Love the Way You Lie (Stripped #1) (21 page)

It feels like the beginning.

I hug each of them. We are friends. That is one real thing that came out of this. It’s friendship born of survival and strength, of darkness and fire. We walked through that fire together. I came out alive but not unscathed. There are burns on my skin—some that are visible, like the dark red wound where the bullet went in. Some that you can’t see, only feel.

Lola’s lower lip is trembling, but I am the one who cries first. I am the one leaving. Even though I don’t want to go back, it’s still sad to say goodbye.

“Come visit me,” I say. There’s a part of me that wants to say
come with me.
Leave this place.
But that would be a form of disrespect.

We all have our reasons for working at the Grand. Mine are gone now.

She gives me a sad smile, pulling back. “You should find different friends.”

Rich friends, she means. Girls who aren’t strippers or prostitutes or druggies. I squeeze her hands, keeping her with me. “I’m doing all right with the friends I have. I never got to thank you for watching out for Clara.”

After a little more interrogation I had been able to rest easy. Clara hadn’t seen too much that night—and Ivan had kept his hands off.

Lola brushes it off. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“I do.” Then in a lower voice, I ask, “Do you think it was wrong of me to keep her hidden like that?”

Her dark eyebrows shoot up. “What? No way. You kept her alive. You kept her safe.”

“Yeah.” I know it’s true, but there’s a part of me that feels guilty anyway. Our father had kept us locked up under the guise of protection too. Maybe he meant as well as I did.

Her look is knowing. “Take it from someone who was bounced around foster homes her whole life. Being with family, no matter how much money you have or where you live.”

Then I can’t help it. I have to give her another hug. “Oh, Lola.”

“Be proud, that’s all. And get some of that.” She nods towards where Kip waits for me. “You deserve happiness too.”

“And you,” I say softly.

“Of course.” Desolation flashes through her eyes before she hides it.

I catch sight of Blue watching us. Watching
her
. His expression is unreadable, and I can’t help but wonder if he wants her.

Then why hasn’t he taken her?

She’s stage Lola again, flirty and smooth. “Maybe I’ll come visit you,” she says with a wink. “We can show your boyfriend that thing we did. In the VIP room. Together.”

She says that last part loud enough so Kip can hear. His expression turns both forbidding and curious, a dark look that gets me hot.

Lola, being Lola, notices and laughs. She heads back into the club. I frown when I notice Blue follow her in. Something is up with those to. I’m going to insist she really does visit me—and find out what the deal is.

Then there is Candy. She’s stiff in the hug I give her.

I step back quickly, not wanting to push. “Thank—”

“It was all Lola. Trust me, if it was up to me I would’ve had her strung out and on the pole in two hours flat.” Candy looks bored, but then again, that’s how she looks whenever she’s around me and Lola. She’s like the inverse. She can fake interest onstage or in the lap of some asshole. But put her in front of people she actually cares about and she turns into an ice queen.

So it’s interesting that she acts coldest to Ivan.

I give her a look that says I’m not buying what she’s selling. She just smiles, mysterious and hard.

She’s already walking away when I call out. “Did you know?”

Her face gives nothing away when she turns to look at me. “What?”

“You asked me, when you saw Kip and me together.
Does she know you’re related?
Did you know about him and Byron?”

“There’s not a lot that happens in this club that I don’t know about.”

“All seeing,” I say. “Like Ivan?”

Her eyes go flat. “Nothing like Ivan.”

Then she stalks off.

Then Kip calls me back, because they’ve reached the bottom, the hollow beneath the fountain.

Of course we find a pile of dirt and leaves, sprinkled in by the storms. There are also cigarette butts and other unsavory items. The fountain is in front of a strip club, after all.

And we find a leather case that contains a lifetime’s worth of jewels. Of treasure.

A bounty that even my father couldn’t have matched.

Kip is holding the box, looking inside. I wonder what he sees. Not the dusty, vibrant jewels. His father’s sin? His mother’s shame?

