?”

I looked back at Cassie. “She lifted her hand from the keyboard. Don’t mind me. I have no interest in your tawdry affairs. I’m going to go back and see if Prince Alpha wants onions on his pizza.” She headed to the back office.

I sat on the sliver of couch that was left after Clutch had sat down. I leaned my forearms on my thighs and stared at my hands, the hands that had touched her. “I have to fucking have her, Clutch.”

“Seems to me that she’s already taken.”

I shook my head. “Don’t care. I have to have her.”

C
HAPTER 14

Scotlyn

It was hard to know how much Lincoln was sensing about Nix and me. He was always so wrapped up in his business that he hardly ever took the time to think about our relationship. But he’d known for some time, even before Freefall, he was losing me. But sometimes I wondered if his supreme confidence had allowed him to believe that I would stay no matter how unhappy I was. For awhile, I’d resigned myself to staying with him. He rarely paid attention to me, giving me a lot of alone time, and I had a ridiculously lavish roof over my head. It beat huddling beneath a newspaper in a downpour.

For the longest time, I’d persuaded myself not to feel anything. That way, nothing mattered and living with Lincoln just became an existence that didn’t include using a gas station bathroom to wash.

This time Lincoln had invited girls out to the poolside meeting. I’d stayed in my room while they paraded through the house to the outside cabana. Lincoln had told me I could join them, but he knew I would say no.

With everyone outside, I took the opportunity to run down to the kitchen to pour myself a bowl of cereal. I was returning the milk to the fridge when the glass door slid open. I spun around to footsteps assuming it would be Lincoln. It was Grady, and he sneered at me like a hungry shark or in his case a lecherous one. He immediately stepped into my personal space, and the smell of beer, perspiration, and spicy aftershave surrounded me. I was wedged between Grady and the counter. I had nowhere to go. The small of my back and the fresh tattoo hit the edge of the counter and I winced.

“Oh, come on, looking at me is not that painful, my silent little treasure.” His breath smelled even stronger than his aftershave.

I looked at the glass door hoping Lincoln would appear. Grady would never come this close to me if Lincoln was around. Lincoln was his bread and butter.

I was trapped. I side stepped and he followed me.

“You know what is really great about the fact that you can’t talk?”

I glared at him and swallowed back a bitter taste in my throat.

He reached for my waist. “You can’t scream.”

As his hand reached for me, I stepped hard on his bare foot. He yelled out, and as he reached down to grab his foot, I raced for the stairs. I flew into the bedroom and locked the door. Tears filled my eyes as I picked up the phone to text Lincoln but then thought better of it. Grady had brought his two beastly looking buddies, and Lincoln was on his own. I didn’t even know for certain that Lincoln would do anything about it. And the last thing I wanted was to have any connection to his sordid business life. I would just make sure to avoid Grady from now on.

“I miss you,” I typed and sent it to Nix.

“I know exactly how you feel,” came back.

“I’m tired of being lost,” I typed.

“You were never lost. You were just waiting for me to find you.”

The tears flowed faster. I pressed the phone with his text against my chest and curled up on the bed to sleep.

***

An angry knock on the door woke me. I walked blurry-eyed and half-dazed to the door. Lincoln’s face was red, and he smelled of sickeningly sweet perfume. “Why the hell did you lock the door?” He actually looked past me into the room as if I’d somehow managed to sneak someone inside.

With a flourish, I motioned around the room to assure him it was quite empty. He really was a stupid ass. He apparently had no clue at all about Grady’s kitchen incident, even though the man had to have been limping when he returned to the pool.

Lincoln grabbed my chin with his fingers, and immediately my jaw clenched shut. “It looks like you’ve been crying.”

I pulled away from his grasp and headed to the bathroom to wash my face. He followed and stood behind me as I leaned over the sink. “Look, Babe, you know those girls don’t mean a thing to me. It’s just business.” Naturally, his ego went right to jealousy as the source of my tears.

I dried my face and hung up the towel. He followed me out of the bathroom. I picked up my notepad from the nightstand and wrote. “I found a job in Century City. I’ll be taking care of an elderly woman. She wants someone to write her memoirs.”

He read it twice as if it was a complicated message. Then he laughed.

I shook the paper angrily at him.

“Not a chance, Scotlyn. No one is going to hire you for that anyhow.” He squinted suspiciously at me. “How did you find this job?”

I lifted a brow and pointed down at the laptop on the nightstand.

He shook his head. “I knew that thing would be a problem.” It seemed as if he wasn’t going to give the idea more than a cruel burst of laughter.

I scribbled words quickly before tears flowed again. “I need to be part of the human world again.”

“You are part of my world, Babe. How would you even get there? You can’t drive,” he took pleasure in reminding me just how much of a prisoner I truly was.

“I can take the bus. I need this badly.” Tears threatened again.

He stared at me, and for a second, it seemed he was actually considering it. Then he waved it off. “No way.”

I crumpled the paper and threw it at his face. He dodged it with another cruel laugh. He turned to walk out and then stopped and looked back at me. “If I let you try this then you have to start planning our wedding.”

My stomach tightened at the words
our wedding
. I tried not to show the complete and utter distaste in my expression as I nodded weakly. It was always much easier to lie when you couldn’t use words.

