He slowly turned his head to face her, and that was when all the words rising in her throat just froze up and dried up and blew away. The look in his eyes was deep hurt, deep pain, deep confusion, but – much worse than all of that – there was deep disgust.
It was a look that she’d had leveled her way many, many times in her life. It had always made her feel cheap and horrible and exposed, and the truth was that for over two years, it was a look that she’d seen reflected back in the mirror. Ever since Dragon had shown her that video, Trish had been unable to look at herself without disgust.
Until she met Keegan.
His calm, unwavering acceptance of her past; his patience in waiting to hear her life when she was ready to share it; his steady core of strength and trust in her… all of these things had helped her to build her self-love again. She hadn’t been finished, but she’d been in the process. She’d felt good about looking into her own eyes again.
But now… oh, God, now.
The way he’s looking at me. I never thought in a million years that he’d ever look at me like that.
The structure of a whole life that she’d been painfully and painstakingly building up crashed to the ground, lay in blocks and pieces all around her. She was sitting amongst the piles of rubble and she was there alone.
She couldn’t make Keegan listen, or understand, or stop looking at her like that. She couldn’t get him to believe her, not after all the lies of omission and the withholding. Trish nodded quietly to herself as she saw the truth.
It was over. With her silence and silent lies, she’d completely screwed it up beyond repair or recourse.
“Keegan,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I know it doesn’t matter what I say now. You don’t care and I get that. I’m just asking you to please remember two things when it all comes out into the light: remember that I love you and that I’m sorry.”
He left her then; just left without a word. Trish was left standing on a porn set with the two men who’d ruined her life over and over again, in more ways than she could believe, each way more monstrous than she’d been able to imagine.
And suddenly, she was so tired, tired beyond exhaustion. All the back-breaking work and selling her purses and jewelry and clothes, saving money in a locked box, all the mad dashes and panicked drives to drop off this fucker’s blackmail cash, all the excuses and lies and covering up to keep her shameful secret. The abject fear, the absolute terror that one day she’d wake up and see her naked, bound, drugged, beaten body splashed across the internet anyway, just because he’d tired of the game.
It was no way to live, not even for one hour. She’d done it for almost two years, and it was enough. More than enough.
Enough.
“Well!” Dragon said cheerfully, exchanging delighted glances with Paul. “That was dramatic, huh?”
“Fuck you.” Trish’s voice was calm, low, uncaring. “Fuck both of you.”
“Hey,” he snapped, his mood changing lighting-quick. “Watch your goddamn mouth.”
“No.” Trish slowly shook her head, holding his angry gaze the whole time. “No, I don’t think that I will.”
“Go get undressed,” he said. “Get naked and ready and on the cross.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Paul sucked in air as Dragon strode over to Trish, but she watched his approach with complete disinterest. She didn’t care, she just didn’t give a single goddamn crap that he was getting furious, that he’d start to threaten her now. Her right hand slid behind her back, her fingers working out of the view of the two men, and she got ready to meet him on almost-equal ground for the first time ever.
Without a word, he raised his arm and his hand closed into a fist. He was just coming down, aiming for her delicate cheekbone, when Trish dropped her purse and swung the pepper spray out from behind her. She clutched it in both shaking hands, pointing directly at his snarling face.
“Don’t,” she said, the word pure ice. “Just don’t.”
Dragon stopped right away, looking stupid with one foot lifted in the air, like a kid playing a game of Statues. He lowered it, took a big step back and shot a look at Paul, who had his mouth open like a gaping moron.
“Now,” she said quietly, still aiming straight at Dragon’s hateful face. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen here. Or – more accurately – what’s not going to happen here. There will be no undressing, no getting naked or ready, and sure as hell there will be no getting on the goddamn St. Andrew’s Cross. There will be, in effect, no fucking filming being done here today, and not anywhere ever. There will be no communication between us, not ever again. This… thing, this sick twisted thing between us, is over. I’m done. I’m walking out of here now and that’s the end of it. Of everything.”
