Say it Louder (5 page)

“No.”

“Then you can’t stay here. I don’t know what you want, but my job’s on the line if I let you stay here. And I can’t afford to lose it.”

I stare at her as she walks through the tattoo shop and flicks off lights, then pulls the chain beneath the neon OPEN sign to turn it off. She opens the door and pulls out a ring of keys to lock up.

“Willa, have you ever needed someone to just help you? No questions asked?” We’re just a few inches apart as she pulls the door closed behind us, but I don’t back away. I can feel her body heat pull at me like a campfire’s warmth. “That’s what I need today. Tonight. I have nowhere I can go right now. No one I can trust. Except you.”

She clicks the lock into place and straightens, her pale blue eyes challenging me. This time, the staring contest isn’t about power—it’s about raw assessment. I’m willing her to understand how much it takes to simply admit that I need some help.

I need her.

“Follow me.”

***

Compared to my house, most people’s homes are pretty basic. Kristina bought four-thousand-dollar leather couches, thick rugs and fancy decorator stuff that I can’t even name. She went apeshit in Williams-Sonoma decking out our kitchen, and then I went kind of crazy with the electronics.

Even compared to my childhood addresses, a series of run-down rental houses and marginally better apartments, Willa’s apartment is a slum.

We climb four flights of creaking stairs, pass several discarded pizza boxes piled up by a garbage chute, and scuttle beneath a lone bare bulb in the hallway. Willa unlocks the door—just one lock, and that worries me.

“It’s safe, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she says. “Some of my neighbors are working girls and dealers, but some of them are just regular folks scraping by.” The challenge in her voice tells me she knows I’m judging her.

I can’t help it. Even when our band first moved to New York, we lived in a better place than this.

She drops her messenger bag on a table that’s splashed with several colors of paint, and that’s the first thing I notice—paint is everywhere, splatters and drips across the floor and color swatches painted on the walls. A rusted metal shelf bears mismatched quarts, brushes, turpentine, and dozens of cans of spray paint.

The apartment is one big room, with windows along two walls. One window is covered with cardboard and another has a star-shaped crack that looks like a bullet hit it.

Maybe it did.

I’m drawn to the stacks of canvases propped along the floor and I walk toward them, but Willa reels me back to her. “Don’t look, and don’t touch.”

“Why not?”

She blows out an exasperated breath. “Look, I took you home with me against my better judgment. Don’t make me regret it.”

So I back off—I sit on the couch and mess with my phone while she putters around her place and the sounds of the city at night take over. She makes ramen and my stomach growls in anticipation.

We slurp from our bowls in silence.

When her eyes flick up to meet mine, I’m tongue-tied by the heavy lashes that fringe her stormy, pale blue eyes. They’re the color of a Caribbean shore, but they carry the feeling of being lost at sea.

I open and close my mouth like a fish, squirming under her direct gaze. I have a million questions but I don’t feel like I have permission to ask any of them.

She stares me down, like she’s deciding something. Whatever’s happening behind those clear, intelligent eyes, she doesn’t share it with me.

I break her gaze and rest my bowl on the makeshift coffee table, turning to anchor my elbows on my knees and run my hands through my hair. I’ve been humbled every way a man could be humbled—Kristina’s deception, the threat of arrest, and watching my options slip through my fingers like sand.

Yet Willa seems to see me so clearly that it takes me down another peg.

She doesn’t see a rock star or a rich guy. She doesn’t see a kickass manager or a half-ass drummer. She just sees … me. And it cuts too close.

It’s my last layer of skin, my final defense, and feeling it penetrated is more than I can take tonight. I lurch up from the couch. “Where do you want me to sleep?”

She pats the couch. “You’re looking at it.”

I nod in thanks and haul myself to the bathroom, feeling the weight of the day drag down my limbs. Just before I reach the bathroom, I hear her soft, strong voice.

“I put a blanket out for you.”

I swallow hard, tightness in my throat almost smothering my reply. “Thanks.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Quiet noises in the apartment wake me hours later. Soft footfalls. The rustling of fabric and clink of metal. I open my eyes to the dim city light that filters through Willa’s curtainless windows.

She’s a shadow across the room.

I stir and her head snaps up, eyes glinting in the light. Her shoulders stiffen, as if I’ve caught her doing something wrong.

I sit up. She’s swapped her jeans for black leggings and her T-shirt for a long-sleeved dark shirt. Her black messenger bag bulges on her hip.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.” She moves to a shelf and stuffs something in the messenger bag.

“You look like you’re going to break in somewhere.”

She tilts up her chin, a challenge. “Maybe I am.”

I’m on my feet in an instant, moving between her and the door. “What? You can’t just go out and wander the streets and break in places.”

She huffs, her eyes hardening when I block her exit. “I can do anything I want. You wanted a place to stay. So stay. But don’t tell me what I can or can’t do.”

Willa moves to get around me but I shift to the side, and suddenly we’re chest to chest. Another staredown.

This time, our faces are inches apart. This time, our staring contest crackles with the electricity of our physical touch.

“Move,” she whispers.

My lips curl into a faint smile. “No.”

Willa scowls and shoves her body closer to the door, closer to me. I rest my hand lightly on her hip, so as she moves, I move. Like we’re dancing.
 

Her fist clenches the material of my dark gray shirt. “I said, move.”
 

Her demand is a hiss and I smell her breath, sweet and hot, cinnamon and clove. My eyes drop to her lips, and suddenly I want my mouth there. I need to taste her.

Her eyes darken, pupils dilating as I tip my chin slightly, moving closer. But before I can connect with that ripe mouth, she shoves my chest—hard.

“Wrong move, Dave.” She spins and grabs the door handle and she’s down a flight of stairs before I can pick my jaw up off the floor, shove my feet in my shoes, and follow her.

