Page 46 of Break You

Leave her alone

Or I’m coming for you

When my phone had pinged bright and early that morning, I’d assumed it was Mike with more information for me about Rocky.

However, when I looked and saw that it was an unknown number and read the message, I knew who it was instantly. Pixie. Rocky must have solved the riddles, and worked out that all of this was connected to her brother’s “business” dealings. She must also have passed on my last message—the one delivered in the car.

Reading between the lines, it was obvious that Pixie knew it was me who had been targeting Rocky. What wasn’t clear, however, was whether she knew. She hadn’t said so when the demon voice in the car asked her the night before, nor had she called, messaged, or come to see me. So I was assuming that she didn’t know, but that’s all it was—an assumption. And if it was one thing I was learning from my dealings with Rocky Gordon, it was that it was a mistake to assume anything about her, because the chances were, she’d prove me wrong.

I’d assumed, for example, that she would have taken the bag of money I’d left at the Swan Club. God knew, she needed it. But not only did she leave most of it there, but then she even returned the thousand dollars she had originally taken. So thanks to her unbendable moral backbone and me, she now had no car, no money to get one, and no extra money for rent and whatever else she needed. Unusually for me, I’d managed to engineer a lose-lose situation.

After her stunt with the i8, I’d sent one of the cygnets to close the door and lock the car, then placed the key in an envelope in her mailbox, along with her thousand dollars. Which was stupid, because I knew full well she wouldn’t touch either of them.

She was stubborn as fuck. I mean, who went through what she had been through at the Swan Club and didn’t call the fucking cops? I’d set the whole thing up to be foolproof for when the police did become involved—everything was locked down, and there was no way any of it could be traced back to me, and I had a watertight alibi.

I had just naturally assumed that calling the cops would have been the first thing she did. The same with the incident with the car. Who came home to find someone had been in their apartment, worse, in their bedroom, and was taunting them from a mysterious car and didn’t report it? But, again, it would seem that Rocky lived to prove my assumptions wrong.

If I was intrigued by her before, I was now positively eaten alive by curiosity. Why might someone have such little regard for themselves that they’d walk around under these circumstances without doing anything to try to ensure their personal safety? I couldn’t work out whether I thought she was totally badass, totally crazy, or just really fucking sad.

The more I thought about it, looking at Pixie’s poem, the more questions niggled at my mind. On the one hand I thought she had to know—he was her brother, why wouldn’t he have told her? On the other hand, if she knew, why hadn’t she come around and kicked my ass, or called the cops? Did they have some bigger play in mind, and were lulling me into a false sense of security, only to later ambush me? Or, did one or both of them have something—else—to hide?

I’d lain awake most of the night thinking about the voice memo, a whole bunch of my own words swirling around in my mind in response to hers. It got to the point where even though I knew she wouldn’t see it until the morning, I decided to leave one of my own for her. If nothing else, it was a way to use the excess hours I had on my hands, other than obsessing about her. I picked a question from the list that had been bubbling in my mind, ever since I’d written it.

“Question #3: Who is the most important person in your life? The answer to this question has been bothering me. And the more I think about it, the less I like the answer. Apart from a few key memories, I hardly remember my mom. She left when I was a preschooler, and I haven’t seen or spoken to her since. I know she remarried and has other kids, so I have half-siblings out there somewhere, but that’s where my current knowledge of her ends. As far as my father is concerned, she may as well be dead. He never speaks about her. Ever.

“It’s always just been me and my dad, and that’s not even true. It’s always been a whole heap of hired help and me—nannies, au pairs, babysitters, housekeepers, so many that they are just a blur of people who went by. I don’t even remember many of them by name or face. Then, there was school. I boarded and sometimes wouldn’t go home for the vacation for an entire school year.

“The side effect was that although my father was supposedly my full-time carer, I barely knew him growing up, and what little I did know, I didn’t like. He made no bones about the fact that the feeling was very much mutual. I never truly knew why, but it was obvious that my dad resented me just for being alive.

“So, I’ve always been the most important person in my life. The person I can rely on. The person I can trust to have my back always. I have friends—Drew and the rest of the guys, yes, but I never get too close to anybody. I learned early it’s the easiest way to avoid disappointment. I can’t screw myself over, or let myself down, or take myself for a ride, so at least this way life is simple.

“I guess that’s changed a little in the last few years—I’ve kind of adopted surrogate parents, which is every bit as lame as it sounds. It’s a long and boring story, but they’re kinda somewhere between godparents, and an aunt and uncle. They’re the closest thing I have to ‘my people’ these days. But old habits die hard, and I don’t think I’ll ever trust anyone more than I trust myself.”

I’d pressed send before I had a chance to change my mind, finally falling asleep in the small hours, and then woke up to Pixie’s text. For someone who irritated the fuck out of me, Rocky was starting to take up far too much mental real estate. That needed to change. Stat.

As though by some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, manifestation, or some other New Age bullshit, as the thought entered my mind I could feel the weight of eyes on me. I knew who it was going to be before I even looked up. A quick sweep of the cafeteria confirmed my suspicions, when I met with a pair of cold, hard eyes. Today they were thunder-gray, and judging by her face and body language, she had a mood to match.

I wondered idly if my assumptions had been wrong, and really she did know about my connection to the Swan Club and the car. Maybe she’d come to blast me about it or tell me she had, or was about to call the authorities. As she stormed across the room, I braced myself for the onslaught, but busied myself looking at my phone rather than at her, as though I didn’t have a care in the world. She came to a stop by me, and I still didn't look up. Moments passed, and neither of us moved a hair, nor spoke a word. In the end, Rocky made the first move, kicking one of the metal legs of the cafeteria chair I was sitting on.

“Hey?” I looked up feigning absentmindedness, as if I hadn’t been aware she was there.

“Don’t ‘hey’ me. I know what you’re doing, and now the cafeteria is going to know in a minu—”

I stood up, not giving her a chance to finish her sentence. As she’d been kicking my chair, when I stood, we were nose-to-nose, and I instantly became hyperaware of the proximity of our bodies. I was also conscious that the other guys, and just about everybody else in the cafeteria was watching us closely. I slapped a fake smile on my face, and spoke through gritted teeth. “Let’s discuss whatever it is that’s bothering you outside.”

“Nah, I’m good with staying right here.”

“Well, I’m not. Let’s go.” I gripped her wrist gently, yet the frisson of tension that sparked between the two of us when our flesh touched shocked us both, stopping us in our tracks. I recovered before she did, pulling her gently toward the door. She hesitated for a moment, then clearly decided that her need to have the conversation was more important than her need to control where we had it.

When we got outside, she turned to me angrily. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”

Anger visibly flowed through her body, and I figured the game was well and truly up. Still, I wasn’t going to give up that easily. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on, Xavier, don’t play innocent with me. Do you expect me to believe all that poor-little-rich-boy shit you pulled on the voice memo? Don’t you think I see what you’re trying to do?”

The feeling of relief that surged through my body was like nothing I’d felt before. I had no clue what she thought I was doing with the memo, but I gave zero fucks.

“Listen, I don’t know what you think—”

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