Soupy delivered one of his girls to each of the bridesmaids and wished them good luck in keeping things under control. Jonny handed Connor over to me, telling him, “Remember, we don’t use Mommy’s words in public,” before heading back down the steps. Connor giggled, and Jonny stopped at the main aisle and turned to me. “You watch your mouth, too.” Then he rejoined his wife and daughter in the second row.
The strings switched over to the wedding march. One of the twins—the aisle sitter—twisted herself free from Dani’s grip and darted down the stairs. I expected her to run to Soupy or her mother, or maybe to one of her older siblings. She streaked past them and stopped at Tori’s side.
Tori looked up at me with panicked eyes.
The little girl brushed her hand over Tori’s hot pink dress. “Pretty.” The next thing I knew, she climbed into my dazed and confused wife’s lap and made herself at home.
Soupy shrugged. “At least she’ll be still and quiet now,” he mouthed at me.
He was taking it far better than Tori, who hadn’t taken her wide eyes off me.
I nodded encouragement, but that was all I could do…because the double doors opened, and Webs walked Katie down the aisle toward us.
She was beaming, her brown hair in a short pixie cut, a shimmering tiara resting on her head. Her dress looked like it belonged to a princess, which seemed fitting. Lord knew Babs thought she was one.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He was blushing like a fucking stoplight, and his dimples were going haywire, but he wasn’t looking anywhere other than at Katie.
For a moment, I couldn’t look away from her, either. It was only right. She was the bride, and it was her day. Everyone was watching her.
But then my eyes strayed to Tori. Webs and Katie had just slipped past her.
I was just in time to see her bolt up from her seat, deposit the toddler on her chair, and take off like the frightened rabbit I knew her to be.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered.
“Fucking hell,” Connor repeated so loud it echoed all around us.
Everyone burst out laughing again, including Katie. Everyone except Jonny, who gave me the look he always gave a guy right before he busted a few teeth loose. And except for Babs. Babs wasn’t laughing. He took a long look at me while everyone else was in stitches.
Then he said, “Go.”
So I went.
“WHO IS SHE? Why is Soupy letting his daughter stay with her? Why on earth would she wear something like that to a wedding? What’s she doing here?” Those questions and a thousand others were whispered all around me. Maybe they thought I couldn’t hear, but I did. I heard it all, as loud as fireworks going off beside me, ricocheting and reverberating inside my mind.
That only proved I’d been right, and Razor had been wrong.
And I had to get out of there.
Now.
I didn’t belong at this wedding, no matter how much Razor might try to convince me otherwise. I didn’t belong in his life. I would never fit with those people—Hollywood stars, professional athletes, and their glamorous wives. The couple who’d sat next to me had been proof enough of that. He’d been big and strong, like Razor, with long hair and a scruffy jaw. But the woman with him? A tall brunette who was flawless in every way. She looked like a model from a fashion magazine, if not for her enormous baby bump.
“Y’all, quit being ugly and hush your mouths,” she’d hissed as the bride and her father had gone past us. So she’d heard it all, too. Telling them to stop talking about me only magnified the fact that I shouldn’t be there, at least to me.
The little girl in my lap had kept petting the satiny fabric of my dress and chattering about how pretty and soft it was, which only made me more uncomfortable. I had no business touching that child. None.
And then it was all too much for me.
I lifted her off my lap, got up, placed her on the chair, pried her fingers free from my dress, and ran back inside the hotel as fast as I could.
“Aw, honey, come back,” the pregnant woman said as I scurried up the aisle as fast as I could go. “You just need to ignore them. It doesn’t matter. Hunter, go stop her and bring her back. Why’d everyone have to be so ugly to her? Come here, sugar.” The last must have been directed at the little girl. She wouldn’t be calling me sugar.
The sound of her voice trailed off as the glass doors slid closed behind me.
Clutching my purse to my side, I walked as fast as my heels would allow toward the bar. Briefly, I thought about leaving the hotel and finding somewhere else to search for my John, but I quickly dismissed the thought. Razor was busy with the wedding. He wouldn’t be able to come looking for me for hours, and by then I had every intention of being holed up with someone who would pay me for my time. The quicker I could find someone, the better, and that meant sticking close. The bar seemed like as good a place as any to start my search. Not that I could afford to buy a drink, but maybe I could talk someone into buying me one…and taking me upstairs to earn some cash. Whatever money I had, I needed to hold on to and find a way to get more. Surely the marriage could be annulled once Razor realized I wasn’t coming back. Or if not, he could get divorced due to abandonment or something like that.
He’d be fine. Yes, he’d tried to help me, but I was well beyond his help. That much must be clear by now.
No matter what, there was no time for me to waste. I’d already lost last night. I couldn’t afford to spend another moment doing anything other than finding a way to get myself out of my current mess.
The second I stepped foot in the hotel bar, I scanned the faces present. It was early in the day for people to be drinking, but this was Las Vegas. Everything was different here.
