Losing Streak (The Lane) (7 page)

“And if I told you that you’d want for nothing during the course of his contract?”

I paused. Damn it, I paused halfway to the door and shot him a glare over my shoulder. But that glare hid something, something I was almost ashamed of. Would have been ashamed of it were it any stronger. Temptation.

I shoved all traces of it away forcefully. “No. I’m not that cheap.”

I started toward the door again and just as I reached for the knob, his voice stopped me once more.

“And your mother? Her cancer is fairly advanced, isn’t it? I don’t pretend to be an expert, but the way I understand it, it really has no other option but advancing further.” He made a vaguely sympathetic noise in the back of his throat. “And you can barely afford the care she is receiving now, as lacking as it is.”

My arm dropped to hang limply at my side and I let a curse slip out under my breath. My head bowed as I turned slowly.

“I’m listening.”

He smiled. A shudder slithered up my spine and wrapped its cold fingers around my neck. Even my beast paused and cringed a little, knowing, instinctively, I’d just revealed something and Joshua saw it. It was a weakness. A chink. He’d found the magic words and he was pleased by it.

“It’s simple, really. I’m in need of an assistant. Your Mr. Williams is in need of collateral. Your mother needs suitable care. Come stay with me, in my penthouse, and work for me, and in return I’ll see to it that your mother is taken care of properly.” He fixed me with a piercing look. “If you won’t do it for Mr. Williams, surely you would do it for her sake. Wouldn’t you?”

Judging by the knowing looking on his face, Joshua was more than aware that there was very little I wouldn’t do for Mama. But not
that.
I’d never shack up with some sugar daddy to pay her bills. The thought alone made my skin crawl.

“I won’t sleep with you.”

“Of course not,” he replied, as if it went without saying. “That’d hardly be necessary.”

“Yeah?” I arched an eyebrow. “What’s the catch then?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The catch. There’s always a catch. If it’s not sex, then what is it?”

He shook his head. “No catch. There will be rules, of course. As reasonable as I may be, I’m also not a fool. I wouldn’t allow someone to offer me a car as collateral and still drive it. Surely you can understand that.”

“I’m not a car.”

“No, of course not. But the same theory applies.”

“Right.” I nodded, turning once more. “We’re through here.”

“Are we? And we haven’t even gotten to the part about your brother yet.”

My entire body stiffened.

“What about him?” I tossed back, attempting to keep my voice as casual as my muscles weren’t.

“He’s lifted a lot of money from me in the time since Brianna Martin has been employed.”

“Jackson hasn’t stolen a dime for you,” I snapped, instantly on the defensive in a way nothing else could make me. I turned to glare at Joshua, planting my hands on my hips.

He smiled, a chilling twist of his pale lips that made the man I thought I knew transform into someone I’d never met. Rather than unnerve me, I felt that beast perk up. Joshua’s smile grew as if he sensed it.

“No, not a dime,” he agreed. “But a pint here. A fifth there. It adds up, you know. Very quickly.”

“I’ll pay it back.”

“You could, yes. But that would take some time. What with that hospital bill you’ll have to pay now and all those other ones that will pile up. He’d almost have to come work for me to pay it off in a timely manner.” He spread his hands wide as if to say, what can you do. “I have more than enough work to go around. Always could use another set of muscles for the more—unpleasant jobs that occasionally come up. Of course, there’s a somewhat problematic turnover rate, but it’s still kinder than what I’d give to most who steal from me.”

“That’s it, then? Either I work for you or you make Jackson? We’re going with extortion?”

“A black-and-white term for something not nearly so simple. I’m offering you an opportunity, and like all opportunities, it comes with its benefits.”

“And consequences,” I pointed out.

“Only if you refuse to answer the door for it. Just like any other opportunity.”

He had me and we both knew it. I’d been flying above a web and realized it was there. But the winds had shifted and I’d gotten too close. It was just my luck that the spider was giving me the chance to wrap myself up further.

“Fine. Say I said yes.” I held up a hand when he started to speak. “I’m not saying yes, but let’s say that I did. Why would I come live with you?”

“Why not? The penthouse is large. Unlike your apartment, correct? It makes sense.”

“Won’t people wonder why I’m staying with you?”

“We’ll simply tell everyone you’re my girlfriend.”

I shot him a look. “Your girlfriend.”

He raised both hands in defense. “It’ll be in name only. As I already stated, there’d be no sexual encounters of any kind expected. I’m not that kind of man.”

I cringed before I could stop myself, remembering those words coming out of Brandon’s mouth once upon a time. How did we end up here?

And no sex? Really? I might have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. “I don’t really see any reason for me to believe that.”

“When you are a man of my stature, with so many options available to you, you don’t need to force yourself on a woman who isn’t willing.”

I managed a deadpan expression. “I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I said that sounds like a load of political, nonanswer bullshit to me.”

For one second, one brief, blink-and-you’d-miss-it moment, his eyes flashed dangerously and his mouth tightened into a thin line. Then it shifted back to the pleasant, polite expression I was more familiar with.

