“And you’re not responsible for what Levi did to himself.”
His eyes dulled once more.
“You’re not, Blake. Not unless I’m responsible for what Clear will one day do. So, which is it? Are we both guilty, or are we both taking on too much?”
He sighed. “It’s a totally different situation.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that unless he died at your hand, the blame doesn’t lie with you.”
With another sigh, Blake lay flat and rested his forehead against mine. “Talked me in a circle, didn’t you?”
“I learned that from you.”
He tugged my lower lip with his teeth and then thrust his tongue inside my mouth. The kiss was soft, deep, and apologetic.
“You’re not forgiven that easily. I expect multiple orgasms when we get back to our suite.”
His smile was wolfish. “That won’t be a problem.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
You like pulp, right?
I had no idea what that meant. But it was the only clue Blake had given me when I’d asked what kind of room he’d booked for us at the Vault tonight. And it wasn’t really a clue, was it? No, it told me nothing and only made me more curious.
Letting the door of the bar swing closed behind me as I finished my shift, I glimpsed at the cloudy sky. ‘Grim’ was about the best way to describe it. The air felt thick and muggy, like just before a storm. Adjusting the strap of my purse, I headed to the parking lot.
It had been five days since we got back from our vacation. Five uneventful days—no activity from Smith, and no bullshit from Tara or Joshua or Libby. Not that I expected that peace to last, but I certainly intended to enjoy it.
I was due to meet Blake in the basement at seven. First, I needed to go back to his apartment so that I could shower and change into my—
“Kensey Lyons?”
Halting at the unfamiliar female voice, I turned. A dark-haired woman stood there, eyes guarded, hand clenched tightly around a bunch of keys. She was somewhere in her forties. Maybe older—she was good enough with makeup that I couldn’t tell for sure.
A journalist, maybe? No, she didn’t look like someone searching for a scoop. She looked … anxious.
I lifted a brow. “Something I can help you with?”
She licked her lower lip and took a small, cautious step toward me. “My name is Liza Montgomery.”
And then I stopped breathing. She couldn’t have shocked me more if she’d bitch-slapped me. This had to be the Montgomery. Wariness kicked in, overriding the surprise, and my pulsed picked up. Unsure what to expect, I took a centering breath and waited, staring at her blankly.
“Blake hasn’t told you about me,” she correctly assumed. She glanced around. “I was hoping we could talk.”
My grip on my purse strap flexed. “About?” I heard my cell start to ring, but I ignored it.
“Blake. I understand you’re living with him. I think—”
“You need to get the fuck out of here,” a male voice growled. Rossi. He’d come to follow me to Blake’s apartment, as usual. By the way he was glaring at Liza, nostrils flaring, he knew her.
Rossi’s expression softened just a little as he turned to me. “Kensey, get in the car, honey, okay. I’ll take care of this.” He whirled on Liza, snapping, “If you’ve done this to get Blake’s attention, thinking he’ll come here, you’re wasting your time. He ain’t stupid.”
She flapped her arms. “What was I supposed to do? He won’t take my calls. He won’t—”
“Woman, why would he take your calls?”
Her eyes briefly drifted shut. “I understand he’s angry, but I need to speak with him. This can’t go on. It has to stop.”
“Yeah? Why is that?”
“I’ve paid for what happened, Rossi, I’ve paid ten times over. I left Redwater. Isn’t that enough?”
“Nothing will ever be enough, Liza.” He only then seemed to notice that I was still standing there. “Kensey, honey, get in the car.” But I didn’t.
Liza turned to me, her face beseeching. “You need to talk with Blake. Tell him I deserve some peace. Tell him—”
“Liza, get the fuck out of here,” Rossi snarled.
She jutted out her chin. “Why? What else can he do to me?”
“You’d be surprised,” drawled Rossi.
Liza swallowed. Once again, she looked at me. “Talk with Blake and ask him to either call me or leave me alone. Please.” She scurried over to a Volvo that had seen better days and drove off.
