She winces as if this pains her.
“How can you do this?” She speaks in a low voice. “How can you just say these things? It’s so unfair. I’m working, don’t you get it? This is me. This is who I am. This is where I belong. This is the only place I’ve ever belonged. This is my job. You fell in love with a whore, okay? I know that’s what you were going to call me yesterday,” she says, nailing me with cutthroat honesty.
“But I didn’t,” I plead. “I didn’t say that. Because you’re not. You’re not a whore, you’re not a slut, you’re not anything but the most amazing, resilient, badass, tough, cool, hot, smart and brave person I have ever known.” I take a step closer, risking it. Reaching for her hands. She doesn’t brush me off. But she doesn’t push me away either. “You told me I was brave, but I think you are too. And I want to be brave with you, Harley. And stupid with you. We can be better together.”
She glances to the door, her eyes etched with longing. But for what? For what’s out there with that short little dude who hired her to play pretend? Or what’s here?
“Harley,” I say, gripping her hands tighter. She starts to squeeze back and the small gesture emboldens me. “You don’t belong to him or them.”
“I do,” she says, but her voice is fading out, like maybe she doesn’t believe it anymore. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever belonged to.”
I shake my head adamantly. “No. You belong to a stained glass window in an abandoned building. You belong to the flower in the junkyard. You belong to the beach that you miss. You belong to your shoes, even those Mary Janes I hate, but also your combat boots that I love,” I tell her, and her lips part, her shoulders rise, and she laces her fingers through mine. She is all I will ever want on this earth, and I have to make sure she knows without a shadow of a doubt that we might be damaged, but we are perfectly damaged together. “You belong to the beer you never drink, and to your friend Kristen, and to that group that I used to wish I never went to, but now I’m so damn glad I did because it might not be how I met you, but it’s how I fell in love with you. And you belong to my brothers,” I say, and it’s then that a tear slides down her cheek. “And to the tree you kissed. Most of all, you belong to the ugly beautiful. You belong to this messy, crazy, brave and honest love.”
She breaks her hold on my hands to loop her arms around my neck, her body trembling against mine. She doesn’t seem as if she ever wants to let go as she brushes her hands against the ends of my hair and says in a broken voice, but one that is still so strong: “Trey Westin, when I walked into No Regrets more than six months ago, I had no idea that I was getting a whole lot more than a tattoo. That I was getting you, and us, and a place to belong. Because I belong to us.”
The breath I didn’t know I was holding, the fear that lined my heart, falls away, crumbles to the ground, turns to dust and shadows. I pull her close, never wanting to let go. But she pushes back, her palms firm against my chest.
“But you have to understand that you can’t freak out all the time,” she says. “My past is messy and it’s unfinished and it will spill over into the present and the future and you can’t walk away when that happens.”
I make the easiest promise in the world when I say, “I won’t. I promise.”
“Then take me out of here.”
I glance at the door we came through, then look for another one. A waiter about my age, with a pierced ear and a tat barely visible on his neck that he’s trying to hide under his white button-down shirt, grips my shoulder. “There’s another door that way. It’ll take you to the escalators.”
I clap him on the back. “Thanks, man.”
Harley
“I have to tell Cam,” I say as we step onto the escalator. I expect Trey to fume, but he doesn’t.
“But you’re going home with me.”
“Seriously?” I roll my eyes. “Of course I am. Tonight, every night. Always.”
I want to run down these moving stairs with him, leap off the escalator like a ballerina, and fly out of here. Not because I’m running away, but because I’m running to something. I’m running to a new beginning, a new start, a new hope. Where I don’t erase the past. Where I own the past, but I claim the present and all of the future too.
Except, I don’t want to trip on an escalator and catch my dress in the metal teeth of these steps, so I walk carefully in my four-inch heels, then turn the corner to the bar.
Trey waits by the door as I find Cam where I left him, parked happily in a black leather chair with chrome armrests, a vodka glass on the table in front of him, his paperback open wide. He’s chuckling to himself, shaking his head as if he just can’t believe what he’s reading.
I am nervous as I walk to him, the unmistakeable sound of my heels clicking against the floor. But I’m also not nervous. Because I can be scared and I can be strong at the same time.
“Hi, Cam.”
He looks up, surprise registering in his big baby blues. “What’s going on, babydoll? Is he giving you trouble? Cause if he is,” he says, his voice trailing off as he smacks a fist into his other palm.
I shake my head. “No. He’s a very nice man. But I can’t do this anymore.”
He sets his book on the table and rises. “Now, now. You don’t mean that. You’re just nervous. You need your old man Cam to give you a pep talk? That’s what I’m here for.”
“No. I don’t need a pep talk. I’m sorry, Cam. I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m sorry to walk out in the middle of a job. I’ll pay you if you want for the money you’re losing. And I’ll give you the dress back too. And I’m sure you want to convince me, and there was a time a few weeks ago in Bliss when I wanted to be convinced, but not anymore. I have to let Layla go, Cam,” I say, and there’s a note in my tone like begging, as if I’m pleading for him to go gently into the night, to let me float away like a bubble blown into the breeze. But there’s another part of me that’s firm and resolute in a way I wasn’t at Bliss. I was toying then, teasing then, and he knew it. Now, I am serious and he senses the change. “I have to let her go for me, and I have to let her go because I want to know if I can love for real with that boy over there,” I say, gesturing at Trey who’s waiting – patiently as he can and I know this is progress for him – by the entryway to the bar.
Cam stomps his foot and curses loudly. “Fuck.”
He turns around, grabs his hair in his hand, and pulls hard. He’s such a big man, but something about him right now, the foot stomping, the hair pulling, reminds me of an angry leprechaun.
He whirls back to me, grits his teeth and blows out steam. “No. Really? You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not,” I say, standing my ground, shaking my head. “This is my choice. I have to do this.” I flash back to my conversation with Joanne about accountability, about ownership. I don’t know if I’m doing it right, but I’d like to think I’m starting to figure it out. I’m stumbling and bumbling and messing it up, but at least I’m starting to speak the truth.
“I don’t want to say goodbye.” For the first time Cam sounds like he’s whining. A chink in his cool-as-a-cucumber style.
“I know. But I have to try. I have to do this.”
He grabs my shoulders, grips me tight. “No. You don’t have to do this,” he says, his hot breath painting my cheek. I can feel the burn of the vodka he just downed.
“Cam.” I stare sharply at his hands that pin me. “I do. I do have to do this.”
He moans angrily and narrows his eyes. But he lets go of his hold on my shoulders. “I just got you back, babydoll. Don’t do this to me.”