“If you agree to this, Rosemary, and I think we can both agree you have every reason to, you need to understand I demand a certain level of respect from my employees.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“More so than I demand here,” he clarified. “I am fairly lax on this side of things. I can afford to be. Not so on the other side. There I have to run a tight ship.”

“So, since I’m still technically on this side I can afford to point out how cliché ‘I run a tight ship’ is?”

“Yes. For the moment, you’re permitted. Get it in while you can.”

“Great.” I forced a smile I couldn’t feel on my face and tried to ignore the hot knot pressing urgently against my lungs. “You were saying you had options?”

He stared at me for a moment too long before replying.

“Yes. Options. Or prostitutes, as less enlightened people might call them.”

“You’re telling me that you have girls you pay to have sex with so I don’t have to worry about you mauling me, the girl you are proposing live with you as your fake girlfriend while you supply her with benefits.” I didn’t need to exaggerate my disbelief.

“You’ll work for every one of those benefits. This is a business offer. So, no. I, as your employer, won’t force myself on you. I’ll have my needs taken care of by one of my girls as I always have.”

“And my needs?”

“I only ask that you be discreet. Of course, Mr. Williams will be off-limits as we already discussed.” Something in my gut twisted painfully at this. “But aside from that? It’s none of my concern unless you make it my concern.”

I wouldn’t be doing that, in any sense of the word.

“Fine. What about Brandon?”

“Three years,” Joshua replied. “He’ll work for me for three years and then his debt will be clear. I’m letting him off fairly easy, of course. But he came to me, saving me the trouble of finding him. I respect that and I like to reward that which I respect.”

I nodded absently.

“So then I work for you for three years as well? Is that what you’re saying?”

“If you’d like. Or you might find that after three years you like working for me. As you already know from working here, I can be a very fair boss. I’d like to believe that I’m even fairer in that side of my life. After all, you can’t reward good help enough especially when they’re entrusted with so much.”

“Okay. But when he’s done, I can be too, right?” I pressed.

“If that’s what you want, then yes. You can both walk. All debts will be forgiven, including your brother’s. I’ll even allow you to keep anything acquired during that time. It’s a good deal, isn’t it?”

If we overlooked the fact that I really didn’t have much of a choice, sure it was.

“What would I be doing? As your assistant?”

“Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that. Errands mostly. Some of my employees like to view this as a game, but in truth, I run a kingdom. A demanding one. It’s a lot for one man to manage on his own, though I think I do more than an adequate job of it. Still, I’m not so prideful that I can’t admit things would be much smoother if I had someone to help me balance it all. That’ll be you. You’ll merely be helping me keep it all straight. My right hand. Every king needs one.”

“Nothing illegal?”

He laughed, a full bark of amusement that made me feel a little as though I’d bitten down on a piece of tinfoil.

“Black and white. I thought we went over this. I was under the impression you didn’t think in those terms.”

“We did. I also have to make sure I’ll be around for my mama.”

“You will be around. I can promise you. She’ll be taken care of. You uphold your end of the contract, and I will always, always uphold mine.”

I eyed him for a minute longer, prolonging the moment for reasons I wasn’t entirely sure of. We both knew what my answer was going to be. There was too much at stake here. I had remaining balances and weekly clinic appointments to consider. Prescriptions to buy and refrigerators to stock and office visits to pay for. I had a brother whose petty fucking theft could be called in, leaving him to work as muscle he didn’t even have doing God only knows what. I had Brandon. And I’d already planned on helping him if he needed it and clearly he needed it. How could I say no?

I nodded, once, firmly.

“I’ll do it.”

Chapter Nine

Our contract would officially go into effect the following morning.

“This is the last few hours of your old life, Rosemary,” Joshua said just before I left that bare, unassuming office where in the course of an hour, everything had changed. “Use them wisely. I expect you to meet me back here in the morning.”

I nodded once, a little mechanically, and walked stiffly out the back door and into a night that was too unfamiliar to ever be mine.

I waved off a concerned Jackson and an impatient Bri, who’d been waiting in the parking lot, and drove back to my apartment on autopilot. I didn’t go in, though. I didn’t even turn off my too-high-idling car. I just sat there, staring at that sad, decaying tower stacked high with people just like me. This me. Not the one who waited on the other side of the sunrise. I looked until I couldn’t any longer, then I drove away. Possibly for the last time ever. I didn’t know how I felt about that.

I wasn’t fully aware I was going to Brandon’s until I got there. His truck was nowhere in sight so I walked the now-familiar path to his apartment, waving vaguely to the wild-eyed guy from 1C, and let myself in. I didn’t bother turning on the lights. I just sat in the dark and waited. It felt like hours. Maybe it was. In the darkness, time didn’t exist. I wasn’t even sure that I did.

The sound of the front door opening had me jumping from the futon and crossing the room before Brandon had barely cleared the threshold. He squinted at me in the dim light that spilled across the floor from the hallway. A hollow, aching place in my gut made itself known as soon as I heard his voice.

“How’d you get in?”

“Old bank card,” I replied, barely recognizing my own voice.

“Ah. Yeah.” His brows knitted together in a frown made darker by the shadows that covered his face. “Meant to have a key made for you. Had it all planned in my head. Was gonna get down on one knee and ask you to move in. Figured you’d either kick my ass for it or laugh.”

