Truly (New York Trilogy #1)

by Ruthie Knox

And then more nothing.

  She wished he would say something. Anything.

  Part of her wondered if this was some kind of elaborate setup, like this morning. That guy who’d stolen her purse must have planned it. He must have wanted access to her phone, hoping for juicy details to feed the media’s fascination with Dan. Or not with Dan, really, but with Dan’s celebrity. Fans called him “Thor” for his longish blond hair, his build, his Scandinavian roots. In his uniform, she could see it. He looked like a Viking quarterback god.

  But he wasn’t what he looked like. People often weren’t. If the thief had looked like a thief, rather than a runty guy in a uniform with a baseball hat shading his eyes, May might have told him not to bother. There were no juicy details on her phone, because there were no juicy details, period. Her personal life was ordinary. Drama-free.

  Or it had been until yesterday.

  The funny thing was, Ben looked more like a thief than the runty guy had. She could easily imagine him being sent to snatch purses. But to coax the truth out of a troubled woman? Not his style.

  There was something intense about him, something really physical and active that made her think he didn’t sit much, normally. He didn’t chat much. He was looking toward the dartboard, leaning forward, rolling the whiskey glass between his palms.

  “Do you like New York?” she asked.

  He gave her a sharp, startled look, as though he’d forgotten she was there. “Sure.”

  The silence settled again, but this time he kept his eyes on her. Those strange, dark-rimmed eyes. He watched her over the top of his glass as he took a sip of warmed whiskey, and his steady, quiet focus created all this pressure in her lungs. She wanted to blurt out the whole story and get it over with. To cut herself open and spread every messy detail on the ground in front of him, then watch his face to see if he felt anything but annoyance.

  Maybe it was the leftover adrenaline in her system, tango-dancing with this latest infusion of alcohol. Her purse had been taken hours ago, but her hands still felt shaky, her armpits damp.

  Ben watched her, waiting for something.

  The pressure built.

  Phantom pressure. Ghost biology. There was no reason for her to open her mouth.

  No reason, except that he didn’t open his, and somebody had to.

  “What brings you to New York, May?” she asked.

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “Oh, how kind of you to ask,” she told herself. “I moved here to be with my boyfriend, Dan.”

  Ben turned toward her and settled one shoulder against the couch cushion. Making himself comfortable. After he’d gotten settled, he lifted his free hand off his lap and made a rolling circular motion. Go on, the gesture said. I want to hear this.

  “So why aren’t you at home with Dan,” she continued, “instead of bothering a strange man at a Packers bar?”

  He didn’t smile exactly, but his mouth did something that was less of a scowl than it had been. Something soft that made her notice he had lips, and they were capable of looking ways other than foreboding.

  “Well, Ben, the thing is, Dan’s not just some ordinary schmo. He used to play for the Packers.” She plucked at the number on her jersey.

  The brackets at the corners of his mouth deepened.

  “Thor,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Thor.”

  He lifted his drink to his lips, then took it away without drinking. “I think I know how this story goes. I heard about it from Connor. That was you?”

  “That was me.”

  “Stabbed Thor Einarsson in the hand with a shrimp fork. I’d have paid good money to see that.”

  “You can see it now for free. It’s on YouTube.” Thankfully, it was a grainy, shaky video taken from afar, and May was little more than a tall blond blob in a black dress. Unrecognizable unless you knew who you were looking at.

  “Nah. I don’t watch that kind of stuff.”

  “Viral forkings?”

  “People’s private lives turned into public entertainment.”

  “Ah. Classy of you.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.” He considered her for a moment. The corners of his mouth hitched up a notch. He leaned in and clinked his glass against hers. “Cheers, then. I can’t fucking stand Einarsson.”

  May smiled and looked away.

  She shouldn’t be smiling.

  “What do you have against Dan?” she asked.

  “I’m a Packers fan.”

  “So am I.”

  “You’re a football girlfriend.”

  “I was a football girlfriend. I’ve been a Packers fan since birth. Plus, I worked for the team even before I met Dan, so don’t question my loyalty.”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  He said it so smug, though.

  “It’s not fair to hate the quarterback for taking a better deal,” May pointed out. “It’s a career decision. This is his job. He couldn’t afford to play favorites, even if he wanted to stay in Green Bay.”

  Another quirk of his lips. “What he’s getting paid now, though, he can afford whatever the fuck he wants.”

  Her opinion of this statement must have shown on her face, because he lifted his hands, palms out. “Hey, I never said I’m fair. I’m loyal, though.”

  “Not to Dan.”

  “To the team.”

  May took a drink. She liked the way the whiskey warmed her in slow increments, sip by sip.

  She liked how it felt to argue with this stranger.

  She didn’t argue, normally. It wasn’t polite. But Ben obviously liked being argued with a lot more than he liked being asked what he was reading.

  “You’ve had a rough time of it.” He spoke the words gently. Too gently. Perversely, she wanted more sniping. More testing.

  “Oh, but there’s more,” she said.

  “Do tell.”