“No buses. I’ll give you money for a taxi. I still don’t see how you’ll get the job without being able to talk.” He reached over and put his arm around my waist, and I pretended not to mind. I didn’t want to do anything to anger him at this point. I was reeling from the reality that he was actually going to let me try this. The other girl’s perfume tasted sweet in my mouth, and up close I could see lipstick on his neck. “But you will plan our wedding. My lawyer is finishing up the paperwork.”

I forced a smile. Then he leaned forward and kissed me, and every muscle in my body went rigid. I relaxed with relief when he released me and walked out the door. Once I’d heard his footsteps on the stairs, I grabbed my phone. “I’ll do it. I want to sit with your grandmother.”

“Great. I’ll tell her today.”

My hands were shaking with excitement and nerves. I was going to venture back out into the world alone, and I couldn’t wait. “Send me her address. Can I start tomorrow?” I needed to get online and look up the bus schedule. Lincoln expected me to take a taxi, but I wanted to do this on my own without his help. I’d used the Los Angeles bus system a lot when I was living on the street, and once you got used to it, it was pretty darn convenient.

I wrote down the address and texted him back. “See you tonight. And thank you.”

C
HAPTER 15

Nix

By three o’clock, our new shop mascot was getting on my nerves, and Cassie, being the awesome person that she was, sensed it. She’d mentioned that she could hear my teeth grinding together all the way from the back room. She offered to drive Dray back to the Zany Lucy, and I finished up with the last client of the day and closed up. I had just enough time to swing by and see Nana before Scotlyn came for her final tattoo session. This plan had to work or everything would go to shit. Nana would have to move into a home, and Scotlyn would disappear from my life forever.

Nana was sitting at the table eating a sandwich when I walked in. Her eyes brightened when she saw me. “Alexander, I wasn’t expecting you. Would you like a sandwich?”

“No thanks, I had pizza for lunch, and I’m still stuffed.” I sat down across from her.

“Your sister was here this morning,” she said and then hesitated seemingly trying to remember if she really had been there. “Yes, it was this morning. We went and bought groceries.” She smiled down at her sandwich. “I guess I won’t have to cook for myself soon.” A sad laugh followed.

“Nana, I found someone to come sit with you during the day.”

The lines on her forehead deepened. “What do you mean?”

“Remember you told me that you wanted someone to write down your memoirs. I found someone to do that, and she can sit with you during the day and make sure you’re all right.”

She looked even more confused, and I sighed in frustration.

“My memoirs?” she said completely puzzled and then her eyes widened. “Why, yes, my memoirs. What a lovely idea.”

“Her name is Scotlyn, and she writes very fast in long hand. You said you wanted to write them in long hand.”

She stared down at her hands. “No, I can’t. My hands hurt too much.”

“I know. Scotlyn will write the memoirs for you. I think you’ll like her but she doesn’t talk.”

Confusion returned to her face. “Why not?”

“She can hear, but she was in a bad accident and she lost her voice.”

“That’s terrible, poor girl. When will she come?”

“She’ll come tomorrow.” I grabbed a notepad to write something to remind Nana of this conversation. The shop was booked solid tomorrow, so I wouldn’t be able to come and introduce Scotlyn. I thought about it for a minute and then wrote. “The pretty girl at the door is Scotlyn. She is coming to sit with you and write out your memoirs. She can hear you, but she can’t talk.” I taped the note to the door as I left. I dialed Diana’s number on the way back to the shop. I had an idea of how she might react and had prepared for it.

“Hey, Di, I’ve found someone to come sit with Nana during the day.”

“What?” It was the reaction I’d expected.

“You heard me. A friend of mine is going to sit with her during the day, and she’s going to help Nana write out her memoirs. I was looking on line for someone to sit with her and decided to pick someone I knew. If it works, then I’ll sell the Zany Lucy and move back in with Nana.”

There was a long silence. “Is this one of your bimbo friends who needed a job? You must be nuts.”

“She’s not a bimbo.” It was good that I’d prepared myself to meet her bitchy reaction with calmness. “Look, we share power of attorney over Nana, and you’re not putting her in one of those old people storage facilities yet. Let’s see if this works. Nana is excited about writing down her past.”

Another anger filled pause.

“Look, Di, let’s just give this a chance first, and if it doesn’t work out then we’ll go look at the places.”

I could almost feel her blow her sigh through the phone. “Fine. Let’s try it. But I think you’re in major denial, Nix.”

“Yeah, maybe. But sometimes it is nice to deny reality. I’ll talk to you later.”

***

They were late and for awhile I began to wonder if Hammond had decided not bring her back. I was fairly certain Scotlyn would have texted me. Unless, of course, he’d caught her texting me and taken the phone away. A knot twisted in my gut as I thought about how frail our connection was. Hammond had been paying in cash, and I had no idea where they lived. Something told me he wasn’t the type of guy that would have his personal information easy to access on line.

I was in the office when I heard the Porsche pull up, and the relief I felt proved that I was in deep trouble. I’d never felt about any girl like I did about Scotlyn, and I had to figure out how to make her mine.

The smug bastard walked in first. His tan got deeper with each visit. Obviously, he had a lot of time to sit around the pool. Scotlyn walked in behind him, and as usual, she avoided making eye contact with me while Hammond was nearby.

“We’re done tonight, right?” he asked. Then he scowled at Scotlyn. “And no more adding strange colors to the flowers. I know you like that hot pink color, but it looks shitty.”

Her lip pushed out sadly, but she still didn’t look over at me.