When the knocking started on Belmont’s door the following morning, he was already sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the blank television screen. He must have been parked there since arriving back from the mine last night, because his clothes were still caked in filth, along with his hands and face. A shower would have helped clean him on the outside, but nothing would have stopped him from feeling dirty, so what was the point?
He turned and glanced at the bed behind him, wincing at the memory of what he’d done. Every time he replayed what happened, it only got worse. How many times had she told him to stop? Said no? He’d been so fucked up over the hours underground, he couldn’t hear a thing over the machine roaring in his ears. And the calls of his name. They were never-ending. Everything had slammed to a halt when he registered her struggling, but it had been too late. He’d…denied Sage a right. He’d betrayed her trust. Sage. His Sage.
Instinct prodded him in the spine, the gut, insisting he find her and apologize over and over again, despite the fact that he’d already done it once. He would bring her coffees, dresses, and scrapbook materials. Anything he could think of to make her happy, even if she didn’t forgive him. Thing was, she would forgive him. Sage was incapable of holding a grudge. There would be talking and nearness between them. Her voice would wrap around him like a scarf. And right now he wasn’t able to accept her solace.
The mine and all the suppressed memories he’d shoved down into the bottom of his barrel were floating to the top. Every inch of him was scoured and raw. Being around the one person who could balm his wounds was too hard. When she was close, he wanted to latch on for dear life and never let go. She didn’t want that. He didn’t want that for her, either. So he stayed away from Sage. Couldn’t even bring himself to look in her direction.
Eventually, he would overcome this broken part of himself. He would. Because Sage was suffering just as he was suffering, and that was unacceptable. There was time, though. As long as Sage was safe from the mine, he could continue to toil and beat these demons in himself. She would wait for him. Wouldn’t she?
Belmont stood to answer the door, but couldn’t resist one more glance toward the bed.
Help me forget, Sage.
Who knows? Maybe she wouldn’t forgive him. He’d proven himself to be exactly what she wanted to avoid. Proved he wasn’t good for her. Would she wait?
Belmont stared down at his hand, willing it to lift and open the door, but it just hung there by his side. Smart hand. If Sage was standing on the other side, he might not be able to send her away this time. He was so damn tired, he swayed on his feet. His heartbeat was pumping slow, slower…slower, like it couldn’t find a reason to keep working without Sage around.
A fleeting thought meandered through his mind. What if he was still beneath the surface in the freezing motel pool he’d jumped into all those days ago? All of this could be one awful dream conjured by a lovesick man. If that were true, he hoped he dreamed up Sage on the other side of the door. He wouldn’t be able to hurt her if she weren’t real.
Suddenly eager, Belmont turned the knob and threw open the door.
It wasn’t Sage.
There were…one, two…seven men, only one of whom he recognized from the last time Augustine had paid him a visit at the motel. And Belmont didn’t know what they could possibly want with him, but intuition told him their presence was a very bad thing. Very bad. In the last week, he’d slept only a matter of hours and his muscles were strained from mine work. His heart was barely performing its function by pumping blood and he ached head to toe. He ached for Sage. What he’d done. How he’d fix it. Whether trying to do so was even the right thing for her.
But his mind was alert enough to know if seven men were there, they anticipated a problem. And the only way Belmont would give them a problem was if Sage’s safety or happiness were in question.
His hands flexed into fists, his back teeth grinding together.
“This is the guy?” one of the men said. “What’s wrong, man? Are the showers out?”
Laughter kicked up from someone he couldn’t see. “Can’t we find him a hose or something? I don’t want him fucking up my leather seats.”
Belmont’s eye started to twitch. “Why are you here?”
The familiar man in front—who Belmont decided must be the leader—wasn’t smiling. No, he looked…wary. Prepared. “We’re going to need you to come with us, all right?” He tilted his head toward the parking lot. “No one has to get hurt, but your visit in Sibley ends this morning.” His shrug was tight. “No hard feelings, but you kind of wore out your welcome.”
Fury shot through Belmont’s veins, branching out into his limbs, his fingertips. “I’m not going anywhere.” An ache started in his jugular. “Where is she?”
That laughter he couldn’t pinpoint painted the air with red. “Probably getting ready for—”
“Hey,” the leader shouted, turning around. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up, huh?”
