softly. “My card’s in there if you need anything. I put my personal number on it as well.”
I clutch the envelope to my chest. Free. Free. Free.
“Thank you,” I say through the tears in my eyes.
“I meant what I said that night, Athena. I want all good things for you.”
***
I decide not to make any hasty decisions, and I quickly find that not having had the ability to make my own decisions for so long has me second guessing everything. I don’t really want to stay at a women’s shelter. I’d like to get a hotel room, but for obvious reasons that seems weird.
I end up taking a cab to the far end of the Strip to a nice hotel I’ve never stepped foot in and where I’ll just be Ms. Hamilton instead of a working girl. I am ridiculously tight with my money, counting and recounting every penny, working through my head over and over how long it can last and ways to make it last longer.
For two days, I stay in the room and do nothing. It’s horribly decadent, but my body and mind need to recuperate. There are times I wake in a cold sweat certain there is a knife at my throat, and I know it will be some time before the nightmares become less frequent. After all, Mike is still out there somewhere.
During the day, I go from one extreme thought to another. My brain is finally processing that Harris was never in deep with Mike, never ratted me out, and was keeping me safe. Unlike Isaiah, who was playing me.
I take the card Harris left in the envelope and flip it over and over, not sure if I should call. Not sure what to say if I do call. Does he really care? Or was I just an assignment to keep safe?
In the end, there is one question I can’t figure out, and it’s that question that pushes me to call.
“Hello.” He answers on the second ring and my knees threaten to buckle at the rough sound of his voice.
“Harris?”
“Athena? Is that you? Are you okay?”
I nod and then realize he can't see me. “Yes.”
“Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need anything?”
“Just had a question for you.”
There’s relief in his voice when he answers. “Sure, what’s on your mind?”
“That night I came to Theo’s room and went to Mike’s office the next day?”
“Yes.”
“How did I make it back to my apartment?” I have been assuming it was Isaiah, but now, knowing what I do, I knew it couldn’t be.
“I carried you. And left a note under Vicki’s door so she would come see to you.”
“Oh.” As soon as I realized it couldn’t be Isaiah, I’d frantically hoped it was him. It seemed too good to believe.”
He takes a deep breath. “I had a meeting with him that morning. Apparently, Cybil tried to contact me to cancel it, but I never got her message. When I arrived, she told me to wait downstairs, that Mike was busy. I would have turned and left, but I heard...” His breath hitches. “I heard a wailing. I wasn’t even sure it was human, coming from his office.”
I’m straining to hear him because his voice is so low. “Cybil heard it too, because she jumped up right as I headed for the door. She tried to block me, and I told her if she didn’t move out of my way, I’d shove the door up her ass.”
I would have laughed at the thought of Cybil with a door up her ass had it been any other conversation I was having.
“I opened the door, and he was standing over you. With this look. Christ, I have nightmares about that look. I truly think he would have killed you if I hadn’t arrived.”
Harris takes a deep shuddering breath. “I didn’t say anything. I picked you up and went down his private elevator to my car and drove you home. Then I called him and asked what the fuck he was doing. At that point, I didn’t care if I blew my cover. To see you there....I couldn’t...I thought of my....”
His sister.
Of course.
“Harris?” I ask. “How did your sister die?”
He’s so silent I think the phone has gone dead, but then he speaks. “I don’t want to talk about her over the phone. I don’ t mind discussing it, but I want to do it in person. It’s that important to me.”
“Would you like to come here? I’m staying at a hotel.”
“Only if you’re okay with that. We can meet somewhere public if you’d like.”
“No, I’m still not comfortable being outside a lot.” I give him the name of the hotel and the room number. He agrees to come by later today.
***
He looks uncomfortable when he shows up hours later, and he hesitates before entering my room.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asks.
“After everything you’ve done for me? I trust you completely.” The man saved my life, for crying out loud. He kept me safe, and he’s worried I don’t trust him?
“How have you been?” He takes a seat on the couch in the room’s small sitting area and I take a place beside him.
“Okay, I guess. I’m going to look for somewhere to live tomorrow. Talk to a job finder. Get some help finding a job.”
The only thing holding me back is I have no idea what I want to do.