“You think so, huh?” Dragon’s black eyes bore into her, but for the first time since she’d met him, Trish felt no fear. He didn’t have the power to hurt her, not anymore. “You do know what happens if you just leave and stop playing along?”
“I do. I don’t care.”
“You don’t care? You think that Meredith might care when word gets out that her little companion is a whore who’s newest video goes viral for the next week? You think Keegan might care that a video of you having rough sex will hit the internet in the next hour?”
“It’s not rough sex, it’s rape, you moronic prick.” She glared at him. “I’ll explain everything to Meredith, then I’ll quit working for her and leave Denver – but not before calling her sons and telling them to hire the best security company in the city to protect their mother from you, you pathetic assholes.” She narrowed her eyes at both of them. “If either one of you even looks at Meredith or shows up within ten miles of her house, you’ll have your faces kicked in by trained bodyguards carrying guns. I’ll make sure of it.”
Dragon paused, looking a bit uncertain for the first time. “But – Keegan?”
“Keegan’s gone and you made sure of that. You watched him go.” A stab of pain hit her at the words and Trish took a deep breath, started to back away from the men. “You have nothing and nobody to hold over me anymore. You have no way to hurt me or scare me – no way to control me. I’ve just lost the best man that I’ve ever known, the only man who’s ever wanted me just for me. I lost him because I was scared and stupid, and that part’s all on me. I should have told him everything, I should have trusted him the way that I know he deserved. That was my mistake, and I get to live with the consequences of being such a damn coward.”
Her voice broke now and she tossed her hair back before continuing:
“So you see… you have nothing to use against me now, and you never will again. You made the mistake of taking everything from me so now I’m left with nothing, and I made the mistake of letting you take it all. But now…” She gave them a hard little smile. “…now I have nothing to lose, so you have nothing to use.”
“Nothing? The video is nothing?” he said with malice. “Even if you don’t give a shit about Keegan and Meredith, you really want those images of you out in the world?”
“That’s not me,” Trish said, suddenly seeing that this was the truth; it had always been the truth and she was angry at herself all over again for not having realized it sooner. “That’s Thalia – and she’s a stranger to Trish.”
“I’ll do it!” Dragon hissed, enraged and red-faced. “Don’t think I won’t, bitch. I’ll have your face and body splashed all over the internet before you even get back to Meredith’s to drop your little truth bomb.”
“Do it, then.” She was about twenty feet from him now, and she got her car keys out of her coat pocket, ready to drive like a bat out of hell, to get away from this hateful, despicable man. “I survived you two years ago and I’ll survive you now, so you throw down your ace and win your sad little game.” She stared at him with nothing but withering contempt, and it was an amazing thing to see the stunned helplessness on his ugly face. “Yo
u can’t touch me or damage me, so stop thinking that you have some advantage or leverage here. I’ll hold my head high and I’ll make a whole new life all over again, one that I can be proud of. So go ahead, you sick, pathetic loser. Do your fucking worst.” She reached the door, stepped outside into the first snow of the season, stepped into its pure white cool. “I promise you this, though: it won’t be anything like enough to destroy me. Not even close.”
Chapter 15
Two days later
Keegan was just sliding a tray of blueberry muffins out of the oven when Clara poked her head around the corner of the kitchen.
“Hey, boss? Guy here to see you.”
“OK. Tell him that I’ll be there in a minute.”
“You know it.” She paused. “He’s sporting a scowl and some serious bad attitude, so just brace for impact.”
“Awesome. Nothin’ I’d rather deal with today. Lookin’ forward to it.”
Keegan set the muffin tin on the massive cooling rack, took off the oven mitts, sighed heavily. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and he’d been up almost all night for the past two nights and was light-headed from lack of sleep and a steady, pounding hangover headache. He’d rolled into the café at four a.m. that day, desperate for a distraction, and got to baking up a storm. These muffins were unnecessary to the point of wasteful, but Keegan figured that he’d take them to the local homeless shelter and hand them out. If he survived the rest of the work day, that was: three o’clock was only an hour away but it was looking pretty damn far in the distance at this moment.
