The black-haired cowboy shifts uneasily, folding his arms over his broad chest.
“But there’s not enough here to control me anymore.” I rub a hand over my face, exhaling loudly. “Don’t worry, though,” I say low and raw. “I have a plan.”
“And what’s that?” he grumbles, face hard as granite.
“Does it matter to you?”
Pain slashes through his face for an instant. Then, a stony resolve. I could almost think I imagined it. But I know better.
“What do you do when you need something from the store?” I ask.
He straightens, jaw ticking. “I get it.”
I nod. “Easy. Simple. But if I go out in public? It’s a madhouse. Paparazzi everywhere. Journalists scrutinizing me. Tabloids jonesing for the worst angle of me. The moment of disgust, the bad outfit, the unfiltered sentence that they can use against me over and over again.”
“And Edwin?” His voice sounds softer, but I can’t mistake it for care.
"Edwin protects me. Edwin cares for me. Edwin keeps me sane and safe and…” My eyes drop back to the line of bottles. “Medicated.”
“With all due respect…” he drawls.
I arch an eyebrow waiting.
“He’ll use you until you have nothing left to give. He’ll take and take and take. Your fame, your talent, your beauty, your youth … until you become exactly what he’s trying to make you.”
“And what’s that?”
“Disposable.”
He doesn’t say the last part like some abstract hypothetical. He says it like a man who knows the sting of losing it all.
“People like you have spent their whole lives learning how to be. People like me inhabit glass cages.” My voice quivers at the end.
“You could figure it out if people would let you.”
“And I will figure it out,” I answer too quickly. “Alone.”
With a sweep of my arm, I send the medications cascading into the trash bin beside the counter. Plastic bites the air. Pills strike hollow and final.
Maverick’s face stills, his eyes brooding. They slide past me to the window. Another sweep of the room, like assassins will jump out of the cracks in the floors if he doesn’t keep watch.
“Laundry’s dry. I’ll help.”
I open my mouth to refuse the offer, but the determination in his walk tells me to save my breath.
Chapter
Thirteen
MAVERICK
Grayson’s voice seethes with resignation. “The lawyers her parents hired aren’t optimistic. If we could just get more time…”
I stand a distance away watching the blonde beauty pull fabric from the line, white cloth billowing around her like a lacy veil.
“Is she confiding in you? Giving us anything we can work with?” he asks, steely-voiced.
“Getting there, though nothing solid yet.”