Belmont had the leader by the throat while the question still hung in the air. The men around him braced, reaching for the insides of their coats, but Belmont only registered those actions dimly. The sense of wrongness with which he’d answered the door was now booming in his ears like cannon fire. He was looking directly into the man’s nervous eyes, but suddenly all he could see was Sage outside the motel room door yesterday, looking pale and…resigned. He’d been so focused on getting himself out of her beautiful orbit, he hadn’t really allowed her appearance to process. Not as deeply as it was now. And there was no comparison to the new kind of pain that rammed into his midsection, almost doubling him over.
“Where is she?” Belmont roared, sending some of the men scattering back. “What is she getting ready for? You have five seconds before I break your neck and ask the man behind you.”
Belmont didn’t realize the man was dangling. Not until his toes tried to find purchase on Belmont’s boot. “She’s getting married today. And not to you,” the man spat. “Augie isn’t taking any chances on you busting up the proceedings, so you’re taking a little trip. Don’t worry, though, it’s not forever.” A breath wheezed out of the man. “We just need to get you out of Sibley until it’s over. Then you can go on your merry fucking way.”
Another voice. “Be sure to send congratulations to Augie. He loves a good greeting card.”
Those words made Belmont’s arm go slack, sending his prisoner crashing to the ground. Half of him was now even more convinced he was still in the freezing motel pool, but common sense rose up and obliterated that theory. His throat wouldn’t work to ask why. Why? Why?
Because he knew Sage through and through. And she’d found a way to keep him out of the mines. There wasn’t a single doubt in his head.
Searing agony ran him through like a sword.
It appeared he’d failed her in yet another way. The ultimate way. Because she’d saved him…at a cost to herself. NO. He hadn’t anticipated that and now…now she’d made herself the sacrifice, instead of the other way around. Instead of him.
He had to stop it. He couldn’t let her—
Belmont’s lack of focus left him temporarily vulnerable, so he didn’t see the wooden bat swinging toward his head. It connected with a horrendous thwack, blinding him in one eye and jolting him back a step. That opening allowed the men to pour inside the room, surrounding Belmont. One still held the bat up, obviously looking for an opening to swing again, but Belmont shocked him by shooting out a hand, closing it around the wooden barrel and yanking it away. His skull throbbed as he crunched the bat over his knee, snapping it in half and tossing it aside. “Fight me like men,” Belmont growled, knowing the distorted sound of his voice was a bad thing. More so when blood began trickling into his eye. “Fight me like the kind of men who wouldn’t make a woman do something against her will.”
The command was laced with misery because they made him a hypocrite. Hadn’t he tried to love Sage against her will? Right there on that very bed?
“Oh, something tells me she’ll at least act willing,” one of the men snickered. “If she wants to hold up her end of the deal.”
Belmont bellowed, not only at the idea of Sage with another man, but at the confirmation she’d struck a bargain. He lunged toward the closest man, swinging his fist and sending him staggering back. One by one, he took them all on. Blood spewed onto the walls and carpet. Cheap furniture was cracked in half, clothes were ripped, and epithets were shouted. But in the end, the odds weren’t in Belmont’s favor. While he was focused on a frontward attack, someone brought a chair down on his head from behind, rendering him unconscious.
As the blackness claimed him, denial rocked his very soul.
* * *
There weren’t many people in this town who were kind to Libby.
Memories in Sibley were sure long when they wanted to be, but short when it came to her. Folks chose not to remember that she hadn’t always needed to sell her body for money. There had been a time when she’d lived happily with her husband, Colburn, on the outskirts of town, working in the beauty parlor as a shampoo girl. But hard times had fallen on them when Colburn got sick—and God knew, the mine company’s insurance wasn’t for shit.
Some of her friends had stuck around and offered a lending hand when Colburn passed, but they’d vanished lickity split when Libby’s well of cash dried up. Even after she’d downsized from a two-bedroom house to an apartment behind the supermarket, most of the money from the sale had gone to medical expenses. Now, Libby didn’t blame her poor husband for her predicament, but it turned out, humans found a way to survive, even at the cost of their pride.
Her first customer had been the town preacher some twenty years past. He’d climbed the rickety stairs to her apartment under the guise of offering condolences. While she’d poured the coffee, he’d slid a fifty-dollar bill across the table. Libby had always been quick on the uptake, so she’d knelt in front of the man of God and done a whole lot more than pray, because fifty dollars was fifty more than she had in the bank.