One man in the far corner met my eyes. I forced myself not to break his gaze, letting him assess me as much as I was doing the same to him. But he wasn’t my mark. No chance. There was something cold and dangerous in the depths of his eyes. He angled his head toward an empty seat next to him. I shook my head, hoping he’d take that to mean I was looking for someone.
Which I was. I just didn’t know who.
On the opposite side of the bar, a group of men sat huddled together. Young. Well-groomed. They were talking and laughing, sipping from their beers. Maybe one of them, if I could get one by himself. I could handle more than one, but that didn’t mean I wanted to.
I was just about to make my way closer to the group of men when Razor put his hand on my arm from behind. I knew it was him without turning to see. In our time together last night, I’d gotten to know the feel of his hands. Big. Strong. Long fingers with a few calluses.
But gentle. Heartbreakingly gentle.
That was the bit I recognized now. It was the only reason I didn’t immediately panic. Yes, I was trying to leave him, but he was a good man. He wouldn’t hurt me. Not intentionally. But if I stayed, I’d end up hurting him. I might have already done so last night.
“You should be at wedding,” I said, the certainty that I couldn’t stay with him making my voice harsher than usual. “Go back. Your friend needs you.”
“I think you need me,” he said. So calm. So patient. All the more reason I couldn’t stay with him. He deserved so much more than I could ever be.
My blood turned electric, surging through me and leaving jolts and shocks in its wake. Every nerve ending in my body was painfully alive and aware of him.
“Come talk to me,” he said, sliding his hand down to my hand. He wrapped his fingers around mine and tugged, a mild pressure, insistent yet unflappable.
“I can’t.” I nearly choked on the words.
“Why can’t you?”
“It was mistake. All big mistake. You don’t under—” I stopped and shook my head. “I don’t—I don’t belong—”
“You do,” he cut in. “You belong with me.” Another tug, stronger this time. He tucked my hand against my ribs, holding it between his body and his hand. Like it was precious. “Come on. Let’s go talk.”
“No time to talk. I need—”
“You need to tell me why you ran away. And why you’re in here trying to find a John.” He didn’t sound mad. Just…confused.
“I’m not—”
“Don’t lie to me, Tori. Please don’t.”
He slipped in front of me, sliding my hand up to cover his heart. The thumping of it was steady but fast. I stared at his Adam’s apple, unable to meet his gaze. There was no telling what I’d find there. But he wouldn’t let me get away with that. He touched two fingers to my chin and lifted until I had no choice but to look deep into eyes that would undoubtedly see too much. He spent a moment staring through me while I tried to keep my mask in place. No use. His thumb brushed my cheek. His touch was tender, but he might as well have clawed through layers of skin and exposed raw nerve.
“I watched you walk in here,” he said. “I saw you scan the room, debating your options. I could tell when you made your choice. I just don’t understand why doing what it’s clear you intended to do would be better than letting me help you.”
A weary sigh, one that had been building for years, poured through my lips, leaving me deflated and defeated.
His brow creased. “Come on.” This time when he tugged, he meant business, drawing me up alongside him and leading me from the bar.
“I can’t go back to wedding,” I argued.
“We’re not going back to the wedding. It’s going on without us.”
My legs were long but not as long as his, so I had to hurry to keep up with him. And I wasn’t sure where we were going. We’d stayed in a different hotel last night and had taken a cab here this morning. It looked as if he was leading me toward the front entrance, though, like maybe we were leaving. “But your friend—”
“Babs is perfectly capable of getting married without me holding his hand.” As he said it, he resituated his grip on me, threading our fingers together in the sort of familiarity I’d always craved. But it felt uncomfortable now that I had it. Too close. Too at ease. Too much as if he were trying to prove we belonged together, even though we both knew that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The summer sun blasted into us the moment we stepped out onto the circular drive.
“We need a cab,” Razor said to the waiting doorman, who nodded and spoke into a walkie-talkie.
A cab. Meaning we were leaving the hotel with the wedding. Why would he drop everything? He’d known me for all of half a day—not enough time to turn his life upside down in order to chase after me. I wasn’t worth all that.
Moments later, a taxi came around the corner and stopped in the drive, and Razor ushered me into the backseat. He slid in next to me, his body taking up so much of the space it was almost stifling.
The driver turned into traffic, and Razor took my hand again, his thumb tracing figure eights over my knuckles. The bit of contact acted as a magnetic pull. Only it wasn’t a physical draw. It was as though he’d locked on to the private parts of me and was attempting to suck them out through the cracks in my walls.
“Why did you leave?” he asked quietly.
“I told you.” My voice kept cracking with emotion, no matter how hard I tried to force it down. “I shouldn’t be there. I don’t belong. Your world is no place for me.”
“What if I want to make a place for you?”
“It’s not so easy. You think you want something, snap fingers make it happen. That’s not how my life works.”
“How does your life work?”
I shook my head. I’d never be able to explain, and even if I could, it wasn’t something a man like Razor would understand. No matter what his mother might have done in the past, Razor hadn’t ever been in my shoes. “Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“It matters to me.” He reached for his wallet and took out some bills as the driver came to a stop in front of the hotel we’d been in last night. He reached for the door handle after paying.