I don’t know why I follow, I just do. Acting on instinct, rather than from the million calculations that usually drive me.

Normally, I think with my head. I weigh the logic in any situation. But Willa defies logic. She’s like a force of nature, thunder and lightning, impossible to control.

I race after her, down four flights, hustling to catch up as she pushes out of her building and onto the sidewalk.
 

“Willa. Would you wait up for me?”

She flings a glance over her shoulder. “This can’t wait.” She doesn’t slow down, but she doesn’t speed up, either.

“What are you doing—really?” I hustle after her and pull my phone from my pocket to check the time. 1:18 a.m. Unless she’s going bar-hopping, there aren’t a lot of legal activities available right now.

Willa snatches the phone from my hand, and that jolt of electricity is back. She powers off my phone without asking. “First rule: keep up. Second rule: put this away. If it lights up or rings at the wrong time, we’re screwed.”

She hands the phone back and I pocket it. “What’s the third rule?”

“Do what I tell you, ask questions later.”

I nod, and Willa inspects my face in the slanting light from a streetlamp. She seems satisfied, so she turns and continues our brisk pace northbound, from the Lower East Side across Houston and into the East Village.

We jog west a few blocks, passing a noisy bar where a handful of patrons are smoking and chatting on the sidewalk outside. The thump of bass from the music reaches my chest, beating in time with my heart.

I stumble on a raised sidewalk edge and Willa’s suddenly not there beside me. I whip my head around, and I’m alone.

What the …?

A snap from the alley I just passed alerts me. I backtrack ten paces, and she’s there, hand on her hip, telegraphing annoyance. I broke the first rule: keep up.
 

I follow her down the alley to a quieter, narrow street lined with mostly apartments. A gray metal roll-up door is down and locked to cover a storefront. She digs into her messenger bag and pulls out a long, rolled sheet of cardboard and masking tape.

“Make yourself useful,” she whispers, and hands me one edge of the cardboard. In the moonlight, I see shapes cut through it, and I follow her gestures to hold it against the door. She tapes it up. I’m not sure of the cutouts, but I think they form words.

Sounds from the sidewalk at the end of the side street make Willa’s body go rigid. I hear voices, and suddenly she grabs my shirt and spins us in front of the door, her back against the cardboard cutout to partially block it. Her arms go around my neck and she yanks my face toward hers.

The voices grow louder. Two men are walking down the sidewalk.

“Kiss me,” Willa hisses. “Now.”
 

Rule three: do what she says, ask questions later.
 

She doesn’t have to tell me twice.

I lower my mouth on hers, finally tasting that cinnamon and clove. Her kiss is desperate, her fingertips digging into my shoulders as the men approach us. She hooks one leg around the back of my knee and suddenly my crotch is pressed right up against her, and I feel myself harden.

Through her thin leggings, I’m sure she feels it too.

And what the hell else is she feeling right now, as her lips move hard against me and her hips tilt up to meet mine? I dart my tongue into her mouth, exploring, and she moans. The men’s conversation drops off, but they’re still walking toward us.

My hands round her hips and fill with two perfectly muscled ass cheeks. The electricity of our touch sparks brighter, shooting want and need and desperate urges into my kiss that quicken the tempo of my pulse.

It’s something I haven’t felt in years. Something so raw it cuts to the bone, to what lies beneath our flesh and blood and ink.

Only a few yards from us, the men slow their pace. Willa kisses me harder, panting tiny breaths, and I inhale her scent and breath and being. I kiss her back, eyes wide open as I strain to understand her expression.

By their footsteps, I know the men keep walking. As their sound recedes, I feel the tension melt from Willa’s body, feel her more pliant beneath my hands as the men amble down the street.

I draw her lower lip into my mouth and suck on it, wanting to taste the fullness of cinnamon. The fullness of Willa.

And that’s when her hands unwind from my neck, trailing down my shoulders to my elbows. As the men’s voices fade, she disentangles herself from me, panting.

She runs a hand through her spiky pink layers. “That was close.”

No, that was awesome.
I stay silent.

“If they’d come down this street a few minutes later, they’d’ve smelled the paint. They’d know we weren’t just here to make out.”

“It’s a good enough reason,” I say, disappointment churning in my gut.
Was that kiss real? Or was I just covering for her?

Because that kiss wasn’t just a pretend kiss. It wasn’t just a here-put-your-lips-on-me-for-a-while kind of deal.

That was thunder and lightning and the heavy, heady feel of air rich with ozone in late summer. The kind of night that makes you feel even more alive.

Like tonight.

But Willa brushes off our kiss like it was nothing. I’m cold from the loss of her touch and the chill of night feathers over my sweat-dampened skin. Her hand dips into her bag again, then short, sharp bursts of spray from her can attack the door. She’s done in under a minute, the can capped and hidden again, then the stencil peeled back from the door.

“Now for the fun part.” Willa’s eyes glint with mischief and I see her take a syringe from her bag loaded with something dark red. Blood? She squirts small amounts on the first two words in her stencil, making little rivulets of that drip down the door. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness of the side street and I can finally read her stencil.

Beauty lies within.

That phrase is sweet, innocuous, even encouraging. But the way Willa’s done it, in bold text with the first two words dripping in blood-red paint, changes everything. Now the stencil reveals a darker meaning:
Beauty lies. Within.

Willa bends and grabs the stencil, then trots down the alley, tossing it and the red syringe into a Dumpster. I hustle to stay close, a part of me shocked that she just committed a crime, the other part in awe of this gutsy girl.

“What’s on the other side of that roll-up door?”

“Clinic. Plastic surgery, Botox, the works.” She scowls. “They’re not selling beauty. They’re just taking advantage of all the beauty lies that women are told. Thought they could do with some truth in advertising.”