I place a hand on his arm. “Now you can have everything your mother wanted you to.”

He looks up at me, bemused. “What?”

“The mansion. The trips around the world.”

He smiles. “I keep my mother’s house in her memory. I’ve hardly lived there. I’ve mostly been traveling. Some for my job—private security. Others were just places I wanted to go.”

“Oh.”

“It’s yours anyway,” he says softly. “It belongs to your mother, to
you,
not me.”

Yes, I could use the money. Far more than Kip, apparently, with his private security jobs and jet-setting ways. I had a few thousand stuffed under the mattress back at the motel. And my father’s money, most of which was funneled into offshore accounts I didn’t have access to.

Dirty money. I’m better off without it. I believe that, but it also means I’m broke.

But I don’t want to take the jewels either.

Kip doesn’t see their rich colors, the shimmery strands of gold and cut jewels. And neither do I. I see my mother’s wish for true love—and her betrayal when she left me behind to find it. I see my father’s deepest pain when his wife left him…and the strange mercy he showed when he let her live.

These jewels belonged to my mother, but they were gifts from my father. Bought with money from booking and prostituting and shaking down other criminals. And then Kip’s father stole the jewels. So who’s to say who they rightfully belong to?

“Clara,” I say.

Kip raises an eyebrow. “A legacy?”

“We won’t tell her how they came to be here. Just that they’re all that’s left from our mother. And they’re for her. She can buy herself a mansion or travel the world. Whatever she wants to do.”

He picks up a ruby pendant, blood-red against his tanned skin. “And you? What do you want to do?”

“I wouldn’t mind traveling.” I look down at a crack in the sidewalk. No flower grows up between it. This isn’t a place for miracles. But I’m wishing for one anyway. “Mostly I want to stay in the house with the yellow curtains and the old books.”

He takes me into his arms, hands circling my waist, pulling me close. “Not much of a legacy for a mafioso’s daughter.”

I look into his eyes—this man of hard muscles and tattoos, of leather and chrome, of heart and honor. “We’ll make our own legacy.”

He brushes his lips across my cheek…my jaw…and lower. “I like the sound of that.”

“That wasn’t a euphemism.”

“Mhmm.” He’s got a very hard
legacy
pressed against my stomach now, rocking gently.

“Kip, we’re outside. In daylight.” At least the afternoon hour means the club is closed for business. Ivan grumbled about the hassle of it all, tearing down the fountain and the money it will take to put it back to rights, but he backed down again under Kip’s quiet demands. I suspect he has some dirt on Ivan actually—and isn’t above using it.

Some things run in the family.

Like the fact that I’m just fine with that. This bounty rightfully belongs to my sister. And for once, finally, I know I did the right thing in running. I know she’s better off in the spare room in Kip’s house, going to college, and then making her way free of the ties of her past.

As for me, I have my own bounty. And that is definitely a euphemism.

His hand slides under my skirt, pushing up. Anyone passing by could see far more skin inside the club during open hours, but I’m done flashing them. Done taking my clothes off for anyone but Kip.

“The roof,” I gasp as he licks and bites at the tender skin where neck meets shoulder.

“Let’s go.”

He is my tiger, with his quiet way of ruling and his dark stripes, his code of honor and wildness. Beautiful and free.

The End

Thank you for reading Love the Way You Lie! I hope you enjoyed Kip and Honey’s story…

•    The next book in the Stripped series is about Blue and Lola. You can order
Better When It Hurts
now!

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•    The Stripped series is dark, dangerous, and twisted hot. If you loved this, you will probably also love
Wanderlust
. Turn the page to read an excerpt from that book…

Evie always dreamed of seeing the world, but her first night at a motel turns into a nightmare. Hunter is a rugged trucker willing to do anything to keep her—including kidnapping. As they cross the country in his rig, Evie plots her escape, but she may find what she’s been looking for right beside her.

“Brace yourself for an unlikely and intense love story. There are no heroes in this tale, only disturbingly beautiful monsters.”