Rossi’s shoulders lowered. “Thank fuck for that. I lied, Kensey. Blake’s on his way. He flipped when I told him she approached you. That’s probably him calling you right now. Answer the phone and assure him you’re fine before he loses his mind.”
Looking in the direction that Liza had disappeared, I pulled out my phone and answered, “Hello.” My voice was low. Flat.
“Kensey.” Blake sighed in what could have been relief. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Put Rossi on the phone, baby.”
I handed the phone to Rossi, who put it to his ear and said, “She’s gone.” He flicked a look at me. “Not much, but enough that you’re gonna have to answer some uncomfortable questions.”
Oh my God, Blake was checking to see how much Liza had told me. I’d just been approached by the woman outside my own damn place of work, and his main concern was how much I knew about his precious project.
“Yeah. We’ll wait for you.” Rossi handed me the phone. “Here, honey.”
I took it and, with a swipe of my thumb across the screen, ended the call without even a single word to Blake.
“He’s almost here,” Rossi told me.
“You know, shockingly enough, I really don’t care right now.”
Rossi winced. “Give him a chance to fill in the blanks.”
Oh, I’d give him a chance, because I deserved to know what the hell I’d just been dragged into.
I was leaning against my car, arms folded, when Blake pulled up a few minutes later. He fairly leaped out of his Maserati and made a beeline for me, his eyes raking over me; studying me from head to toe. Weirdly, he didn’t enter my personal space. Didn’t touch me, kiss me, draw me to him, anything.
“Did she touch you?” he asked, his posture stiff, jaw tense.
I slowly shook my head.
Rossi stepped toward him. “She asked Kensey to speak to you on her behalf, but I personally think she only came because she thought you’d ride to Kensey’s rescue and then she’d be able to talk to you, face-to-face.”
Blake’s eyes narrowed. “That so?”
I watched him closely as I told him, “She said she’s paid for what she did, that ‘this’ can’t go on. Was driving her out of Redwater part of your project’s goal?”
A muscle in his cheek ticked. “Yes.”
I swallowed. “She said she deserves some peace.”
His eyes darkened in a way that made my stomach flip. “Peace? That’s the last thing she fucking deserves.”
“We talked about this in Mexico. It’s tragic that Levi committed suicide. But, ultimately, it was his choice.”
Blake stiffened. One brow arched. “Are you saying she holds no blame? That I should give her what she wants?”
“Don’t get pissy with me. How the hell would I know what she does or doesn’t deserve? You won’t tell me anything. I don’t have a damn clue how it all went down.” I waited for him to explain, but he regarded me with an unblinking stare that gave away nothing. “This is what I do know, Blake—me and my mother had people trying to drive us out of Redwater all my life, blaming us for Maxwell’s fuck-ups. All we wanted was some peace.”
“It’s not the same, Kensey. Not even close.” He rubbed his jaw. “Wait here. I need to talk to Rossi.”
Blake led him away, speaking in a voice too low for me to catch … and I realized that he hadn’t cleared up a single thing. No blanks were filled. I was still none the wi
ser. And I was pretty sure that, even though his baggage had just approached me in a goddamn parking lot, he had no intention of explaining any of it. Why else would he be over there, whispering?
Muscles fairly quivering with anger, I yanked open my car door, hopped inside, and drove off in a screech of tires. A glimpse in my rear-view mirror showed Blake rushing to his own car. The bastard was going to follow me.
I cursed, realizing I had nowhere to go. I had no apartment, and I certainly wasn’t going to his place. Sarah was out with Bastien, so I couldn’t go to her apartment. It was Cade’s day off work, but if I went to his place, there would be bloodshed for sure. Cade would yell at him for upsetting me, and Blake would then pounce on him—happy to have an excuse to fight him. There was my mother’s house, of course, but I didn’t want to bring her into this.
And then I had an idea.
I changed direction, determination flooding me, and ignored my ringing cell as I drove. An occasional glimpse in the rear-view mirror showed that Blake wasn’t far behind. But that was a good thing, because I needed him for this.