She’d only meant to do it once. The guilt when she’d walked into church on Sunday had been awful. But the money had come so easy. So she’d kept on, and on, until twenty years had sped by in a blur of sweaty men and her evening bottle of wine.
But hell if she didn’t walk through town with her chin up. They wouldn’t make her ashamed of what she’d done to make ends meet. To stay sheltered and fed. No sir. At least, that was the attitude she’d kept until walking into the convenience store and meeting that gentle giant. The giant that required seven men to carry him out of the motel room and throw him without ceremony into the back hatch of his Suburban. Belmont.
Not the kind of name one forgot. Not the kind of man one forgot, either.
When he’d conversed with Libby, she’d realized how long it had been since someone spoke to her without disdain. Or judgment. Had it been years? Sometimes she took the bus to Shreveport when she needed new, inexpensive clothes, and those store clerks were polite to her. But only because they didn’t know she was the prostitute of Sibley.
Most of the men wrestling Belmont’s lifeless legs into the Suburban had visited her at some point over the years, and not one of them acknowledged her on the street. Or even in private. They didn’t see her as a human with feelings, but Belmont…she thought he had.
And she desperately wanted to repay that simple kindness.
So she watched and waited, her body tucked back behind the rental office. A wrench turned in her belly when the Suburban left the lot, because there was nothing she could do to stop them leaving.
When a white van pulled into the motel parking lot half an hour later, however, hope rekindled. Six people poured out of the vehicle and none of them were smiling. A gorgeous man in a suit, his hand lingering on the back of a young girl with wild hair. An older, authoritative-looking man watching a wide-eyed beauty with concern. And a flannel-wearing cowboy, helping a stricken brunette from the far back seat. They were there for Belmont. Libby could feel it all the way down to her toes. Something about the…light they radiated. The palpable concern. They were the type of folks Belmont would care about and vice versa.
But even though she was fresh from having such a pleasant conversation with Belmont, she was still a little gun-shy about approaching people. Over the years, she’d given up on being discreet and become a walking advertisement for her profession. So she hung back and lit a cigarette, watching as they approached room seven, walking right through the still-open door.
The high-pitched wail from one of the women got Libby’s feet moving. She stopped in the doorway, though, shifting side to side as she waited for their attention.
The wide-eyed girl with curly hair was kneeling down, picking up pieces of the broken chair, and the suited man—they resembled each other, those two—was pacing and cursing, fingers punching at his cell phone. “He’s not hurt, is he? Who would want to hurt Bel?” the dark-haired girl murmured. “He’s…Bel.”
Curly hair started sobbing, and the older gentleman who oozed respectability lifted her into his arms and sat down on the bed. Everyone sort of gravitated toward the pair, laying hands on the crying girl, almost as if they didn’t have to think about it. Who were these people?
“We need to find Sage,” Suit said. “We find Sage, we find Bel. That’s all there is to it.”
“No…” Libby piped up from the doorway. When all six sets of eyes swung in her direction, she almost ran for it. Truly, she did. But in the same way Belmont had grounded her and made her feel like someone in that store, these six people did the same. “Little while ago, some men took Belmont in that old Suburban. I don’t know what Sage looks like, but there wasn’t a woman with him.”
“Took our brother?” Suit prompted, stepping forward with an incredulous expression on his handsome face. “There must have been more than a few men.”
Regret tilted in Libby’s chest. “Sounded like they were having some trouble with him in here, but…he wasn’t moving when they put him in the car.”
The dark-haired girl dropped onto the bed, her face white as a sheet. “Did you hear what they were talking about?”
“No, I was too far down.” Libby shook her head sadly. “But I know where they might have taken him.”
Everyone on the bed shot to their feet. “How?” asked the older gentleman.
Laughter from days gone by filtered into Libby’s mind. The clinking of bottles and the haze of smoke. Sore joints and smarting skin. Creaking springs under her abused cheek. Thankfully, the six interpreted the meaning behind her silence. The girl with the wild hair had been hovering to the side, but she stepped closer to Libby now and laid a hand on her shoulder, sending a shock of warmth down Libby’s arm. Real human contact. The good kind. “Will you please take us there?”