I’ve not dealt with a lot of women in this context. Usually, if I am dating a woman, there is a protocol and a set of behaviors we will engage in. A mating dance, really. There’s the invitation, the dinner, the dancing, the bedding, the inevitable farewell when they realize my intensity carries through to every area of my life and they realize they could never withstand it.
I crouch down in front of her, borrowing a technique I learned when my youngest brothers were small.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” I ask the question softly. “Something you would feel unburdened by if you just told me?”
She shakes her head and practically whispers her response.
“No.”
I reach out and tip her chin up. She has started to hide her eyes. They all do that when they are feeling guilty and know they should have behaved better.
She looks at me reluctantly. I cock my head to the side as I search her gaze.
“It’s a relief to confess,” I tell her.
“And what would you do if I did?”
Oh, she’s guilty. Of something. My pulse spikes for a moment as that fact registers inside me. Leo told me she was a red herring, a nosy little goth girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I don’t think so.
I could take her now. I could imprison her in my home and have my way with her and break her down until she told me everything I wanted to know and a great many things I did not.
But something tells me to leave her loose, to watch her. If she’s up to something, I will find out more from observation than from confession. This girl did not hurt Teddy, but I think she knows who did.
I smile, breaking the spell, and I stand up and back, releasing the pressure. It’s a technique used for training horses, but it works on people just as well.
She looks surprised, and even more nervous now. She looks up at me, practically quivering with fear. She is a rabbit waiting to be devoured, but now is not the time to eat.
“I’ll leave my card,” I tell her. “If you think of anything.”
I slide my card onto the kitchen counter, nod, and leave. It’s an abrupt departure, and it is intended to be. I want her off balance. I want her to feel like I saw something in her, that perhaps in some way she’s already been found out.
I want to see what she does next.
CHAPTER 6
Luke
I’m being transported against my will. Again. Happens a lot. Far more of my adult life has been spent with a big man’s arms wrapped around me than I ever thought possible.
I’ve done this enough times to know that I can come quietly, but that’s not going to be on brand, and they’re going to be suspicious. Ironically, they’ll think I’m on something. It’s actually easier to go down fighting. And it plays into my natural instincts and talents.
Two big men paid to put up with exactly this kind of shit are accompanying me. They work for the rehab, not for Aiden. If they were our guys, I’d get a little in the way of deference. As it is, these two are treating me like a piece of shit they dragged off the street.
“Get the fuck off me!” I kick one of them in the stomach. Half-strength. This is basically professional wrestling at this point, but I’m the only one who doesn’t know it’s real.
“Quiet down, or we’ll sedate you,” the other one growls.
“Don’t you know who the fuck I am?”
I ask the question just as we all come tumbling out of the depressing van that always goes to places like these. Cars don’t have enough room to restrain people against their will. I let them half-lead, half-drag me to admissions, asking that question over and over in increasingly arrogant and agitated tones.
“You’re an addict.”
A man with a clipboard, shaved head, and a ratty little fucking goatee says those words to me like he’s a prophet from god making a proclamation from on high.
God, they love to talk down to you. The fucking nerve to act like they’re better. A lot of the people who work in these places have also dealt with addiction in the past, but that doesn’t stop them being smug as fuck.
“I’m Luke Levin.”