Finally, I arrived at my destination and pulled up outside the Vault’s private parking garage, near the keypad. I didn’t have the code, so I waited, fingers tapping the steering wheel.
Mere moments after his car parked behind mine he was standing at my open window. I didn’t look at him as I spoke. “You have two choices. You can tell me what the hell you’ve been hiding, or we part ways right here, right now. I respect that you needed time. I gave it to you. But you told me that this situation would never touch me. Well, it did. And it took me off-guard. I didn’t know what I was dealing with, I wasn’t prepared, and I didn’t have a fucking clue what she was talking about.”
I met his gaze then. “Like it or not, I’ve been brought into this ‘project’ of yours, just as you were brought into my mess. I didn’t try pushing you out of my situation—I made sure you knew exactly what you were dealing with to protect yourself, and I respected your right to involve yourself. Now you need to do the same for me, or you need to let me walk away without any fuss. Make your choice.”
He didn’t speak. Just stared at me, eyes hard and unreadable. I didn’t back down, though. I wouldn’t. And I let him see that in my expression.
He pushed away from the window and backed up a step. Still, he didn’t speak. Instead, he punched in the code on the keypad.
My heart slammed against my ribs, and I let out a shaky breath. I drove into the garage, whipped my car into an empty space, and climbed out. Standing near the trunk of my car, arms folded, I waited as he parked his Maserati.
Crossing to me, he looked at me in silence for a long moment. “You sure you want to know, Kensey? You sure you want to tumble even further down the rabbit hole?”
“I’m sure.”
He didn’t look relieved. “All right.” He put his face close to mine. “But know this: If you say you can’t deal with what you learn, I won’t just tip my hat and let you walk away from me. We’ll go somewhere and talk. And talk and talk and talk until you tell me you can deal with it, because I fucking refuse to give you up.”
Okay, well that took me off-guard. I didn’t respond, though. Just followed him through the door and into the elevator. When he jammed a key into the B3 button on the number panel and then pressed it, my heart started to gallop. I realized then that a part of me didn’t want to know what happened on that floor, because what if it was something I couldn’t handle? Something I couldn’t ignore?
No, Emma had told me that it wasn’t ‘so bad.’ Blake himself had said that ‘nothing terrible’ occurred down there. And then I remembered another thing that Emma had said …
“I’m hoping you’ll show the same spunk you showed at the garage when you stumbled upon that scene, because I think you may just have the power to hurt Blake. And I’d hate to see him hurt again.”
At that moment, the elevator doors slid open. I stepped out, and I gaped. Not in horror or disgust. No, I just really hadn’t expected this. At all. Really hadn’t expected to see the large space filled with people that were crowded around boxing rings and mixed martial art cages. Their shouting and hooting mixed with the sounds of the fighters grunting and growling.
An underground fight club—or fight floor.
As we walked around, I could hear fists and feet thudding into flesh; hear the clanging of wood as fighters hit the floor hard. Some spectators held beers, others held cash, as they egged on whichever fighter they’d bet their money on. Somewhere, a referee whistled and—
Well, fuck. I blinked, recognizing one of the boxers as a goddamn TV. host.
“You’re not looking at the dregs of society, coming here to brawl,” Blake told me. “These people pay to come here, let off steam, and gamble. Millionaires, politicians, actors, models—hell, even a vicar.”
“Models and actors? But their faces—”
“It can be specified before a fight that the face or other areas are out of bounds.” He studied me closely, searching for something. Probably judgement.
“You didn’t need to keep this from me. I could have handled it, Blake. It might not be legal, but it’s consensual and I can see you have referees and security guards patrolling. I wouldn’t have collapsed in horror about it; I’m not fucking delicate.” And he knew that, so there had to be something I was missing. There had to be … And then it hit me. “The bruises I’ve seen on you. Not your PT.”
“No,” he admitted.
“The weekend of the carnival, you had a big bruise on your jaw—I saw it on the photos.”