  “I was supposed to be staying in the apartment and not attracting any undue attention until Dan came back from a meeting. We’d planned to fly to Wisconsin tomorrow and then drive up to Michigan to stay at my family’s cabin for Labor Day, only Dan and his agent put that on hold until after they talked to the PR people for the Jets. But instead I waited for them to leave for a meeting and then snuck out.”

  “Nice.”

  “I left a note on the fridge breaking up with him.”

  “Ouch. After he proposed?”

  “I know.”

  “How long were you two a thing?”

  “Four years.”

  He winced.

  “But this whole last year was long-distance. And even before that, we never lived together because he was in Green Bay and I was in Manitowoc.”

  “Isn’t Manitowoc, like, thirty minutes from Green Bay?”

  “Yeah. We saw each other a lot.”

  “But you couldn’t rent a place together or something?”

  May shrugged. They could have. They hadn’t. And it wasn’t this man’s business, but she kept blurting anyway, needing him to know she wasn’t as heartless as she might seem. “I tried breaking up with him a bunch of times yesterday, but he didn’t want to have the conversation. He would just be, like, ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow.’ But today his agent was around all morning, and we didn’t talk about it. So I thought, ‘Forget it, I’m going home.’ I was on my way to Newark airport.”

  “Why Newark?”

  “We live in Jersey usually. That’s where Dan’s house is, in Florham Park.”

  “So what’s in the Meatpacking District?”

  “His apartment.”

  Ben cast his eyes at the ceiling, making it clear what he thought of turncoat quarterbacks who used their ill-gotten loot to purchase both a house and an apartment.

  “So anyway, I was going to fly out of Newark.”

  “Never fly out of Newark.”

  “I didn’t even get that far. I only got to the lobby of the apartment building, and there were all these paparazzi around the elevator. One of them gr
abbed me by the arm and led me outside. I thought he was a security guard who was trying to help me avoid the mob, but, in fact, he was just taking me into an alley away from all the other ones so he could steal my purse.”

  Both eyebrows lifted. “You got yourself robbed?”

  “Well, it’s not like I asked him to rob me.”

  “You went with some strange guy.”

  “I thought he was security.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “He had a black polyester jacket on.”

  Ben let out a judgmental huff of air. She found herself smiling again.

  Her situation had not improved, and now he thought she was a moron. But for some reason, being subjected to Ben’s scorn made her feel more cheerful than she’d been all day.

  He put some terrible drug in your drink from a secret vial in his jacket. It makes you confess all this personal stuff and pass out, and then he’s going to carry you back to his apartment and have his wicked way with you.

  Of course, he couldn’t outweigh her by more than a few pounds. In order to carry her off and ravish her, he’d have to get a helper. Or a dolly.

  “He steal your suitcase, too?”

  “What? Oh. No. I don’t have one. We went straight from the site of the forking to Dan’s apartment. I’ve only been there a couple times. I didn’t have anything to pack.” Or many options for what to wear. Which was why she was wearing her old jersey and these terrible shoes. “I figured I’d get whatever I needed back home before I drove up to Michigan,” she said with a shrug.

  “Did you report it?”

  “Report what?”

  “The theft.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t see the point.”

  It seemed so unlikely that the police would be able to do anything, and if she’d gone back into the building to call 9-1-1, the cameramen would have followed her. They’d have yelled questions at her, taken her picture as she waited for the police to arrive.

  THOR’S GIRLFRIEND FLEES LOVE NEST!!!

  FORKING FIANCÉE IS VICTIM OF HATE CRIME!!!

  “You don’t have faith in the NYPD?”

  “I figured there wasn’t much hope of getting my purse back. A few days ago, I sat by a policeman on the PATH train, and he was telling me about budget cuts and how their resources are stretched really thin.”

  “Thought you’d save him the time, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  Ben didn’t respond, but he emanated unspoken opinion.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, you have to say,” she insisted.

  “You make friends with everybody you sit next to on the train?”

  “No. Sometimes. This guy was really nice. He gave me his card.”

  “How old was he?”

  “I don’t know. Your age?”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  She welcomed the opportunity to study his face. Hard to tell, under all that stubble and grouchiness. She aimed high, adding a decade to test his reaction. “Forty-five?”

  He cut her a killing look.

  “You have a little gray in your hair,” she pointed out.

  “Not much.”

  “And crow’s feet around your eyes.”

  The depression between his eyebrows deepened into a deep black V-shape.

  May smiled. He was easy to rile. “Well, how old are you?”

  “None of your business.”

  He growled it. Her sister would get a kick out of this guy. He was so feral. Allie loved dogs with behavioral issues. “What are you so testy about? Afraid you’re losing your looks?”

  “I’m not testy,” Ben said. Testily.

  “All right.”

  “It’s just that I didn’t have you figured for one of those women.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “The type who plays games.”

  “Okay, fine. I don’t really think you’re forty-five.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant, I didn’t figure you for the kind of woman who pretends not to get it when a guy tries to pick her up.”

  “So you’re saying … what? You’re trying to pick me up?”

  “No, not me, genius, the cop.”