“You should go back to wedding.”
“I don’t think so. I think I should be with you.”
Stubborn man. He was trying too hard at a lost cause. If I wasn’t careful, he might get through all the layers I’d built up, but what he might find when he succeeded... It wasn’t worth thinking about now. There were far more pressing matters I needed to sort through. I tried to climb out the door on my side of the car, but he wouldn’t let go of my hand, easing me across the seat to follow him.
Every bone in my body wanted to run. I wanted to get back in the taxi and use some of the meager money I had to leave. I could disappear. Papa taught me how to do that, and it had worked once before. I could make it work again. Once I got on a bus, I could go somewhere it was legal to sell my body, and I could earn enough money to get myself back to Russia. Not that I knew what I’d do once I got there, other than find a way to hide. That wasn’t the point for now. If I did that, Razor would never be able to find me. It would be better for him. Safer. There was no reason for him to get tied up in the mess that was my life.
But something about him compelled me forward, one step at a time. I stayed by his side traversing the hotel lobby, waiting in the elevator, all the way until we got off at his floor and he let me into his room.
The way he compelled me wasn’t like with other men, the ones I’d filmed scenes with. They forced me to do whatever they wanted, whatever the script called for. There wasn’t any hint of force with Razor. It was more like getting caught in a whirlwind, and he was the only thing solid to hold on to.
He closed the door behind us, and he led me to the couch. He sat and urged me to sit beside him. When I did, he eased an arm around my shoulders, as if he could protect me.
I wanted to believe it was possible. A knot of ache filled my belly. I wished there were truly men who were as good and kind as he seemed. But I’d seen too much of the real world to fall for such a trap. I wasn’t so naïve. Not anymore.
My insides twisted in knots as I waited on the interrogation to begin anew. Razor wanted answers. He wanted to understand why I’d left the wedding. Why I couldn’t sit still while surrounded by Hollywood stars and professional athletes. By families. Children. He wanted to understand me, and there was some small part of me that wanted to try to explain it all.
But he didn’t demand I explain. He sat with his arm draped across my shoulders, and he lifted his hand to smooth it over my hair.
It was such a simple thing, his compassion, but profound at the same time. I tried to swallow hard enough to keep my tears at bay. No use. They spilled down my cheeks, hot and fast, turning the pink satin on my breasts a vibrant red everywhere they landed.
I could feel his eyes burning through me. I could sense the gears turning in his head as he attempted to sort out my secrets. But it was his gentleness that would undo me, a thought that only brought on a fresh torrent of tears.
Razor would break through all my defenses—that much was clear—but he would do it with a deliberate tenderness and determined care I’d never before experienced.
That realization further drove home the fact that no matter what, I would never be free. All that Papa had done to get me away from the Tambovs, away from Russia, to keep me safe…it had been in vain. In this world, a woman like me could never be her own master.
TRYING TO PRY answers out of Tori hadn’t worked once yet, so I had no doubt any such endeavor would be fruitless as all hell. Instead, I decided to wait her out. Let her cry until she was done, and then we could talk.
But I damn sure intended to get her to talk to me. She didn’t have to tell me everything down to who her best friend was when she was seven, but she was my wife. I needed to know more than the bare-bones minimum she’d fed me so far. I intended to do whatever it took to understand her. At the moment, I was clueless beyond realizing she’d been through a lifetime of shit, probably before her fifteenth birthday, not to mention everything that must have happened since. That much was clear in the haunted look in her eyes and the way she was fighting so hard to keep her crying under w
raps, despite the fact that there was no point in it at all. Whatever was behind this was going to force its way out, whether she was on board with it or not.
I stroked a hand over her long, dark hair again. It was soft and still smelled like the hotel shampoo she’d used this morning, a fresh combination of orange and ginger that tickled my nostrils. The temptation to bury my nose in her hair and breathe deeply was strong, but that was going to have to wait. This wasn’t about me.
At first, there’d only been a few tears streaming, but it had turned into full-blown sobs before much time had passed, her shoulders heaving from the force of whatever was going on in her head. So I waited, trailing my fingers through the silky tendrils of her hair, for her to make the next move…whatever that move might be.
She kept her spine straight, her neck rigid. She refused to lean in toward me or to seek more comfort. Pride? Maybe. I doubted it. Fear seemed more likely. Or shame. She was carrying around a shit-ton of that.
“You followed me,” she said after a long while, her voice raspy from the effort of crying so hard. “I don’t understand.”
“What’s there to understand? I married you. I promised I would take care of you.”
Even though I tried to brush it off and make it sound simple, I knew it was anything but. I couldn’t explain my reaction to her any more than she could tell me all that she’d been through.
She shook her head, staring down at her knees. “Why? Why leave friends for me?”
“Has no one ever put you first, beautiful?” More and more, it seemed as if she’d never had anyone in her corner. No one fighting for her. She’d had to do it all on her own.
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