Page 50

Lauren

I lay curled in my bed, curtains drawn, a cold towel over my eyes to reduce the swelling.

Three days had passed since I’d confronted Nic, and I’d spent most of that time locked in my room, crying.

Everything hurt. Not just my heart, but my throat from where he’d grabbed me, and my shoulders and back from getting slammed against the wall.

Add to it the pain of betrayal, and I couldn’t gather the strength to get out of bed for anything besides going to the bathroom and showering.

My roommates had brought me food, but most of it remained untouched, carried away by them later.

They’d been hovering, concerned, because they’d seen the marks on my neck and thought I’d been mugged or something.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell them the truth, that I’d trusted the wrong man, again , and this time, he’d done the impossible: hurt me even worse than he had when we were kids.

I’d also kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to endanger Ryan and Taylor.

The one thing Nic had said that I wholeheartedly believed was that if word got out that I knew about his family, I might be the next one to go missing.

So I held it all inside and suffered in silence.

And, yes, I was scaring my roommates, but I’d rather have them scared than dead.

I rolled over, curling into Walter, who’d been glued to my side this whole time. He let out a low whine and wriggled closer, and I threw my arm over him and burrowed my face against his neck.

How had I not seen this coming? My instincts had tried to warn me, tried to get me to break things off with Nic every time he let me down, but I’d ignored them, because whenever I got around the man, my brain abandoned ship, and my hormones took over the helm.

I felt like a fool now. Nic had killed my father.

Or, at the very least, had something to do with his disappearance.

Hid his body, maybe. Cleaned up the scene where he was murdered.

I’d imagined countless scenarios over the past several days, couldn’t stop picturing all the horrible, gruesome things Nic might have done.

And, no, I didn’t like my father, had barely spoken to him over the past decade, but that didn’t mean I wanted the man dead.

That I’d be okay with my...whatever Nic was, having something to do with it.

He’d been lying to me, the whole time . Hiding so much.

And I’d just blindly walked right into his clutches like the horny little idiot I was.

I’d gone against all my better judgment and given him a second chance, and then a third.

I’d begged him not to betray me, and he’d promised he wouldn’t.

I’d started to trust him, started to feel hope that there might be something more between us, that maybe I wasn’t as unlucky in love as I’d always believed.

I’d handed him my battered, bruised heart and told him to be careful with it, and instead, he’d crushed it in his fist.

God, he must have thought I was so stupid, so gullible, so easy . Had he been secretly laughing at me? Toying with me? Having the time of his life while he strung me along?

I squeezed my eyes shut and rolled onto my back, trying to turn my mind off, trying to force it out of the constant loop of self-doubt and recrimination it had been stuck in, trying to forget the fury in Nic’s face when he screamed at me that he’d done it, that he’d killed my father and then fucked me just to spite him.

As much as that image was burned into my brain, the one that followed was equally unforgettable.

The way Nic’s expression had crumpled, shoulders slumping, regret replacing rage.

I couldn’t stop replaying it in my mind.

It was the one thing tripping me up. Because if he’d really done everything I’d accused him of, if he was really as big of a bastard as I feared, then why had he looked so distraught?

A noise came from downstairs. It sounded like the front door closing.

Walter bounded from the bed to go check it out. No doubt it was Taylor coming home from Jackson’s, or Ryan getting back after meeting with Ben.

Walter let out his usual whines of hello , followed by a series of squeaks that told me he’d grabbed his elephant.

I heard a murmur and assumed it was Ryan even though the pitch was lower than their normal register.

My senses were all fucked up from crying so much.

I couldn’t smell anything, and food had become tasteless, so of course sounds would be the next thing to go.

Footsteps thudded up the stairs. I rolled toward my door, straining my ears. They sounded heavier than Ryan’s, too.

“Hello?” I called, my voice hoarse.

No answer.

“Hello?” I said again, louder.

Still no answer. My roommates would never ignore me like this.

Fuck. Someone else was in our apartment, and since Walter wasn’t barking his head off, I assumed that meant he’d met that someone before.

Nic?