  For a second, she thought Ben meant that he was trying to pick up the cop, which confused her further, because he hadn’t even been there. But then she figured it out. “He wasn’t.”

  “He tell you to call him?”

  “If I ever needed anything.”

  “And I bet he wrote down his personal cell number on the back of the card.”

  He had, but that didn’t mean … “He knew I had a boyfriend. He was just being nice.”

  “You call him sometime,” Ben said. “I bet you ten bucks he asks you out.”

  “Nah. I would notice if someone was trying to ask me out.”

  “Clearly you wouldn’t, because you didn’t. One of NYPD’s finest put the moves on you, and you thought he was being nice.”

  “He was.”

  “Men are nice to old ladies for no reason. You’ve got blond hair and nine-mile-long legs. If a strange man is nice to you, he wants to get in your pants. If a cop gives you his cell number, he’s hoping you’ll use it.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And,” he interrupted, vehement now, “if a guy grabs you by the arm and starts dragging you into an alley, you’re supposed to kick and scream, not go with him and give him your fucking purse.”

  “I thought he was security.”

  “Next time? Check.”

  May took a breath. Her face felt hot, the skin beneath her bra strap damp and itchy.

  It was exciting, talking to Ben. Bickering with him. She never bickered.

  “So what’d you do?” he asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “After you got your purse stolen.”

  “I just started walking,” she said. “And now I’m here.”

  Ben cupped his chin in his hand, scraping his fingers over his stubble. “Six weeks, you said you’ve been in New York?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Well, in New Jersey, mostly.”

  “You know anybody in the city besides Thor? Or over in Jersey?”

  May shook her head. In the year Dan had been playing for the Jets, she’d established casual friendships with a few of the other players’ wives and girlfriends, but no one she’d want to call right now.

  “And your family’s all back in Wisconsin.”

  “Yeah. On the way to Michigan.”

  “So you’ve got nobody to take you in.”

  “Right. Except Dan.”

  “Who you dumped with a note.”

  “Yeah. Although he probably hasn’t read it yet.”

  Ben knocked back the rest of his whiskey in two quick swallows and addressed his next comment to the ceiling. “You’re having a really shitty couple days.”

  May nodded.

  “You have anything else on your agenda? Now that you’ve committed assault, dropped your asshole boyfriend, and gotten mugged?”

  “Not really.”

  Surely there was a way to sort things out and still fly home, even on a holiday weekend, but she couldn’t imagine it would be easy. Bare minimum, she needed access to the Internet, because she didn’t know anybody’s phone number except her parents’, her sister’s, Matt’s, and Dan’s—and none of those were any use to her now. Her family and Matt would be headed up north to the cabin on the lake.

  If she could get online, she’d be able to find someone to call. Beth and Anya were both in her Gmail address book. Or she could go back to the apartment and wait for Dan to come home, then tell him what had happened.

  But there was that imaginary line across the floor behind her.

  Ben scrutinized her. “You sure you don’t want to play darts?”

  “There’s always pinball.”

  One corner of his mouth hitched up. It wasn’t a smile, but it was defi
nitely amusement. He set his glass on the table next to the couch. Slowly, he rose, stretching his arms behind his back. He was broader through the shoulders than she’d realized. Flat across the stomach. Nicely put together.

  But she only registered that in the most distant, uninterested sort of way, because the bulk of her brain was preoccupied with trying to figure out what to make of the fact that he was moving around like he planned to leave soon.

  “Get up,” he said.

  Confused, she lifted her chin and collided with his eyes again. The black corona around the edges reminded her of the rings around a lemur’s tail, which was yet another crazy thing to think, but that didn’t make it any less true.

  They were ordinary brown eyes. There was no reason they should be so … so crackling.

  He extended his hand, and when she took it, his fingers wrapped around hers, and he hauled her to standing.

  She stopped moving before her head did, which suggested she maybe shouldn’t have had whiskey on top of the beers at the bar on top of no lunch and a public robbing. Normally, she had the alcohol tolerance of a moose. Right now, though, she had to be a little tipsy and a lot hungry, or she wouldn’t feel this impulse to rub her face against Ben’s neck.

  His hand was really warm.

  “You all right?”

  She nodded, afraid to speak before she’d relocated her brain.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you some dinner.”

  She was so relieved, she nearly collapsed. Which didn’t make sense because, one, she barely knew the guy, and two, she didn’t much like him. Plus, three, he wasn’t following her friendship-development script at all.

  Still, she felt a sort of any-port-in-a-storm relief. Ben was far from her ideal shelter, but he was sturdy, and he was offering food.

  Except … why?

  Her eyes cut to his face the instant after the unpleasant possibility struck her. He didn’t think—

  He wouldn’t expect her to—

  Would he?

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  She took a step back and wiped her tingling palm on her hip.

  “Don’t bullshit me. You’re looking at me like someone slipped you a copy of my prison record.”

  “You have a prison record?” Her voice rose to a panicked whine.

  “No. Christ, it was a joke.” His eyes narrowed. “What do you think this is?”