“You need to get out of the hospital? Why? What’s the rush?”
“I need out of this city. I can’t do this anymore, Reeve. Look at me.” She waved a hand at her immobilized wing and bandaged chest. “I have twenty stitches in my chest and half of that in my back. I look like a character in a video game. No one is going to pay money to see a washed-up stripper covered in scars take her clothes off. All of this is just so tired and sad. I’m exhausted and I don’t want to do it anymore.”
I closed the door behind me and walked into the room. I set my purse down on the floor and winced at the heavy thud the gun made when it landed. I was going to need to get used to that or Titus was going to get suspicious.
“You’ve been in the Point as long as I have. Where else would you go?” I had seen the suburbs, thought I could make that work for me, and had been so wrong. I wondered if Key had been anywhere but the Point.
“Anyplace where no one has ever heard the name Honor. I want to bury her. I don’t want to be her anymore. I don’t want her life. I don’t want to want what she wants.” She shifted and used her good hand to push some of her dark red hair over her shoulder. Only she could be shot up and bedraggled and still look so perfect. “There was this girl that danced at Spanky’s for like six months a few years ago. She was kind of a gypsy, not one to settle any one place for too long. She was young, but smart and ambitious. She ended up in Denver, I think. I heard she reconnected with an old flame and has a kid on the way now. We keep in touch here and there, so I was thinking maybe I would head that way. She says Colorado is the most beautiful place she has ever been. Nothing like the Point. Fresh air might be just what I need to get my shit together.”
“It’s not that easy,” I told her quietly.
“What’s not?”
“Leaving this place behind. The scenery changes, the people are different, but you’ll still be you and that means you’ll always have a huge part of the city in you. You can’t just leave it behind; you can try and fool yourself into wanting something different, but it doesn’t work.” I would never settle for an imitation again.
She scoffed a little and then struggled to her feet, forcing me to scramble and help her as she wobbled unsteadily.
“I can try. Now, will you help me outside or not?” She sounded so surly and disgruntled I had to chuckle at her.
“Yeah, I’ll help you.” What choice did I have? “So are you planning on telling Nassir where you’re going or that you’re leaving?”
I put a hand on her waist and let her lean on me as we shuffled to the door. I pulled it open and she grunted in discomfort as the action jostled her.
“I already did. He didn’t believe me.”
The nurses looked up when we hit the hallway. They scowled at Keelyn but she just smiled sweetly as we slowly made our way to the elevator. She lifted an eyebrow at me. “They don’t like me, for some reason.”
I snickered at her and reached out to push the button with my free hand. “Because only you can get shot, operated on, and still look like a goddess. It’s not fair.”
She rolled her eyes. “I paid a lot of money to look this good.”
I’d bet she did. “I saw Nassir when you went down. He wasn’t happy, like really not happy. There is something there with him and you, isn’t there? That’s why he thinks you won’t really leave?”
She slumped back against the elevator and closed her eyes. She was obviously hurting and from more than the bullet wound in her chest.
“Nothing makes Nassir Gates happy. He is a coldhearted bastard and the only thing he cares about is Nassir. What he wants, he takes, and I have had enough of being taken by men to last me a lifetime. He would destroy me.” Her voice cracked on the last part of her sentence, and when she pulled her lids back up to look at me, I saw an expression that was all too familiar. The longing, the yearning, the burn for a man that you shouldn’t want.
“He’s very intense.”
“He’s a killer. There is no good or bad with him like there is with Bax and Race. There’s just this void where he exists in his own world and operates under his own rules, and anyone that doesn’t want to comply is going to be collateral damage. He’s ruthless and the only side that matters to him is his own. He’s all smoke and mirrors and what’s under the reflection of sophistication and humanity is a nightmare. He’s the devil in an Armani suit.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Do you really see, Reeve, because most people I talk to about him only have a vague idea about how dangerous he really can be.”
There were undertones there that spoke to something deeper between her and the exotic-looking club owner but I couldn’t question her about it because the elevator dinged as we hit the ground floor and I put my arm around her waist so that I could almost drag her toward the front doors. She was moving really slowly and I think she was in much more pain than she was letting on. I gave her a little squeeze and told her softly, “I think I see very clearly, Key. You think you can run. You think space, time, and maybe even a different man will get him out of your system because he’s not who you should want. You think that maybe, just maybe, you can be a different person, leave all the shit and mess here in the Point, and be someone you always thought you should be. You think you can replace him, lose him, and I’m going to tell you from firsthand experience it’s not that easy. Just like the city is in you, so is he, and you will always be you, so that part of you that hungers for him, aches for him even though you know he might be the end of you, it’ll still be there.”
A battered yellow cab was waiting for her, so I pulled open the back door and helped her into the backseat. The cab smelled gross and looked like it had bullet holes dotting it, but that was pretty typical for a taxi in the Point. She looked up at me with a scowl.
“Thanks for the hand, but you’re still a bitch.”
I shrugged. “So are you. Good luck chasing down a new life.”
She bit down on her lower lip. “Promise me something.” I lifted my eyebrows up at her and waited to see what she was going to ask of me. “If you see me back here in the next six months, promise me you won’t say ‘I told you so.’ That’ll really piss me off and I might have to swing at you again.”