by Karr, Kim
I’d never come that many times in one night.
He was a sex machine.
A sex god.
And I had been deliciously and thoroughly fucked.
My phone started pinging with a message, and it sounded like an unyielding alarm. I winced. My head hurt. My body hurt. My heart hurt.
The red digits on the bedside clock read four fifty-nine. It was early. Too early. Still, somehow I managed to sit up and slide out of bed. I looked down at him, and my insides fluttered. His dark-brown hair was deliciously tousled. His naked body sculpted and tanned.
Even sleeping, he looked strong, powerful.
A little aloof, too.
It made him seem intriguing, mysterious, even.
I wondered if his walls were as high as mine. I wanted to try to climb them. Get to really know him. That was never going to happen. I would only ever know the way his body fit mine like it was made for me.
My cell chimed again.
With a regretful sigh, I turned. On tiptoes, I searched for my purse, and once I found it, I fumbled to locate my phone. Clumsy from lack of sleep, or from being hung-over, I dropped my purse.
Quickly, I fell to my knees and gathered up the contents. With my phone in my hand, I cursed it. I should have turned it off, and I would have if the mints hadn’t sidetracked me.
Reluctantly, I read the message on the screen.
SIMON: You disappeared off my radar. I hope you got enough for the operation. I talked to the nurse last night, and Riley is going to be released today if his parents don’t come up with the funds.
I closed my eyes.
Riley.
I couldn’t let him be released without having that surgery. I couldn’t chance that he might never walk again.
Because of me.
Step 3: Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.
When I opened my eyes, they landed on Sundance’s bulging wallet and then shifted to the two camera bags.
I felt sick.
So sick.
But I knew I had to take them. It was my only choice. Hating myself, I texted Simon back.
Me: I got the two camera bags and some cash.
SIMON: And what else?
Me: I don’t have time to get into it.
SIMON: Meet me at Huck’s Diner near the Park-n-Fly in thirty minutes, and I’ll take care of cashing everything in.
Me: Okay.
Haphazardly, I tugged on the clothes that weren’t mine and then pulled my wig over my disheveled hair. Over at my suitcase, my thumbs depressed the two buttons and the latch released.
Sundance was out cold, but still I worried he might awaken. With trembling fingers, I reluctantly emptied the contents of one of Sundance’s camera bags into the Louis and threw the other over my shoulder before I opened his wallet and took the wad of fifties and hundreds.
Even when I was seventeen and on my own with nothing, I had never stolen anything from anyone.
I felt sick.
I held my breath willing it away.
This was for Riley.
This was for Riley.
Thinking of what I’d done to him was the only way I could get through this.
When I was finished, I looked at Sundance for a long while before I left. A beautiful, tortured man who didn’t deserve this. I didn’t even know his real name. Didn’t want to. The only thing I knew was that he had modeled at some point in his life.
Did he still? I had no idea.
I did know one more thing. I knew that love had burned him, and to escape the flame, he was running for a while. Going on vacation, I assumed, and hence the cameras.
I had no idea where he was headed, but I hoped when he got there, what I’d taken didn’t prevent him from stepping off for a while.
Slowly, I closed the suitcase and walked toward the door. The floor creaked, and I froze. Without breathing, I flipped back the lock, turned the handle as quietly as I could manage, and eased the door back before stepping across the threshold.
As it started to close behind me, I couldn’t help but turn to look at him one last time. I grabbed for the handle and peered through the crack. I couldn’t help but think if he was The Sundance Kid, I was Butch Cassidy—the outlaw.
In that final moment, I wanted to think we were alike.
Something sad lived within both of us.
A feeling of unwantedness that couldn’t be shaken?
Either way, we were both runners. However, unlike me, he wasn’t running from the law . . . just love.
And that made us so incredibly different.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SADIE
THE BELL JINGLED WHEN I stepped inside Huck’s Diner. The smell of eggs and bacon hit me immediately.
My stomach lurched.
My head throbbed—from the booze and the wig.
And my heart ached from what I’d done.
Dizzy with hunger and sick from alcohol, I wasn’t sure if I needed to eat or vomit.
Simon sat in a corner booth with a cup of coffee in front of him and a magazine off to the side. Even though there was hardly anyone in the place, he still waved me over.
As I walked unsteadily toward him, both the wheels of my suitcase and the soles of my heels stuck to the stained linoleum.
Sliding into the booth across from Simon, I nodded hello and pulled my sweater tighter around myself. Even inside here, there was still a chill in the air from the constant rain, but at least the hurricane winds had passed. Then again, tucked inside the safety of the hotel room with Sundance last night, it wasn’t like I ever felt the brunt of the storm.
A gray-haired woman sidled up to our table with a notepad in her hand and a pen behind her ear. She fumbled around for it and then looked at me. “What can I get you?”
“Just coffee, please.”
Simon raised a brow at me. “Have you eaten?”
I shook my head no.
“She’ll have the sunrise breakfast with wheat toast.”
