Page 45 of Live Love Steal
I couldn’t even breathe deeply to calm myself down. I’d gag.
“Let’s go.”
He led me upstairs. At the top of the landing, the loft opened up into a lounge area with two couches guarding the walls, a coffee table with dubious lines of cocaine residue glued to the surface, and what looked like years of shake embedded into the syrupy spilled booze that had dried on it. Beyond that, a hallway that had open doors lining it.
I don’t know what was worse. Knowing that three of the open doors led to mattresses flopped down on the floor, or that the locker room style shower-slash-bathroom was not private.
“I can’t do this.” As gross as I was, this was too much.
My heart was beating too quickly, and I just wanted to flee. But overpowering that was the urge to say fuck it and tear my clothing off and just get clean.
At least there was soap and various shampoos.
“I’ll guard the door. No one is going to come up here.”
That was a blatant lie. Everyone watched us walk in. Someone was bound to come up to investigate.
“Clothes?”
“I’ll take care of it. Toss those in the trash.”
My favorite pencil skirt.
That crawly thing on my back moved.
Fuck it. Favorite or not, it would never come clean. I stripped out of my clothes and dumped them on the floor. I didn’t want to touch them ever again. My shirt stuck to my back, and I really didn’t want to look at what caused that.
The water was hot, and I lathered at least seven times. But still, the smell was there. It clung to me like… blood.
Like the bits of Victor’s skull when Sketch shot him, my breathing came in little gasps, and I couldn’t stand up anymore. If I fainted here, would there still be some gunk from that damn dumpster on the floor?
“Oh God.” I crouched and tried to hold the tears in as I put my head low so I wouldn’t faint. I’d almost died. Those bullets hit the dumpster wall by my face. The scene was vivid, like a slow-motion movie that looped in my mind. The noise was too deafening to be real. The bulge of metal was coming straight for my nose. The slam of another bullet near my shoulder, which was hot against all the cold slime in that metal coffin.
I rubbed my tattoo and couldn’t even remember my mantra. All I could do was rock in my crumpled shell and try very hard not to cry. And not drown from the water I inhaled.
“Hey. Shhh.”
Sketch tore off his clothes and wrapped them around me, picking me up from the floor.
A sob broke free, and the floodgates of all the bad things that happened to me today poured out in tears and uncontrollable tremors.
He wrapped his arms tighter. “I got you.”
He’d almost died, too. I clung to him. “Victor had a gun in his hand.”
“I know. Shh.”
“He was going to kill you.” My breath caught, and I couldn’t get my body to take in any air. I gasped, suffocating on terror.
Sketch shook me. “Look at me. Look at me, Isobel. Damn it!”
I tried. I could barely see him through the flood of tears pouring out. I sucked in air too quickly, and it caught in my throat, tearing at me from the inside.
“One… look at me. Two. Three. Exhale. That’s a good girl. Inhale.”
I wasn’t a good girl.
“Isobel. Look. At. Me!”
