Page 57 of Beautiful Rush
He laughed. I gently trailed my fingertips over his eyebrows. Down his straight nose. Over his cheekbones. The bruises on his face and his cracked lips. The stubble on his square jaw. I loved his face. The rugged beauty of it. The little laugh lines around his eyes. His full lips and straight, white teeth.
I cradled his face in my hands. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry I let that happen to you. Fuck, I’m so sorry about that.”
Guilt. It was such a heavy burden. I didn’t want him to carry any guilt on my account. “It wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault. You saved my life.” At the speeds I drove, it probably wasn’t even an exaggeration.
He guided my hand to his mouth and kissed the palm of my hand then trailed his lips along my inner wrist, over the words inked on my skin. “Tell me your story.”
I had known it was coming, that someday he would ask. “You already know it.”
“I’ve never heard it from you. Come sit next to me.”
I climbed off the log and sat next to him, my shoulder leaning against his, and drew my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.
I wouldn’t even know where to begin. But this was my chance to be honest and open about who I was. After he heard my crazy story, he could decide for himself if he wanted to stick around. “When I was a kid, I didn’t really know what my father did for a living. I just thought he ran a nightclub. One time, I must have been seven or eight…I couldn’t sleep, and I crept downstairs. I was looking for junk food, probably. My dad was sitting at the kitchen island, cleaning his gun. It was the first time I realized that he carried a gun. I asked him why he needed a gun. He said he wanted to keep me and my mom safe.”
“I figured out what my father did for a living the way most kids found out important information. From kids at school. He sent me to private school with kids whose parents were doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers. It didn’t take long to realize that my father was a lot different than theirs. When I was in grade school, the girls used to invite me to slumber parties and birthday parties and stuff like that, but I was never allowed to go. My father wouldn’t even let me have friends over. By the time I was eight or nine, I stopped getting invited anywhere. One day I overheard these kids talking at lunch. They said my dad was a gangster. That he made his money by threatening business owners and if they didn’t pay up, he’d destroy their business. As I got older, I heard a lot of rumors about my dad. I heard he killed people. Sold drugs and arms. Whenever I asked my dad about it, he said that the kids were lying, and they were just jealous of me because I was prettier and smarter than them.”
I laughed bitterly. He put such a premium on beauty. My father had always surrounded himself with beautiful things and beautiful people. He used people like puppets on a stage, pulling the strings to make them dance for his own amusement and entertainment. “The way I got through school was to act like I was better than everyone else. Like I didn’t care that I had no friends. I didn’t win a lot of popularity contests.” I had acted like such a bitch. So superior. But it was a lonely way to live.
“In junior high, the boys took bets to see who could fuck me first. None of them had a chance. I had muscle men who drove me to and from school. They made it clear that if any of them laid a finger on me, they’d regret it. Things changed when I went to high school and met Sasha. He was in tenth grade and I was in ninth. He gave zero fucks, and nobody fucked with him. He ruled the school. Kids feared him, but they also hero-worshipped him.”
The first time I met Sasha, he was leaning against my locker, looking like a beach bum, a lazy grin on his face. “Who are you and why are you blocking my locker?”I asked.
“Your partner in crime and your new best friend.”
“What crimes are we committing?”
“We’ll hatch a plan after school.”
“I don’t hang out with anyone outside of school.”
“So I’ve heard. That’s about to change.”
“And your father didn’t mind you hanging out with Sasha?” Deacon asked.
“No. He encouraged it. Most likely, it was good for his business if I hung out with Ivan Petrov’s son. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It was never clear what their relationship was. At one point, Sasha told me they were looking to align forces, but that never happened.”Because Sasha died and Ivan disappeared.
“Are you wondering why I betrayed my father?” I could feel him watching me, but I stared straight ahead, not turning my head to meet his eyes. “You’re wondering what kind of a horrible daughter would do that.”
“That’s not what I’m wondering.”
I watched the dust motes floating in the sunlight. “What are you wondering?”
“How you lived like that.”
I shrugged. “It was all I knew at the time.”
“Tell me the rest of the story.”
The rest of the story. We’d be here forever if I tried to do that. “I never knew who to trust. My father always told me to report everything to him. If I was being followed, what they looked like, if they talked to me…I had a few stalkers.”
“You had a few stalkers,” Deacon repeated.
I nodded. It was so hard to describe my life in Miami. It sounded so far-fetched and I hadn’t even told him the half of it. “I think some of them were federal agents. I never talked to them. Sometimes I led them on a wild goose chase just to see if they could catch me.” I laughed at the memory. That part was fun. “That’s how I learned to drive fast.”
“Jesus,” Deacon muttered.
