Lauren Blakely - Night After Night

“Let’s just change it then.”

“I tried. The later flight is booked,” she said, and her voice was strained, as if she were speaking through a sieve.

“Really?” He arched an eyebrow.

“Yes, really,” she said, but she didn’t look at him. She kept tugging and yanking at her suitcase. He got out of bed to help, kneeling down on the floor next to her. His shoulder bumped hers, and she cringed as if he’d burned her.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” she said, crisply as he closed the suitcase for her.

“You don’t seem fine.”

“I just need to go, that’s all. I hate being late and missing flights. It totally stresses me out,” she said, and there was a hitch in her voice, as if she were about to cry. Did she have some kind of bad childhood memory about missing a flight? Because she sure as hell seemed sadder than the moment warranted.

“Let me go with you then to the airport. We can at least spend more time together in the car.”

She shook her her head. “That’s sweet. But I just have to go. The cab is already here.” She stood up. “I need to get going. I’m going to have to work tonight too,” she added.

He cocked his head to the side, saying nothing, just studying her. He was used to negotiations, to dealmaking, to knowing when someone was lying, and his hackles were raised.

She didn’t seem so stressed or sad anymore. She seemed full of shit.

“Which one is is it, Julia?” His words came out more harshly than he thought. Or maybe they were exactly as harsh as he felt. “Are you working tonight or did you mix up your flights? Because I’d buy one or maybe I’d buy the other. But two seems like you’re piling on the excuses.”

She huffed out through her nostrils, narrowed her eyes. “Do not even think about accusing me of lying.”

“I did not accuse. I asked,” he said. “But it’s interesting to see where your brain went.”

Her eyes widened, and they were filled with anger. “I have to go,” she said, biting out the words. “I need to get out of here. I have shit to take care of at home and that is that. I will call you later.”

“I’m so sorry to hear Jordan’s arm is broken,” he said, not bothering to strip the anger from his voice.

She shot him a furious look, but kept her mouth shut as she grabbed her bag, headed down the steps to the front door and out of his building.

The door clanged shut, the sound of it echoing throughout his home, leaving him with cold, empty silence.

He could have gone after her. Followed her, gently grabbed her arm, and asked if she was okay, if he’d done something wrong. But there was no point. She didn’t want to be stopped. She didn’t need to be stopped. She was a woman who’d made up her mind, and he had enough self-pride and smarts to know he’d been played. Especially when he grabbed his computer and sank down on the couch in his living room to look up the email from Virgin Atlantic. Since he’d been the one to buy the ticket for her, he’d also booked the airfare.

His heart dropped. Hot shame spread in his chest. He had no clue what had gone wrong, but the time on the ticket told him that all this falling had been a one-way street.

She was still on the 5:11 flight.

He cursed more times than he could count as he slammed his laptop closed. He ran a hand through his hair, anger and frustration coursing through his bloodstream. The last thing he wanted to do was sit with this feeling. He pulled on workout clothes and went to the boxing gym to spend the morning punching the bag alone, letting all his anger pour out of him, and his hurt too. The stupid hurt he felt for having been left.

He’d only known her for a short time. Had only spent a few days with her. Perfect, fabulous wonderful days, but even so it shouldn’t feel like an ache without her. Like a gaping hole in his chest.

It should feel like nothing.

Like nothing. He let those words echo in his head with each punishing jab until eventually his mind was blank, and his body was tired, and he hoped against hope he’d forget her fast.

Even steven.

For a card player there were worse words. Like lost it all, or lost big.

But for now, the words even steven stung.

That’s where she’d netted out. With nothing to show for her race home to play Charlie’s whale.

“You disappointed me tonight, Red. I expected more from you,” he said, as he bent over a steaming bowl of noodles. He slurped up a spoonful, the noodles trailing wetly down his chin, the last one snaking into his mouth.

He pushed his index finger down hard on the ledger next to him. “This? This blank line for you tonight? This tells me you have something else on your mind. Do you?”

She shook her head, pressed her lips together as if she could hold in all the nasty things she wanted to say to him. Her fists were clenched at her sides. “No,” she muttered.

