I’m so shocked, so completely taken aback by the gesture, I simply stand there, mortified and stunned. I can’t even lift my arm to cover my shame.
“Guess who told me all about your little secret,” Victoria hisses next to my ear, her smile never faltering as she looks into my eyes and then presses her cheek to mine to pose for the multitude of pictures being taken.
Guess who told me all about your little secret.
Agony rips through my insides. Rogan. He told her. He told her about my scars. The ultimate betrayal. How could he do that to me? Why? Why would he do that to me?
It’s like I don’t even know him. Like I never did. It was all just an act to get the girl who no one else could get. And I let him. I let him in, let him close. But I was misled, deceived. On every possible level. By the first person I’ve trusted in years. By the first person I’ve loved in forever.
Flash, flash, flash. Cameras being shoved in my face, microphones being held out to me, curious onlookers dissecting my every word and move.
“Are you affiliated with the charity?”
“Are you a representative at the benefit?”
“How do you know Rogan?”
“Are you a victim of abuse? Do you have a story to tell?”
With my mind spinning, I listen to their questions, still too stunned to move. I can only assume they’re asking about abuse because the charity is one for abused children. I’m sure that, by the look of my scars, they think I might very well be one. I can understand their rationale, and perversely, I almost wish it were the case. Somehow it doesn’t seem quite as humiliating as the truth. But still, my lips can’t form an answer, my throat can’t utter a sound.
I look up for Rogan. He’s gone. I look at Calvin. His face is contorted in a sneer that I remember all too well. I look to my side at Victoria. She’s as smug as I’ve ever seen her.
“Told you he’d be mine,” she whispers, winking at me for the reporters, even though they can’t hear what she’s saying.
I urge my numb legs into motion, taking one step back. It feels so good I take another. Then another. The closer I get to freedom, the farther away the faces get, the more my muscles cooperate. Three, four steps later, I’m running through the maze of halls behind the stadium, looking frantically for a way out. Any way out.
I see a red Exit sign up ahead and I lunge for it, pushing through and out into the cool, dark night like a woman possessed. I run in a straight line, aiming for the lights of the street in front of me. When I reach it, I hail a cab, a skill I’m glad I never lost, and I give the driver the airport as my destination. I don’t care that I have only the clothes on my back. I don’t care that my belongings are still in the room I shared with Rogan. I don’t care that I’m acting irrationally. I have to get out of here. I can’t be in this city anymore. For the second time in my life, it’s taken from me everything I hold dear.
Everything.
THIRTY-TWO
Rogan
I’ve felt protective before. Over Kurt. Over my comrades in Delta Five unit. I’d fight to the death for them. But even my feelings for Kurt, my damn brother, don’t hold a candle to the almost violently protective surge that’s pumping through my veins right now.
Katie.
Seeing her expression just now, seeing the sheer panic on her face when this bunch of nosey asshole reporters saw me notice her . . . God, I just wanted to tear through them like teeth through meat, ripping and tearing and killing.
But I know better. I know better than to start something that could go sideways with her caught (physically and emotionally) in the middle. She could get hurt, and I couldn’t live with myself if that happened. So, without a word, I turn and run through the locker room, heading for the door that leads into an anteroom and then out into the hallway. It should empty out somewhere behind Katie, some place that I can get her and get her the hell out of here.
But when I burst through the door, there’s no Katie. The hall is full of the same reporters, all as voraciously curious as a tank of barracudas who’ve caught the scent of blood. Besides them, there is only Victoria. No Katie. Even Kurt is gone.
Unconcerned with niceties or worrying about the damn cameras, I reach through the crush of bodies and grab Victoria’s arm. She turns a blinding smile on me that only serves to piss me off even more. I’m not playing her games right now. “Where’s Katie? Where’d she go?”
“How am I supposed to know? She was here one minute and then she was running down the hall like a scared rabbit the next. I guess she freaked out over those scars.”
Scars? For about a tenth of a second, I’m confused. What happened while I was coming for Katie, while I was running through the back rooms?
I don’t ask because I already know the answer. I see it on Victoria’s face. The satisfaction, the malice. I wind my fingers around her stickish upper arms and haul her up against my chest, hissing down into her face, “What the hell did you do?” She doesn’t answer me, just smiles. “You bitch!”
I’ve never hit a woman. Never even considered it, but looking down into these smug eyes tries my patience like never before.
“She’s not right for you, Rogan. She never was. You just needed a little help in seeing that.”
“If you’ve hurt her, so help me God . . .”
Victoria has the audacity to arch her back and make this into an even worse spectacle. “You know I like it rough, baby.”
I throw her away from me like the trash that she is and she stumbles backward. “You know, Tori, you’re the only woman I’ve ever known who I can truly say I hate.”
Without another word to her or anyone else, I take off down the hall, praying that Katie’s waiting for me back at the hotel.
Only she’s not.
After a twenty-minute ride because of traffic, a ride during which I’d done nothing but hit REDIAL on Katie’s cell number, I took the elevator up to an empty hotel room. I feel a pang of panic when I see that all her stuff is exactly where she left it, but she’s nowhere to be found. Where the hell could she be? If not here, where else would she go?
Fear clenches in my gut, a cold fist wrapping around my stomach. What if something happened to her? What if she got railroaded by the press somewhere else at the coliseum? What if she got hurt somehow?
Sweat breaks out on my forehead, but I push all that emotion down, deep down. I have to think. I have to find her.
Rational thought brings Kurt to mind. He’s gone, too. He was supposed to keep an eye on her. Maybe he knows where to find her.
Furious with myself, my brother, my nasty bitch of an ex-girlfriend, I dial Kurt. He answers after the first ring.
“Where is she and why the hell weren’t you keeping an eye on her?” I preempt the instant he picks up.
“I checked the hotel and she’s not there.”
“No shit. That’s where I’m at.”
“You just need to calm down. There’s—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. She’s upset and I need to find her. I need to find her because you couldn’t do the one simple thing I asked you to do.”
“I’m at a little bit of a disadvantage, if you haven’t noticed,” he replies bitterly.
“Not this time, Kurt. I give you that excuse practically every day of our lives, but not this time. All I asked was for you to keep an eye on her. Your eyes work just fine, damn it.”
To this, he says nothing. Silence is my only answer.
“I have to find her,” I growl in frustration.
“Have you checked the airport?”
The airport. It makes perfect sense. She’s scared, upset, humiliated. She’d want safety, security, the comfort of the familiar.