Page 75 of Savage Lover

She takes the wand back, pursing her lips and blowing a slow, steady, and gentle breath of air into a dozen round, glossy bubbles that go spinning away over the sand.

“How’s your week been going?” I ask her.

“Good,” she says. “It was my birthday on Tuesday.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing,” she says serenely. “I went for a walk by myself in Lincoln Park. It was perfect.”

“Levi didn’t take you out?”

She laughs. “No. He said we’d go for dinner, but then his brother called, and they got in a big fight. And he didn’t want to go anymore.”

“What were they fighting about?” I ask, casually.

“Oh . . . his brother is coming back from Ibiza.”

“So?”

“So he wants his house back.”

“I thought Levi owned that house?”

“No,” Ali says patiently. “The other one.”

I frown, confused. Ali is such a conundrum, because she’s strangely innocent and seems to say whatever comes into her head. But she also seems to assume that I already know what she’s talking about, when in fact I have no fucking idea.

I want to keep talking to her, but I can see Levi watching us with a malevolent expression on his face. Catching my eye, he motions me over with a jerk of his head.

I get up reluctantly, joining him on his blanket.

“What’s up?” I say.

“Why are you talking to Ali?” he demands.

“Uh . . . because she’s cool?” I say.

“You know she used to dance at Exotica.”

“Yeah, she mentioned that.”

“That’s where I met her.”

“Good for you,” I say, trying to sound sincere. The idea of Levi hitting on Ali by shoving dollar bills in her thong is not at all romantic to me.

“I saw your mom there, too,” Levi says. “Before she quit.”

My skin prickles with anger and disgust.

I don’t give a shit that my mom used to strip, or whatever else she got into. That’s her choice. What I fucking despise is how everyone tries to use it as a weapon against me—to shame me and degrade me.

“She was really hot,” Levi says, an ugly smile on his face. “Hotter than you.”

“I know that,” I say stiffly. Everybody always said how beautiful my mom was. She wanted to be an actress when she was young. She wanted to go down in history as one of those timeless faces, like Sophia Loren or Ava Gardner.

Instead she got pregnant with me.

I’m not angry at her for abandoning me. She was sixteen years old—way younger than I am now. Younger than Vic, even. Just a kid.

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