Page 170 of Never Die for a Sinner
“W-what?”
She glances up, and I follow her gaze across the room. Levi’s speaking to a woman. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I also can’t deny the twinge of jealousy sliding through me.
“Bringing the current girl here to be babysat by the former girl at the bar while you meet with the next one behind her back.”
“He came to speak to Deigo.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” she says, holding up her hands in self-defense. “I’m just making an observation.”
“He’s not like that,” I grit. “If you knew anything about him, you would know that.”
“I know him better than you think,” she says, wiping down a glass. “Who do you think was there for him when his father died?”
I think it would hurt less if she’d just stomp on my chest, rather than ripping my heart out.
I look back across the room, and he’s chatting with the woman, his arms crossed over his chest. He seems interested in what she has to say, and there’s a sick and twisted part of me that wishes I could hear what they’re talking about.
And suddenly, without a doubt, I know.
“You’re . . . Cherise.”
She grimaces at the name, but sighs with a shrug.
“Guilty.”
It’s why he didn’t want me present when he was speaking with the police. Because the girl he was with is the same one who makes his drinks every time he comes to this stupid club.
“You were . . . with him before.”
“Ava,” she says, like I’m a child who needs coaching. “I was where you were, at one point. I thought I was high on the world being the girl in his bed. I thought I could change him. It’s not real.”
It’s not real.
It’s not real.
“It’s men like that who always get what they want,” Cherry continues. My gaze locks on Levi across the room, and I can’t fight the disturbing pang in my chest. “They take and take and take, and when they’re done with you, they throw you to the wind.”
Without looking at her, I shake my head.
“Levi’s not like that.”
I hear her humorless chuckle behind me.
“Is that what you really think?” she asks quietly. “Or is that what he told you to believe?”
A pit opens up in my stomach and threatens to swallow me whole.
She’s right.
Of course, I know she’s right, but I don’t want to believe it.
He cares about me. He has to. Otherwise, why would he have come to Gran’s funeral? Why hold me while I cried?
Hell, he even went so far as to threaten my thieving mother and her new boyfriend for me.
“In the end, it’s the girls like us that get forgotten,’ Cherry says, her words sliding over me like hot tar. “I’m just sorry no one told you sooner.”
Sickness pools in my gut, and my heart feels like it’s trying to claw its way out of my chest. Without knowing where I’m going, I climb from my barstool and walk away from Cherry and her stupid red hair. I make my way towards the long line at the bathroom, only when I spot the neon exit sign, I follow that instead.
