Chapter Five
Kayla lay awake, hearing the thuds and wails, the screams and groans, the gunshots and whatever the hell else all around her. It was almost soothing in its regularity, its familiarity, after a night spent slinging expensive beer and overpriced bar food to a bunch of rich assholes and their insufferable dates.
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, willing the vision of him out of her mind. Willing him gone from her memory banks. He was just another Richie Rich anyway. Just another asshole, eye-fucking her when he thought she didn’t know it.
But she always knew it. She’d spent her entire life knowing it.
The heat in the upper room where she was squatting pressed down on her body, forcing her to remain as still as possible as if by her stillness she might escape it. She took tiny sips of the wet, damp air. Reminding herself that she was lucky to have this illegal space at all. That she was lucky to be alive.
Lucky. That wasn’t a word she usually associated with her life. But it seemed to be shining a weak light on her the past few weeks, at least in relation to the shit she’d slogged through from the time she’d been thirteen. Lucky to get caught up in a drug bust, where she lay, dying from an overdose of pain pills and booze. Lucky to be so poor and nameless that the hospital had had to take her in, revive her, feed her a few days. Lucky that a nice lady doctor had taken pity on her and found her a coveted spot in a government-paid detox camp. Lucky that the camp had made her work so hard she’d almost forgotten her daily need for a hit, for a pill, for a drink.
Almost.
Not so lucky that one of the guards had caught her outside smoking an illicit cigarette one night and demanded that she blow him in exchange for her silence.
She sighed and let the sweat drip down her face, knowing that it would cool her skin and so resisting the compulsion to wipe it away. She rolled onto her side and let her legs dangle off the edge of the mattress. Her feet hurt, but in a good way, a hard-day-at-a-job-she-actually-liked way. It had only taken her a few weeks to get into the groove and flow of the place. And Melody, her rescuer, seemed to be pleased with her performance so far.
She had the day off tomorrow, which was not something she looked forward to like a normal person would. Hours to sit and stare at walls did nothing for her, so she planned to take a long walk, drop in at the library and read, anything to keep from having to be alone with her thoughts.
She’d put her foot down and insisted that she wasn’t ready to see Trent so Melody had agreed to keep her presence a secret as far as was possible. She’d enlisted Evelyn in this, too. And Trent was super busy working on some new massive real estate development deal anyway so he was hardly ever at the bar.
Her baby bro—the real estate mogul. She smiled into the stifling room while thinking about him, letting herself visit some of her oldest memories after a lot of years stuffing them under a pillow and smothering them out of mental self-preservation. She’d seen a picture of him on Melody’s phone and had been shocked at how tall and handsome he was. But the sight of his face had set her back a few days. Because he looked an awful lot like his father. The man not her father, but who’d stuck around long enough to drink away what money they’d had, slap her around a little, then take all of that a step further when she’d turned fourteen.
She squeezed her eyes shut, unwilling to go there right now.
With a groan, she sat up, letting her bare legs stick out on the floor in front of her. The pain in her feet focused her for a few minutes, but the urge was back. The need to do something to release the intolerable pressure building in her chest, her neck, her head.
When her stepfather had made his first forays into her childhood bedroom, she’d been afraid, of course, but something in her, some innate positive creature, had reminded her that he must love her.
She’d been so stupid and weak, she’d sought him out during the days he’d been home without work. She’d bring him beers or sandwiches and he’d smile at her, pat her on the arm, kiss her cheek, tell her what a nice girl she was. So much nicer than her mother.
He’d come to her at night, make her cry, and leave her room with kisses on her forehead and cheeks and promises that if she never told anyone, he would love her forever.
She forced herself to her feet and stumbled into the adjacent room with the moldy shower, cracked toilet seat and leaky sink. Tears burned her eyes but she stopped them, calling on her training. Nobody likes a crier, he’d said to her. A lot.
She dropped to her hands and knees and pressed her hot face against the toilet seat, waiting for the inevitable. But she’d only eaten a few bites of soup and her body seemed determined to hang on to it for now. As she leaned back the room spun a few times, then righted itself. Which served to increase the pressure. Pressure under her skin so powerful she wondered how she didn’t just explode into a million pieces.
Gasping in pain, she stood, lifted the lid of the toilet tank, and found what she was looking for—a tiny ziplock bag with a few crucial items.
Not pills. Not anymore. She’d never go back to that.
As her fingers closed around the sharp, German-made blade, she sighed in anticipated relief. Just holding the cold metal between her finger and thumb calmed her racing pulse. The pain in her feet and hips faded in anticipation.
She pressed the blade to an old cut, ready to slice through the thick scar tissue, eager to release the horrific pressure under her skin, she recalled the man she’d met today. Brock. His handsome yet sad face. His deft touch with the little kid. His sweet smile.
“No,” she said, startling herself as she opened an old wound with a grunt of pain. “No. No. No. No. No.”
The blood beaded up, then began to flow down her arm—a warm, familiar, soothing sensation. Kayla sighed and dropped her head back. The voices building in her head—mostly her stepfather’s but a few others’ along the way—receded in the face of the pain. But another voice, and a different face, filled her mind as she sobbed, keeping as quiet as possible. Because nobody liked a crier.
The sound of a buzzing phone made her gasp and sit up, slipping around in the coagulating blood on the bathroom floor. Her neck ached from being jammed up for God knew how long after she’d passed out on the floor and dropped over onto her side in the small space. Her arm throbbed. But her head was clear. The pressure was gone. And that was all that mattered.
Pressing a thin towel over the fresh cut, she stumbled out into the other room, still shocked that anyone would have a reason to be calling her. It took her a few seconds to register that it was Melody, her boss.
“Hello?” She tried to keep the tremor out of her voice. She was dizzy, weak, hungry. But she needed to sound normal. She wanted to keep the job at the FitzPub.
“Hi, Kayla. It’s Melody. Listen, I’m wondering if you’re available to open tomorrow?”
“Yes, I am.” She pressed the towel against the oozing wound and made herself focus on this conversation. “No problem.”
“I gave you a key, right?”
“Yes. I have one.”
“Great. Okay. Thanks!”
“No problem. Thank you.”
There was a beat of silence. “Kayla, I really think we need to tell Trent.”
“I know you do. But I… I need a little more time.” She closed her eyes, seeing his face in the photo and unable to not superimpose the voice of her stepfather in her ear, the smell of old booze and sour sweat out of her nose, the pain… “I’ll do it soon, I swear. I need to go, though. I’ll open tomorrow. Talk to you soon.” She ended the call and fell back on the mattress, panting and praying that the pressure wouldn’t build and forcing the invasion of Brock Fitzgerald’s face, eyes, smile out of her head.