Page 42 of Price of Angels

Holly nodded, and turned to walk away.

“Hol.”

The shortening of her name froze her to the spot. She dampened her lips, lifted her brows, tried to keep her voice steady. How stupid, she thought, that something like a nickname should leave her breathless and giddy.

“Yes?”

“The food can wait. Sit with me.”

It was both an order and a request, the harshness of his voice softened by the fractional lifting of his brows.

She couldn’t have refused if she’d wanted to.

Holly slid into the booth across from him, tray leaning absently against her leg. She didn’t speak, but waited for him to say whatever it was that was burning inside him, forcing him to breach all his protocols.

He downed the whiskey in one gulp without flinching, and said, “I want you to tell me about them. The men who you…” Elegant gesture.Wanted me to kill. “What did they do to you, Holly? Why did they follow you here?”

She felt panic welling at the idea of telling him. But she felt something else, too: a relief, so profound she could cry, lingering at the horizon. He wasn’t giving up on her after all. He’d come back around to the idea. He wanted to know. And if she told him, it might ease this awful ache of knowing her own past. Living with what had happened was exhausting. She would never want to burden someone with her story, but Michael wasn’tsomeone. He was the sergeant at arms for the Lean Dogs MC, and he’d seen his share of horrors, no doubt. She held such hope that this outlaw might understand her outsider soul.

She leaned toward him. She wanted to touch him, but refrained. “Not here. Can you wait till I get off tonight?”

He nodded. “I’ll follow you home.”

The earnest attention in his hazel eyes was too much. She did touch him, reaching forward to briefly close her hand over the back of his. Then she left, before he could retract his interest.

There were a handful of lights on at the Victorian mansion, including the lamps Holly had left blazing in her attic loft, the tiny Christmas tree twinkling behind the fogged glass.

Inside, there were the faint sounds of music, and the smell of sweets baking.

“Mrs. Chalmers has insomnia and does night baking,” Holly explained. “And Eric never sleeps, I don’t think.”

He followed her up both shadowed stairwells, the old house creaking under their feet. Muffled human noises from the other tenants: a cough, a murmur of a voice, a door closing, water running, TV rumbling. Did no one go to sleep in this place? It was almost four.

Oh well. This way, nobody would be disturbed by them moving around in the attic.

The loft was almost too warm, and Michael peeled off his jacket, hung it up on one of the pegs inside the door.

Holly took off her jacket too, and kicked off her uniform sneakers, but she didn’t go change clothes, as he expected. She was drawn tight as a bowstring tonight, nervous and furtive, and exhausted because of it. She walked to the kitchenette, pulled a bottle from an upper shelf, and took a long slug from it as she walked back toward him.

It was Crown Royal, he saw the label as she reached him, and she was drinking it straight down like water.

“That’s some nasty shit,” he informed her. He felt clumsy and awkward, here in her personal, feminine space, with her in such a fragile state.

She shrugged. “All of it’s nasty. It gets the job done.” She sat down on her peach sofa, curled her bare legs up under her, tugging at the hem of her silk shorts. She clutched the bottle into her middle. “Sit,” she said, and he did, settling beside her, an arm’s length between them.

Holly let her head fall to the side, against the back of the sofa. It was wearing her out already, thinking about what she’d say to him. The lamplight caught the shadows beneath her eyes. She looked small and pretty, like he could pick her up in one hand.

“Your father, your uncle, your husband,” Michael said, recalling what she’d said before.

She nodded, silken hair rustling against the sofa. “Some of their friends were involved sometimes, but I never knew their names. It was usually too dark to see their faces.”

Michael felt the slow, even pounding of his heart against his ribs. He didn’t want to hear the story she was about to tell him. The dread was already building in him, swirling like bile at the base of his throat. But he needed to know how bad it had been. He needed to have this justification for what he was fast realizing he had to do.

“What did they do to you, honey?” he asked, quietly, his shoulders stiff with anticipation.

She closed her eyes a moment, pain lining her face. “Promise me something first.”

He waited until her eyes were open, and nodded.

---