“I’d had a particularly bad fight the previous Sunday, and I came out of it with a lot of bruises and swellings. They took their time fading. That was why I didn’t meet with you.”
“You were giving the injuries more time to heal and fade.”
He inclined his head. “I never met with you on weekdays for the same reason. It used to be my routine to come here on a Sunday night and let off steam. By the time I saw you the following weekend, most of the injuries had faded.”
“You haven’t done it lately.” I’d made a passing comment a few days ago that his PT had been going easy on him lately, because there had been no bruises. Now I understood. “You couldn’t fight because I was living with you, and that meant I’d have seen the injuries.”
“Yes.”
“Ordinarily, you fight here a lot.”
“Yes.”
“I could have handled that too.” I didn’t like it, but I could handle it.
He covered the small space between us in one stride, but he didn’t touch me. “What’s the question swimming around your head right now? Ask me.”
“Why would you fight here so often?” Every Sunday was a lot. Considering it part of his weekly routine was odd.
“The answer is … I need it sometimes.”
My brows lowered. “You … need it?”
“I need that feeling of my fist crashing into something. And I even need the pain of a fist smashing into me. In short, I like giving pain, and I like receiving it.”
My stomach bottomed out, because the first thought that floated into my head was: Just like Michael.
“Not sexually. I’m not into sadomasochism or anything like that. I don’t have a temper. I don’t lose my shit. I just … I just need this.” And here, he got what he needed in a controlled, consensual environment.
I swallowed. “I don’t get it.”
“The pain … it helps me. I know how fucked up that sounds, Kensey. I do. Just as I know that learning the person you’re sleeping with likes to dole out pain must be a knife to the gut, especially since Bale is much the same. I read articles about him, because I wanted to be sure I didn’t say anything that would push a button for you, and that’s how I learned that he and I have this fucked-up thing in common. And that’s why I didn’t want us to ever have this conversation.”
I shoved my hand into my hair, struggling to absorb everything—not wanting to absorb it. “
Who are you beating up each time you get into those rings and cages? Who put that rage there?”
His face tightened. “I don’t want you down here. Come upstairs to my office with me. This isn’t me evading your questions. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just not here.”
Since I really needed to sit down, I nodded and walked with him back to the elevator on wobbly legs, my heart hammering in my chest. I felt cold. Confused. Off-balance.
He didn’t touch me, maybe sensing I needed space or maybe worried I’d reject him. But when we reached the club’s main floor, he apparently decided to try his luck, because he held out his hand.
I just stared at it, uncertain. It wasn’t that I was now scared of him or something. It was just that my mind was in absolute chaos, and I didn’t really know what to think. I felt like I’d been sucker-punched. No wonder Cade had told me to be prepared.
“I’d never hurt you, Kensey.” The hint of pain in his eyes broke my resolve. I put my hand in his, and he gave it a little squeeze. “You have every reason not to believe me when I say this, but you are safe with me.” He pressed a kiss to my hair. “Now we talk.”
Keeping me protected from the crowd with his body, he guided me across the busy dance floor and over to the flight of iron steps. Once inside his office, he locked the door and ushered me over to the leather sofas near the tinted window. Eager to hear what he had to say, I sat down and rested my clasped hands on my lap.
“Want a drink?”
I shook my head.
Instead of sitting beside me, he sank into the sofa opposite me and draped his arm over the back of it. “You once asked me if I’d ever been in a relationship. I told you I was seventeen at the time. I was seventeen when it ended. I was fourteen when it started. Liza Montgomery was my chemistry teacher.”
My mouth almost dropped open. Speechless, all I could do was stare at him.
“It started just after my mom died. I was a mess. Feeling angry and guilty because she’d stayed in that burning house looking for me, no matter how much I screamed for her to get out—she couldn’t hear me. She died in my bedroom.” He swallowed. “I was picking fights all the time. I liked fighting. Liked the pain, liked venting. Liza played the concerned teacher. She often kept me behind after class to ‘talk.’ It wasn’t long before she made a move.”