—Romantic Book Affairs

I
felt tiny
out here. Would it always be this way now that I was free? Our seclusion at home had provided more than security. An inflated sense of pride, diminishing the grand scheme of things to raise our own importance. On this deserted sidewalk in the middle of nowhere, it was clear how very insignificant I was. No one even knew I was here. No one would care.

When I rounded the corner, I saw that the lights in the gas station were off. Frowning, I tried the door, but it was locked. It seemed surreal for a moment, as if maybe it had never been open at all, as if this were all a dream.

Unease trickled through me, but then I turned and caught site of the sunset. It glowed in a symphony of colors, the purples and oranges and blues all blending together in a gorgeous tableau. There was no beauty like this in the small but smoggy city where I had come from, the skyline barely visible from the tree in our backyard. This sky didn’t even look real, so vibrant, almost blinding, as if I had lived my whole life in black and white and suddenly found color.

I put my hand to my forehead, just staring in awe.

My God, was this what I’d been missing? What else was out there, unimagined?

I considered going back for my camera but for once I didn’t want to capture this on film. Part of my dependence on photography had been because I never knew when I’d get to see something again, didn’t know when I’d get to go outside again. I was a miser with each image, carefully secreting them into my digital pockets. But now I had forever in the outside world. I could breathe in the colors, practically smell the vibrancy in the air.

A sort of exuberant laugh escaped me, relief and excitement at once. Feeling joyful, I glanced toward the neat row of semi-trucks to the side. Their engines were silent, the night air still. The only disturbance: a man leaned against the side of one, the wispy white smoke from his cigarette curling upward. His face was shrouded in darkness.

My smile faded. I couldn’t see his expression, but some warning bell inside me set off. I sensed his alertness despite the casual stance of his body. His gaze felt hot on my skin. While I’d been watching the sunset, he’d been watching me.

When he suddenly straightened, I tensed. Where a second ago I’d felt free, now my mother’s warnings came rushing back, overwhelming me. Would he come for me? Hurt me, attack me? It would only take a few minutes to run back to my room—could I beat him there? But all he did was raise his hand, waving me around the side of the building. I circled hesitantly and found another entrance, this one to a diner.

Hesitantly, I waved my thanks. After a moment, he nodded back.

“Paranoid,” I chastised myself.

The diner was wrapped with metal, a retro look that was probably original. Uneven metal shutters shaded the green windows, where an
OPEN
sign flickered.

Inside, turquoise booths and brown tables lined the walls. A waitress behind the counter looked up from her magazine. Her hair was a dirty blonde, darker than mine, pulled into a knot. A thick layer of caked powder and red lipstick were still in place, but her eyes were bloodshot, tired.

“I heard we got a boarder,” she said, nodding to me. “First one of the year.”

I blinked. It was a cool April night. If I was the first one of the year, then that was a long time to go without boarders.

“What about all the trucks outside?”

“Oh, they sleep in their cabs. Those fancy new leather seats are probably more comfortable than those old mattresses filled with God-knows-what.” She laughed at her own joke, revealing a straight line of grayish teeth.

I managed a brittle smile then ducked into one of the booths.

She sidled over with a notepad and pen.

“We don’t usually see girls as pretty as you around here. Especially alone. You don’t got nobody to look after you?”

The words were spoken in accusation, turning a compliment into a warning.

“Just passing through,” I said.

She snorted. “Aren’t we all? Okay, darlin’, what’ll it be?”

Under her flat gaze, I turned the sticky pages of the menu, ignoring the stale smells that wafted up from it. Somehow the breakfast food seemed safest. I hoped it would be easier to avoid food poisoning with pancakes than a steak.

After the waitress took my order, I waited, tapping my fingers on the vinyl tabletop to an erratic beat. I was a little nervous—jittery, although there was no reason to be. Everyone had been nice. Not exactly welcoming, but then I was a stranger. Had I expected to make friends with the first people I met?