Page 128 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
“You said, ‘I can’t,’” growled Nico. Beautiful and fierce, he cradled my face in his hands, staring down into my eyes with so much love in his own it took away what little breath I had left.
“What?”
His words spilled out in a rush. “When I asked you to marry me, you didn’t say ‘no,’ you said, ‘I can’t.’ I didn’t realize it until later because I was too fuckin’ crushed, but then someone said they saw me walkin’ out the back door at the House of Blues when I hadn’t walked out the fuckin’ back door, and I knew it was him, and he’d gotten to you somehow, and you’d promised to do somethin’ crazy like break up with me to protect me, because that’s exactly the kind of fucked-up thing he would ask you to do, and exactly the kind of fucked-up thing you would do instead of talkin’ to me about it, and I should’ve known in the first place because you lie for shit, always have, told you that the first fuckin’ day I met you. Entire time you were tellin’ me you didn’t love me and you wanted to leave, your eyes were sayin’ you were dyin’. Been kickin’ my own ass over that for a week.”
The room above his head careened like a roller coaster. The ground beneath me lurched like a stormy sea. The pain in my body grew more intense, along with the sharp, unwelcome appearance of nausea, but I managed sarcasm in spite of it all. “You mean in between sticking your dick in every available hole?”
“Don’t be fuckin’ dense, woman,” Nico murmured, tenderly stroking my cheeks with his thumbs. “Already told you, you ruined me for anyone else. All those bitches were a cover. I thought Michael’d leave you alone and come after me when he saw his plan didn’t work. Obviously that backfired ’cause he knew me better than I thought he did, and that fuckup is one I’ll never forgive myself for. You left me for real, I woulda dug myself a ditch, crawled into it, and never crawled back out.”
Oh, wonderful feeling. What lovely, lovely relief. No dick. No holes. Just Nico trying to create a diversion and save me from his evil brother.
I whispered, “He said he’d tell everyone about what happened with your father. And that you and Amy had a thing . . . and about that photographer you made disappear. He said you’d go to prison. That’s why I did it. I wanted to keep you safe, too.”
“Oh, baby,” Nico said softly. “I didn’t make the photographer disappear. Wanted to, but Michael beat me to it. As for prison, I got some new insurance against that. Apparently Amy kept a diary her whole life. Made a video diary before she died, too, as part of her therapy in rehab. Gave it all to Kenji for safekeeping. After the funeral, he gave it to me. Guess they were a lot closer than I realized.”
So the diaries were what must have been on Kenji’s mind at Avery’s funeral. No wonder he’d been so distracted.
“Speaking of funerals, is he dead?” I tilted my chin toward Michael.
“Unfortunately, he’s still breathin’. Think I only got him in the arm. Though he’s gonna have one motherfucker of a headache when he wakes up, thanks to you.” Nico glanced back at me, and suddenly it was as if he was seeing me for the first time. He jerked away, eyes widening.
“Jesus, fuck, baby, you’re bleedin’ everywhere!” His voice broke over the last word. He tore off his leather jacket, then his T-shirt, and ripped the shirt right down the middle. He gingerly wound the piece of fabric around my upper thigh, tied it into a tourniquet, then pressed the rest of the shirt against the ragged wound.
As pain scorched through me, the room grew dim. The sirens were right outside. Someone shouted from the front of the house. Nico shouted back, “In here!” Then a dozen cops burst into the room, led by Officer Eric Cox and a very bloody and disheveled Barney, shakily gripping his gun.
I whispered, “Oh, fun, the gang’s all here,” and that’s the last thing I remember before I passed out for good.
The E! True Hollywood Special that aired two months later was the highest-rated episode in the network’s history. Nico refused an interview, but there were plenty of other people eager to tell what they knew about Amy Lynne Jameson aka Avery Kane.
Neighbors. Teachers. Friends from school. It seemed everyone in the shitty little Tennessee town the Jameson kids had fled remembered something. How the mother had abandoned them. How the two boys would show up at school bruised and silent. How pretty Amy was. How strange and wild she grew as she changed from a child to an adolescent.
How the kids had run away, and the town never heard from them again. Only the town had, but it just didn’t know it.
The network had also scored interviews with everyone from her agent, the snake-eyed Ethan Grossman, to Gloria Gentry, the head of the National Council on Child Abuse and Family Violence, who weighed in with solemn statistics about child abuse and neglect, and reminded the viewers at home of the warning signs of possible abuse.
After they played the segments of Avery’s video diary where she detailed the horrors she’d suffered at the hands of her father, Ms. Gentry answered the interviewer’s follow-up questions with tears in her eyes.
Nico and I watched it from the penthouse suite of the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris on New Year’s Eve, silently sipping champagne together in the massive king-sized bed, until he couldn’t take it any longer and turned the television off. He set his champagne on the nightstand, took mine from my hand and did the same, then pulled me down against him to the satiny, pillowed heaven of the mattress, and buried his face in my neck.
“What did you think?” I whispered, running my fingers through his hair.
He inhaled deeply against my skin, hiding a few moments longer, then reluctantly withdrew, and propped himself up on an elbow. His gaze was solemn. “I think it’s what she wanted, or I never would have allowed it to be shown. It’s not how I wanted people to remember her.”
I kissed his bare chest.
We were both naked, having made love for the second time that night. He was still being gentle with me—much to my irritation, I’d never received that spanking he’d promised months ago in his note in the duffel bag—and touched me as if I were fragile as porcelain. Which I think I’d proven I wasn’t, considering the size of the bump I’d put on the back of Michael’s skull.
Also considering how quickly I’d bounced back after sustaining a serious concussion, breaking three ribs, fracturing the maxillary bone of my eye socket, and losing a potentially life-threatening amount of blood from the laceration on my thigh.
The scar was already kick-ass. I felt like I’d done battle with a saber-toothed tiger and won. The tour only had to be pushed back three and a half weeks before I was well enough to travel.
Naturally, pushing the tour back was Nico’s idea. “Where I go, you go,” and that was that.
I sighed, running my fingers over the new tattoo of my name inked on his chest, right above his heart. It was big, surrounded by thorns and roses, and almost as kick-ass as the scar on my leg. “I wish I could have known her better. She was brave, doing that video. Wanting to make sure she helped you if you needed it.”
“She did it for other abuse victims as much as for me. There was no way she could have predicted this shit with you, but during one of her lucid moments, she must have realized Michael would eventually snap. Mayb
e she thought he’d even do something to hurt her. Either way, her intentions were clear: she wanted the world to know what she’d gone through, and who she really was.” His voice grew soft. “I think she was just as tired of all the lies as I was.”