He ran his hands through his hair, took a massive sip of his coffee, fought off the exhaustion. It suddenly occurred to him that his scowling visitor might well be one of the assholes from two days ago, maybe there to twist the knife about the porn shoot. Hell, maybe dragon-tattoo guy was dropping off a complimentary copy of Trish’s newest work to him.
Keegan resolved to keep his cool if the guy waiting outside was indeed one of Trish’s little porn buddies. He also resolved to never get involved with a woman again, ever. He’d been making that resolution all night and all day for forty-eight full hours straight, and he was feeling pretty fucking great about his decision.
It was just about the only thing that he felt even slightly good about.
He sighed again, rolled his shoulders back, headed out to the café. He didn’t really expect one of the idiots from two days before to be standing there, but he really didn’t expect who was actually standing at his counter, holding a take-out coffee and – true to Clara’s word – scowling at everyone.
“Dalton?” Keegan said blankly. “Hey, man.”
Dalton narrowed his green eyes, eyes so dark that they looked like an endless, tangled forest, the kind that hid witches and swallowed up kids whole. “Hey. We need to talk.”
“Yeah. OK. Uh.” Keegan felt the strong urge to scratch his head; he’d never seen Dalton outside a meeting before. He’d actually never seen the man in natural light before. “My office?”
“Wherever we can be private.”
“Then my office,” Keegan said shortly, matching Dalton’s usual abrupt, asshole tone. “This way.”
He led his surprise visitor across the bustling café floor and ushered him into his military-clean workspace, then Keegan sat heavily. Whatever this was, he already didn’t like it. Anything that brought Dalton McGregor into his personal orbit and place of business had to be a goddamn nightmare.
“So?” he said, crossing his arms, only now noticing that he was still wearing his apron. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Your girl. Trish. Thalia.” Dalton shrugged his massive shoulders. “Whoever the fuck she is to you.”
Keegan stiffened, unable to believe that of all the people in his life, it was this one who’d found Trish’s newest porn offering first, and somehow knew that Keegan had dated her. Fuckin’ just my luck.
“First up, McGregor, I ain’t got a girl.” He stared the other man down, challenging him to not believe him. “Second, how the hell do you know anythin’ about any of that?”
“Because the video is breaking the internet, man.”
Keegan refused to flinch; he wasn’t showing Dalton one ounce of hurt. “Yeah? And?”
“And…” Dalton glared. “It’s obvious the chick needs help.”
“Wait. Wait. Explain how you know who Trish was.” He paused, then corrected himself. “Is. How you know she’s Thalia. Was Thalia. Or is. Whatever.”
“Jesus Christ, that’s the issue? How I know you’re dating Thalia Flame?” Dalton shook his dark head and scowled more. “I saw you out grocery shopping with her once. Recognized her right away, even with the blonde hair. Happy now or you want to keep playing Sherlock Holmes?”
“Uhhh.” Keegan blinked. “And you never said nothin’ about me datin’ her?”
“What the hell would I say? I don’t give a crap who you sleep with. I figured you knew her past and didn’t care.” He shrugged. “Hell, maybe that was even part of the turn-on, dating a former porn star. But again, not my business.”
“Right. OK.” Keegan tried to catch up. “So… so what are we talkin’ about?”
“Jesus Christ,” Dalton repeated and spoke like he was dealing with a particularly idiotic drunk teenager. “The. Video. On. Line.”
“I ain’t seen it and I don’t want to. I saw enough two days ago, when I accidentally stumbled onto the set where it was bein’ shot, and found my now-ex-girlfriend happily gettin’ ready to get back to the work that she’d told me she’d quit.” Keegan stood up. “I hope you enjoy it, though, you and everyone else with an internet connection.”