“Probably both.” Something was burning in my throat, causing everything there to draw in toward it. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to stand perfectly still and do nothing because we were standing in a patch of light, and as long as that light existed, as long as we stayed in it, nothing could touch us.

From somewhere down the hall a muffled voice called out suddenly and Brandon winced before he reached back and shut the door, plunging us back into the darkness I’d known before he came in.

“Talked to Joshua,” I said after a minute, not quite wanting to, but not wanting to prolong it any further.

“Yeah? Me too.” He laughed, bitter and dark, and I closed my eyes against it. “I didn’t want this, Rose.”

I nodded, not sure if his eyes had adjusted enough for him to see it. “Which is why I’m not pissed.”

“You should be. Fuck. I am.” The look he gave me was desperate and searching. “It seemed so fucking sure, you know? Never lost before. Not once. And I’d been smart. I picked the best damn fighter out there. Everyone told me so. Turner never lost. First fucking time. Damn it. He picked a hell of a time to end both of our winning streaks.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. So instead, I replied, “I’m Joshua’s new assistant.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck roughly. “Yeah? Not too bad, I guess. Could be worse anyway. Not that I’ll sleep any better.”

“We might still run into each other.”

“Doubt it. Canada’s a drive from here.”

I stared at him, face screwed up in confusion, and he sighed.

“I’m taking over a stash house up there.”

“Shit.”

“Is one of the words of the day,” he agreed.

“When do you leave?” I wanted to reach out and fix the hair that was falling into his eyes. Hair that I hadn’t messed up personally. It offended me, that hair. But he was already so far away. He was standing right in front of me, close enough to touch, and yet the inches between us could have spanned miles.

“The morning. Somebody is supposed to meet me with a GPS at the edge of town. Can you believe that? Those were his exact words. ‘The edge of town, Mr. Williams.’ Fuck. I can’t...” He trailed off, looking around almost frantically at everything but me. Then he shook his head and shoved that offending piece of hair back. “I’m supposed to make a little money. I don’t know how much or how often. To live on, I guess. I’ll send every dime I can back.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

His eyes flashed to mine, a hard edge in them as he nodded slowly. “Right. Of course. Jesus.” His hands clenched and unclenched stiffly at his side. “I wouldn’t want shit from me either.”

“What?” I took a step forward only to pull up short when he held up a hand.

“You’re splitting. I don’t blame you. The shit I just got us into? I’d run. I want to run.” For one second, hope flirted with his features, only to be quickly wiped away. “Not that we can, huh?”

“No,” I said quietly. I didn’t need to say anything further. I couldn’t go anywhere without Mama, who wouldn’t go without Jackson, who wouldn’t leave without Bri. I was bound by my people. My responsibilities to them were chains that held me in place.

Love was dangerous that way.

“Yeah. Figured as much.”

It was almost physically painful to say my next words. “You can, though. You should.”

“You think I’d do that to you?” The look he shot me was both hurt and heated. “It’d come down on you. King already made that one clear.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about him?” I asked, careful to keep the accusation out of my voice. It didn’t matter. Not anymore.

“Didn’t know until today who was in charge. Never thought to ask before. God. The list of how fucking stupid I am just keeps getting longer, huh?”

He tipped his head back, jaw clenched, and I found myself staring at it. Helplessness welled up in me, so thick it was hard to take a breath around. I wanted to grab his shirt and yank him toward me. I wanted to fix all of this, erase it, because that was what I always did. I fixed everything, even if that meant paying in flesh and blood.

But I couldn’t do that now. I couldn’t make it better. Everything was broken and all we could do was stand in the wreckage and bleed separately.

Except for tonight. Tonight we could bleed together.

I dove forward so quickly I caught myself by surprise. Brandon opened his mouth but before a sound had a chance to escape I shoved mine against it. My hands were jerky and desperate as I fumbled with his belt. I was terrified, even as his lips moved just as frantically against mine, he’d attempt to stop me or make me slow down. I was afraid for the first time he’d want things to be different. Gentler. Sweeter. He’d want to make love, whatever that even meant, and I didn’t want that. I wanted fast and hard. I wanted to burn and I wanted him to burn. I wanted our skin to blacken from the heat and when morning came, I wanted us to part marked deep enough from this night that we would have no choice but to remember in the empty nights ahead.

With a growl, he shoved my pants down, then we were falling onto the floor, a tangle of limbs and random pieces of clothing and frenzy, and I let out a half moan, half wail when he thrust forward, filling me up in one swift movement.

I scratched and clawed at exposed skin as he pounded into me, angry and scared and uncertain. I wasn’t a girl anymore. I wasn’t even the beast that howled somewhere inside of me, close to the surface. I was raw emotion. Naked, exposed nerve endings. I was everything all at once and I was nothing. I was the wound this beautiful, broken boy above me who’d slipped into my life and under my skin would leave behind when he was ripped away.

And afterward, when we lay in a sweaty, shuddering heap, hands clutching and gripping too tight and we whispered shaky words about time and distance and waiting through them, I felt like I was already bleeding.

Then, because it was cruel, the sun found us.