He pushed back his chair, the sound of the legs scraping across the floor of the Chinese restaurant. He rose and reached for her chin, grabbing her roughly. His calloused fingers dug into her jaw so hard that he was practically pushing the inside of her cheek into her teeth. All her instincts told her to cry out, to yelp from the sharp, cruel pain. But he’d see that as a sign of weakness, and weakness had no place in his poker circuit. If she let on, he’d throw her out and find some other way to extort her. A worse way, surely.

He angled her chin, forcing her to look at him. “You lie to me, Red. You lie like you lie at the table with your poker face. You went away for the weekend to see a man, didn’t you? And you can’t stop thinking about him.”

She rolled her eyes as if that notion were ludicrous. “I only wish I had done something so interesting. Told you I was seeing friends in New York. That’s all.”

“Your friends have distracted you then,” he said, enunciating each word so crisply that a bead of spit flew out of his lips and landed on her skin. “Do I need to pay them a visit? Enlist them in my employ?”

“No,” she shouted, as he poked at her deepest fears. “But maybe you shouldn’t have called me back then. I barely got off my flight before I had to show up.”

He sneered at her, his fingers drilling her face. “You had three hours in between. That is enough.”

“Well, it wasn’t enough tonight.”

He yanked her closer to him, so close her eyes could no longer focus on his face. She stood her ground though, her high-heeled feet digging into the floor as his brutal fingers jammed her jaw. “I can’t have my ringer bringing me nothing.”

“Sometime you win, sometime you lose, sometimes it rains. That’s the way it goes,” she said in as flat a voice as she could muster.

He dropped his hold on her chin, then stared at her curiously, as if she were a science project. “I do not like baseball. Do not give me baseball analogies. Give me your best poker face and beat my whales. That is all I want from you.”

“That’s what you’ll keep getting.”

“But Red, I did not like your performance tonight. If it happens again, I will be adding on to your totals.”

Her heart plunged and she wanted to shriek No. A loud, echoing cry that would carry through the night. “It’s not even my fault. It’s not even my money,” she said, insistently, as if that might change his mind.

“It is your fault. It is your money. And you are mine until I say you’re not,” he said, rooting around in his pocket. He took out his knife, opened it, and stabbed it into the wood of the table. She cringed, and there was no hiding her emotions this time as the sound of metal parking itself into wood rattled in her ears. He didn’t remove the blade; he left it in the wood like some strange trophy. “Or do you want me to visit your pretty bartender friend?” He asked, making a circle over his stomach, as a reminder that he knew Kim was pregnant.

Her heart twisted. “No.”

“How about your sister? She’s a lovely lady and quite perky on that little fashion blog of hers,” Charlie said in his cool even voice.

It was as if he’d sliced her open with his knife, her bleeding organs on display for all to see. Julia bit her lip hard, trying to stop her insides from quivering. Charlie had never gone near her sister, or her friends. He’d also never mentioned McKenna until now, and her heart raced at the pace of fear. She’d do anything to keep her sister away from him. “Please leave them out of this. This has nothing to do with them.”

“That’s right,” he said with a firm nod, pointing from her to him. “It is our business, and we will continue do business until it is all resolved, or else I might need to collect from them too. Is that clear?”

With his words, the floor felt out from under her. He’d done it. He’d done the thing she feared. Threatened her family. Fear coursed through her body, rooting itself in her belly in a twisted knot, where it planned to set up camp for a long, long time. “Yes,” she choked out.

“Now get out of here, and I will call you when I have a game you won’t mess up.”

She turned on her heels, and left the restaurant, Skunk holding open the door. He lowered his voice to a whisper, as if he didn’t want Charlie to hear him. “Want me to call you a cab?” He asked, and he sounded like a sweet, sympathetic bear. Like he legitimately wanted to do something nice for her after the way Charlie had treated her. He had some kind of soft spot for her. But she wasn’t going to be fooled. She knew where his loyalties lay and it wasn’t with the woman he wanted to help. It was with the man who owned him, just as Charlie owned nearly everyone he worked with.