“And can I get you anything else, sweetie?” she asked Simon.
Sweetie?
“Just a coffee refill.” He smiled.
That was when I noticed Simon had an empty plate to the side of him. He must have been here for a while.
“Jasmine, this table needs coffee,” she hollered, and another older woman was at our table filling our cups with piping hot tar before our waitress had even tucked the pen back behind her ear.
When they were both gone, Simon reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “You look like shit.”
I stared down at his hand and then up at him. He let go like I’d burned him. It must have been the look in my eyes. “Good, because I feel like shit.”
“It gets easier,” he said, obviously knowing what I was referring to.
I swallowed the coffee, and it tasted just as bad as it looked. “What if I don’t want it to?” I commented. I was about as far removed from this conversation as I could be being so close to him.
He shrugged. “We all do what we have to do, Sadie. So, how’d it go?”
“Fine.” One word. One answer. I had nothing else.
My eyes flittered from the suitcase, to the large shopping bag I’d thrown the other case in, to my purse which held the five thousand dollars Sundance had in his wallet. Simon was asking me to be more specific, and when I swung my gaze back to him, it landed on the magazine he had left open on the table.
Staring back at me was not only the latest issue of Hotlanta but also the very same stock image I’d seen weeks ago. The one that got me fired and started me down this rabbit hole.
It was of a younger Sundance.
I strained to see the headline. It read:
WHO’S WHO in ATLANTA
A LOCAL PHOTOGRAPHER MIGHT LOOK LIKE SIN IN FRONT OF THE LENS, BUT IS HE SIN FROM BEHIND IT? by Elise Petra and Chloe Carmichael
Oh my God, Sundance was a photographer!
A photographer.
&nb
sp; And I had stolen his camera.
His livelihood.
Swallowing the saliva pooling at the back of my throat from the fact that I had taken something this man needed, I felt my entire body start to tremble.
I knew I couldn’t live with the consequences of screwing with his career. Without thought, I reached across the table to snatch up the magazine, and when I did, I knocked over the piping hot coffee cup. The brown tar landed right on Simon’s lap. He jumped up with a curse, and the waitress was at our table before I could even apologize. “Oh, darling,” she said, “let me help you.”
He didn’t even look at either of us as he hopped from one foot to the other, and then took off for the restroom.
Alone, I knew what I had to do.
Summoning the iron willpower I had been forced to grow while I was on my own, I rose to my feet and grabbed the bag beside me. The waitress was wiping up the bench seat across from me and staring at me with irises as hard as diamonds.
I knew I didn’t have much time, so I quickly decided that the time it would take me to go around the woman, and the possibility of getting trapped by her, was not worth the risk of taking the suitcase, which contained the second camera.
I also worried Simon would return.
Reaching inside my purse, I pulled a pen and a key from it. While the waitress cleaned up, I quickly scratched a note on a napkin.
Simon,
I can’t do this. Here is the key to my storage unit. Sell it all and use the money from everything for Riley. Do what you have to do to get him the rest. I’m sorry.
Sadie
With my heart in my throat, I set the pen down. Folding the napkin over, I scribbled Simon’s name on the top. The waitress had finished cleaning up but hadn’t moved. She was staring at me, but this time there was some kind of understanding in her eyes. Like she could see my pain. I said nothing as I turned and hurried toward the door. She didn’t stop me.
I couldn’t help Riley.
Not in this way.
With each step I took, I saw that article. Saw Sundance. Saw Elise. Saw Chloe. Did she have an ulterior motive? Had she wanted my job? At least Elise had taken my mistake and turned it around. Righting my wrong for the benefit of the company was so like her. I wanted to think she’d done it to help me gain legitimacy. Even though it was at Sundance’s expense, she wouldn’t care. Then again, it was probably to launch Chloe’s career—her Carrie Bradshaw of Atlanta was on the rise.
The bell jingled behind me, and I ran faster.
Simon called my name, “Sadie, come back here!”
I ran faster.
The bell jingled again, and this time the woman from the diner hollered, “Sweetie, your bill.”
Simon was sweetie.
I was darling.
She wasn’t calling me.
It didn’t matter either way, I never looked back.
I knew better.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JAXSON
BACK WHEN I HAD BEEN a smoker, I frequently woke up reaching for a pack of Marlboros before I was even conscious of what I was doing.
Right now, I seriously wished the same applied to a bottle of Advil because the banging on the door was making my head feel like a sledgehammer was coming down on it over and over again.
The room was dark, but somehow I managed to find the light. “Hang on,” I yelled.
The clock read six ten.
Who the fuck was at my door this early?
The knocking continued. “I’m coming!”
Forcing myself to get out of bed, I looked around for Sarah, but she wasn’t in the room. Maybe it was her at the door and she’d locked herself out running down to get coffee or something.
Finding my boxers, I punched my legs into them and then pulled on my jeans. In my bare feet, I yanked open the door.
Disgusted eyes peered at me. “You were supposed to meet me downstairs.”