“Are you talking to anyone? Counseling? Therapy?”
“No.” To be honest, I have’t given anything like that a moment’s thought.
He pulls a card from his pocket. “I have a few names and numbers here. I can vouch for them, and there won’t be a charge.”
I nod and take the card, but I have no intention of calling anyone. “Have you found Mike?”
“No, and he’s resourceful. He could pop up anywhere. We’ll bide our time and be patient, he’ll show.”
“And Vicki?” Biding time was fine for Mike, but Vicki was in danger.
The expression on his face tells me everything I need to know. “I’m sorry, Athena. There’s nothing we can do until he surfaces.”
I start to argue, but he stops me. “Don’t. Don’t think we haven’t done everything we know to do in order to find her. Sometimes, the bad guys win the battle. All we can do is focus on the war.”
He says the words, but they aren’t easy for him to speak. “Is that how you deal with it?” I ask.
“It’s the only way I’m able to deal with it. If I view it as a war, then I feel like I’m actively doing something. Even if that something is standing on alert.”
“Is that what you told yourself about your sister?”
“Yes.”
He stands up and begins to pace. He’s made two turns of the room before he speaks again. “My mother was fifteen when she got pregnant with us. Her parents weren’t prepared for her to have twins, and she was too young to have children, so we were placed in foster care. We were normal kids, I see that now, but we got shuffled around a lot. When we were thirteen, my sister said she’d found us a forever home. It was a man she’d met in the library.”
I close my eyes. I could picture it all too easily. The young girl, desperate for a family and a place to fit in. A predator who just found his next victim.
“I begged her to let me meet him, but she kept putting it off. Saying it wasn’t time. Then one day...she didn’t come home.” He sits down next to me, but he won’t meet my eyes. “I was so angry with her. I thought she’d left me for him, and I was furious she didn’t take me with her. I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t write or call or let me know where she was. Eighteen months later, she was dead. She had a tattoo on her that marked her as the property of a sex trafficker in New York City.”
I think about the tattoo on my left hip that Mike had put on me years ago. It’s been part of me for so long, I don’t think of it most days. But now that I am thinking about, I want it off. Immediately. Yesterday. Five years ago.
“That’s when I decided I was going to be a cop and stop the guys who prey on young girls.”
“And you did it.”
“There are days I hate my job. I hate acting like I’m one of them.” He opens and closes his fist. “I always fe
lt so dirty after I got home for the day. And discouraged because I knew I could never save all of them.”
I don’t think he’s shared this part of himself with many people, and I’m honored he felt comfortable enough with me to do so. “Your sister would be proud.”
He looks at me at those words, and I see traces of the lonely and lost boy he once was. “I watched you that day in the food court.”
I wrinkle my eyebrows. “When I stalked Isaiah’s wife?”
“The young girl you talked to.”
“Probably didn’t do any good.”
“You don't know that. If someone had talked to you when you were sixteen, would you maybe have made different choices?”
“I’d like to think so.”
“Then you did everything you could.”
I’m suddenly hit with what he must feel everyday. “It never feels like it’s enough, though, does it?”
“No,” he says. “That’s why we have to focus on what we know we can change and to try not to dwell on what we can’t. And what you need to focus on is starting fresh. Are you leaving Nevada?”
“I don’t know. I thought about going back to the South, but part of me wants to stay here. Maybe not Vegas, but the Southwest.” It can be downright terrifying to have to make decisions. When I thought about where I wanted to live and knew I could go anywhere, I almost felt like burying my head in the sand. “Maybe I’ll become a hermit.”
“Never do that. You have too much going for you.”
I remember his words from when I was at his house and wonder if he really meant them. He’s not touching me at all today. In fact, it’s like he’s making a concentrated effort not to touch me. I want to say it feels like the only thing I have going for me is the ability to trust the wrong men. But I’m not ready to go there with him, so I’m quiet and hope there will be another day — some other time — for us to talk.
Chapter Twenty One
Five Months Later
It doesn’t happen overnight, but I’m slowly learning who I am and how I fit into my new normal. Though I hadn’t planned on going to a therapist, one day not long after Harris came by, I found myself in line to purchase whiskey at one in the morning. Unable to sleep because of thoughts of Mike, and haunted by thoughts of Vicki, I came to the conclusion I could sort everything out if I just had a drink. Or maybe enough to numb my brain so I didn’t feel anymore.