I scrambled out of bed, looking for a weapon. My purse with the taser in it was downstairs, hanging from its usual hook on the entryway wall, and the bat was still propped by the front door. I had nothing in my room to defend myself. Nothing except sex toys, that was.

Taking a page out of Taylor’s book, I wrenched open my closet and grabbed my favorite whip, the same one Walter had chewed on all those weeks ago.

My door creaked. I turned toward it just in time to see Nic slip inside and close it behind him, shutting Walter out.

He looked terrible, face drawn, expression grim.

In his usual head-to -toe black, he could have been the grim reaper come to collect me.

My eyes dropped to his gloved hands, gloves that would prevent any fingerprints from being left behind. Oh, god.

“Please,” I said. “I haven’t told anyone. You don’t have to do this.”

He shook his head and reached into his jacket, where I assumed a gun was strapped to his side.

I’d love to say that’s when I snapped the whip at him and fought my way free, but I’d never faced such a threat of violence before, and I froze, staring in horror, unable to move a single muscle despite everything in my being urging me to scream, to run.

I think maybe I was in shock that the boy I’d loved as a teen was about to end my life.

Nic pulled out an envelope instead of a gun, stepping forward to set it on the edge of my bed.

“W...what is that?” I rasped. It looked too small to be a bomb, but I couldn’t rule out the threat of anthrax. He was wearing gloves to handle it . . .

“It’s the deed to Velvet’s building,” Nic said, his voice as raw as mine.

My hands started to shake, the whip falling from my numb fingers and clattering across the hardwood. He wasn’t here to kill me?

“I bought the building from McKinney,” he said.

“That’s why I had to leave the other night, that’s what I was doing the day you snuck into my apartment.

I’d planned to use it to help me get free.

I wanted to lower the rent back down, expand Velvet, help it grow.

” His eyes slid away from mine, looking bleak.

“Show you how serious I was about building a life with you. I realize that’s probably impossible now, so I want you to have it. ”

My head swam, and I had to sit down before I fell down, lowering myself to the floor.

Concern swept over Nic’s face. He took a step forward, but something in my expression must have given him pause, because he stopped several feet away, breathing hard, his gaze running over me.

“I didn’t kill your father,” he told me.

“But I understand if you don’t believe me, especially after what I said to you.

I was hurt and scared of losing you and my fucking temper .

” He balled his fists and took a deep breath, visibly trying to get ahold of himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that’s not enough to make up for what I put you through, but I have to say it anyway. ”

My eyes shifted from him to the edge of the bed.

Quickly, because I was still afraid he was feeding me more lies, I leaned forward and snatched the envelope off my duvet.

It was heavy in my hand, stuffed full of paper, and when I opened it, the deed tumbled out, or at least a convincing copy of one.

I brushed my fingers over the notarized seal at the bottom, my thoughts churning.

It certainly didn’t look fake, and why would Nic go through all this trouble to set me at ease if he was planning on hurting me?

The dates next to the signatures confirmed his timeline, official-looking stamps beneath them with the city seal in stark relief.

I lifted my gaze, searching his face, looking for any sign of duplicity or malice, but instead, I might as well have been staring into a mirror.

He looked just as exhausted as I felt, just as wrung out, just as depressed.

Like our fight had hurt him as much as it had me.

I set the deed back on the bed, frowning.

Even if he hadn’t killed my father, he’d been lying to me, and I wasn’t about to let him get away with it.

“Tell me what happened to Tommy.”

Nic’s shoulders dropped, some of the tension leaching from his body when I didn’t immediately order him out. “Can I?” he asked, motioning toward the bed.

I nodded, and he sat, facing me, elbows braced on his knees. His green eyes met mine before slipping down to my rumpled T-shirt and sweats. I looked like hell, but from the way he drank me in, you’d never know it.

His gaze returned to mine. “Tommy was last seen with my father.”

“So he’s dead?” I asked, my heart breaking all over again.

Some stupid, small part of me had been holding out hope that one day, my father would change, become a better person, or that I’d at least get closure on our relationship.

With his life cut short, the chances of either of those things happening disappeared.