I ran a rough hand down my face. I vaguely recalled responding to my new assistant’s text last night. “Yeah, sorry, Abigail, I overslept. Come in, and I’ll grab your money.”
Abigail Short was the runner-up for the Sports Illustrated contest, and bitter didn’t even begin to describe her. As the runner-up, she had been invited to join the six-week expedition, as my assistant. And she had, albeit reluctantly, agreed.
For some reason, her advance check had been mailed along with mine, and since the weather had delayed her drive from South Carolina to Atlanta, she’d asked me to cash it for her.
I didn’t mind. I had to cash mine, anyway.
With a bitch in her step, she walked in. “Do you think you could put a shirt on? I hope the entire trip isn’t going to be like this.”
Me either I thought as I strode into the bedroom and grabbed for my wallet on the dresser.
Opening it, my mouth fell open. Fury emanated from every pore of my body. Needless to say, I was more than shocked to see it was empty. Never one to panic, I glanced around.
Unwilling to believe it was actually gone, I searched the room. Had I put the money somewhere else? I checked the bathroom, the safe.
Nothing.
I refused to believe I’d been had.
That it had been stolen.
I strode over to the nightstand and when I slammed the last nightstand drawer shut on the Bible, my eye caught sight of something shiny beside the bed. I grabbed for whatever it was.
In my hand I held a set of dog tags that read:
Banks
Theodore A
001–02–0345 Navy
0 Pos
Catholic
My mind whirled back to the old, frayed yellow ribbons tied around the oak trees in our yard. The ones that had been there my entire childhood. Memories I never wanted to recall came rushing back. A young child neglected. Left to take care of himself while his mother lay passed out on the couch. Memories I had pushed away.
“Could you hurry up? I want to grab a few things before our plane takes off,” Abigail called impatiently.
I blinked a few times to clear my head.
Tossing the dog tags on the bed, I strode back into the living room area and searched the bar, the couch, the tables. “Has the flight already been rescheduled?” I asked, trying not to sound alarmed as I roamed the room.
“You mean you haven’t even bothered to check yet?” She huffed in annoyance.
The word bitch sat on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t unleash it. Instead, I searched.
Nothing.
Nothing except the mess Sarah and I had made last night. With the scent of sex thick in the air, I searched.
Nothing.
Starting to panic, I stormed back into the bedroom and yanked open the dresser drawers. Long shot, but what the hell did I have to lose.
As I slammed the last one shut, I noticed my camera bags weren’t near my duffle. This time I lost my cool and went on a frantic hunt. They were gone, just like the money, just like Sarah.
I wasn’t stupid.
I’d been duped.
Taken.
Had.
Screwed, and not just literally.
“Fuccckkkk,” I yelled.
Abigail appeared in the bedroom door. “What the hell is going on?”
I looked her right in the eye and said, “Someone stole the money.”
Someone. No, not someone. Sarah.
Abigail’s face turned bright red, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “I need that money.”
Yeah, well so did I.
My gaze skittered to the dog tags. The only thing I had to connect Sarah to being in this room. “And I’ll get it for you. I just need some time.”
And I would get it. I had a way to find her and she had no idea. This chick knocked on the wrong door. No, she screwed the wrong guy.
“Do I look stupid to you?” Abigail shouted.
Exhaustion taking over, I sat on the bed and placed my elbows on my thighs. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to, but my money and both of my camer
as were stolen as well.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right, and you want me to believe you’d let that happen on the verge of a career-making gig. I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but I’m calling the police.”
I peered up at her. “Great, go for it, and while you’re at it, tell them I need to talk to them, too. After I explain what happened, and that I told you I’d get you your money, you’re still going to have to wait for it.”
“Screw you, Sundance. If you wanted this gig solo, you didn’t have to go to such lengths. There’s no way I can work with someone like you. I quit,” she huffed.
Someone like me?
“Yeah, a dumbass like me,” I said to myself seconds later.
As she stormed away, she added, “And I want that five grand wired to me before the end of the week, or I will call the police.”
The door slammed to the suite, and I did what she wasn’t willing to do—called the police to report a robbery.
“Atlanta Police Department, hold please.”
As I held the line, I tried to figure out what I was going to tell them—that I got drunk and invited a blonde, which turned out to be a wig, to my room, where I fucked her senseless without knowing her last name, and then she stole my things all while I slept. Oh, and let’s not forget, she left someone’s dog tags behind. Husband? Lover? Friend? I didn’t have a fucking clue. With that, I disconnected my call.
The police would never believe me.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I’d use the dog tags to find this Sarah.
I’d make sure she paid for what she did.
And in the meantime, I’d turn the theft of the cameras into the insurance company, but calling the police was out of the question.
Even I had to question my character.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SADIE
THERE WERE DOZENS OF CABS parked outside the Park-n-Fly.
I jumped into the back seat of the first one in line and handed the driver a fifty. “I need to get back to the hotel airport as fast as possible.”
“At seven a.m.?”
I nodded and handed him another fifty.