Before I made it to the front of the line, I clued into what I was doing, and I left the store without the bottle. The next morning, I called the first therapist on the list Harris gave me. He was right about her, of course; she’d worked with women in my position before, and with her help, I started on my way to rediscover myself.
Within a few weeks, I started work at a local pet store and rented a small apartment on the other side of town from where I lived before. But I still jumped at loud noises, and sleep continued to be an issue.
Harris keeps in contact, but it’s not like it was when we were at his house. I tell myself that those were stressful days for both of us, and our emotions were running high. That it was to be expected, shoved together the way we were.
And yet, my stomach still does flip-flops whenever he comes to the pet store.
About five months into my new start, he comes into the store unexpectedly on a Thursday. I’ve learned his routine, and he rarely deviates from it. Saturdays are when he buys cat food for Munchkin. He buys cans, which is funny because I remember a bag of dry food when I stayed with him.
“Hey,” I say to him, and then raise my eyebrow because not only is it Thursday, he’s not stopping by the cat food aisle. For a minute, I think he’s heard about Mike or Vicki, but he’s smiling and too relaxed to be bringing me such news. He reaches the counter.
“Can I help you with something?” I ask.
“I came to ask you a question,” he says.
“Go for it.”
“Will you go out to dinner with me tomorrow night?”
The leash I’m holding falls to the counter. “What?”
“Will you go out to dinner with me tomorrow night?”
“A date?”
“Yes,” he answers.
I’ve done a lot of new things since I’ve been on my own, and I’ve had some new experiences, but I’ve done nothing resembling a date.
“Uh...I’m ... I should be.... I think....”
“Athena, it’s just dinner. I promise.”
I’m free the next night. I’m free most nights. And I’ve never been on a date.
“I’d really like to go on a date with you.” My words come out in a rush, and I’m a bit embarrassed, but Harris doesn't act like he notices.
“I’ll pick you up at your apartment at five?”
I’m going on a date.
My brain is still processing that information.
“Athena?”
“Yes. Five.”
He smiles and says he’ll see me then.
***
I’m a complete wreck the next day. Because I’m working the weekend, I have the day off. It really would have been better if I didn’t have the day off. By noon, all my clothes are on top of my bed, and by two, I’ve vetoed every outfit I own. At three, I stand in front of my bathroom mirror and give myself a good talking to.
It doesn’t work.
Nothing can erase the fact that I’m twenty-six and I’ve never been on a date. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been with a lot of men. Not one of them stood before me and asked me to dinner. Not one of them wanted to spend the evening with me just because I’m me and not because I’d be naked at some point.
I walk back into my bedroom and shuffle through my clothes once more. It’s another reason to hate Mike. The fact that I missed so much. For me, there had been no prom, no graduation, no first date. Nothing. But it’s a conscious decision I make not to let that anger rule my life. To do so is to give him even more power over me, and I refuse to do that anymore.
When Harris rings the doorbell at five, I’m wearing jeans and a green silk top. It’s not too casual and not too dressy. I open the door, and he’s standing there, smiling and holding flowers.
Flowers.
“Hi,” he says.
Flowers.
“These are for you.” He holds them out. It’s a combination of blue and white violets and they’re the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen.
I tentatively take hold of them, supporting the glass vase they came in with one hand. “Thank you. I’ve... I’ve never gotten flowers before.”
I can’t stop looking at them.
“The white means ‘take a chance on happiness,’ and the blue means ‘watchfulness.’”
“Appropriate,” I say, catching his gaze and smiling. I step out of the way. “Would you like to come in while I put these down?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll stay out here.”
He’s being respectful, and I appreciate that. However, I can’t help but remember the way he kissed me and his promise after. My fingers remember the heat of his skin, and my body wants his hands on me again.
I place the flowers in the middle of my two-person kitchen table and hurry back outside. He’s waiting with his hands in his pockets, and when he looks at me, there’s a heat in his eyes I know I’m not making up.
“Ready?” He holds out a hand.