“OK, look.” Dalton held his hands up in a strangely pleading gesture, as if to both stop Keegan and calm him. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing here, man.”
“No?”
“Nuh-uh.” Dalton shook his head slowly, holding Keegan’s eyes the whole time. “This video, the one that’s gone viral and is blowing up – no way it was shot two days ago.”
“How do you know?”
“A few ways, starting with the fact that in the video that I saw an hour ago, Trish has red hair. But she doesn’t now, right? She’s blonde?”
“She wore a wig in the video, I guess. Red hair’s her trademark, ain’t it?”
“Nope, I don’t think so. No wig would be able to handle that kind of… um. That kind of rough treatment, and stay on. But even if she dyed her hair just for this flick, the time stamp in the corner of the video says it’s from over two years ago.”
“Can be faked. Easy.”
“And…” Dalton hesitated. “And… well…”
“And well what?”
“Well…” Dalton took a deep breath and dropped his truth hard and fast, opting for the rip-off-the-bandaid approach to delivering shit news. “What I saw online wasn’t consensual. No way she signed up for that.”
Keegan stared at him. “What the actual holy fuck are you talkin’ about McGregor?”
“The video that was released yesterday – the one that I think was shot a while ago and when Trish was clearly still living as Thalia – didn’t show a woman who was in agreement with what was happening. In fact…” He paused again. “She didn’t even seem to know what was going on.”
Kegan sat again with a thud as Dalton’s implication set in. “What exactly are you tellin’ me?”
“What exactly I’m telling you is: the video that’s currently making the internet melt down is of Thalia Flame – drugged and passed out – being brutally raped and beaten by two men.”
Keegan was sure that Dalton could hear his heart; God knows, it was pounding in his ears.
“It’s fake?” he asked, his voice coming from far away. “A – a role play situation? She’s pretendin’ to be blacked out?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.” The finality in Dalton’s tone convinced Keegan, despite this being the last thing that he wanted to
believe was true. “There is not one iota of doubt in my mind that that girl was drugged, raped and beaten within an inch of her life. If she’d been pretending to be passed out, there’d be no way that they could – could punch and kick her in the face and body like that. She’d flinch and cry and scream. Believe me.” His voice was as gentle as Keegan had ever heard it. “The blood and bruises are real. The rape is real, man. I’m sorry.”
“Oh my God.” Keegan sat frozen, literally stuck to his chair with shock. “I need to see it.”
“Bad idea, Sinclair. Terrible move. It’s – it’s bad. Really fucking bad.” Dalton paused and looked as though he was considering what he should say next. Then he added, “ And I’m telling you this as a former special- and black-ops guy myself.”
Keegan stared at him, amazed at the fact that Dalton was actually telling him anything personal. “You are? Ex-special-ops?”
“I am, so I have a pretty damn good idea what you’ve laid eyes on in your life. Please trust me when I say that this is not how you want to see your girl, or anyone… you don’t want this nightmare burned into your brain. Please. Don’t watch it. I’m sorry that I did and I have no feelings for the girl. Please, just don’t.”
Keegan nodded in reluctant agreement, then he said in a quiet voice: “She never said a word to me about this whole situation.”
“Nothing?”
“Well…” Keegan was remembering a whole bunch of individual pieces that Trish had shyly offered to him. With Dalton’s visit, those pieces all shifted and twisted, then slammed into place. “No, that ain’t true. I mean, she told me about the – that she’d been raped. By two guys. No details at all besides that, except that it happened right after she walked away from porn and made plans to move out of L.A. She never told me that it got… that it was so violent – though I fully understand that rape is violence no matter how you fuckin’ look at it – and she sure as hell never told me that it had all been recorded. She told me that she left L.A. to start again, and I really got the feelin’ that she was in full-on survival mode.”
Keegan (Wounded Hero Book 1) Page 25
