Free

by Kristen Ashley

“You sure?” he pushed.

  “Sure, I’m sure.”

  No humor. No inflection. Not even any impatience.

  Dull and flat.

  The first time he’d met her, she’d run hot. Understandable. He and his brothers had hijacked her car with her in it and taken her to a dirty, one-room cabin in the mountains.

  Still, she’d been funny, brave, open and disarming, the last in a good way.

  The second time he’d been with her, she was again funny but also sweet and talkative and engaging.

  Blindsided by that fucking great dress, it was only now he was realizing how remote she was being.

  Rush was not super hip on moody women. He was less hip on having to drag whatever shit out of them that was making them moody. And he was completely not hip on women with multiple personalities, where you never knew what you were going to get to the point you ended up walking on eggshells, wondering when one you didn’t like was going to come out.

  Maybe she was nervous about what the bag she’d packed meant.

  She gave no indication she wasn’t up for it, and that was not only the fact she’d actually packed the bag.

  But he wasn’t exactly taking this slow.

  He wasn’t called Rush just because he’d never been known to waste time getting what he wanted.

  His dad gave him that nickname seeing as, since he was a kid, if he wanted something, he went for it, didn’t waste time . . .

  And took no prisoners.

  But she didn’t know that.

  Not yet.

  And if it was worth taking time, and putting in the work, he’d learned to do that too.

  He reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it with his.

  “You know, nothin’ is gonna happen tonight you don’t want to happen,” he assured.

  Her fingers lay limply in his hold. “I know.”

  He gave her another squeeze.

  And got nothing back.

  He let her go and she didn’t hesitate to put her hand back in her lap.

  Shit.

  He decided to let her start any conversation she might want.

  His silence was reciprocated all the way to his place.

  Not good.

  He took the alley, pulled into his parking spots at the back of his place next to his bike, cut the ignition and climbed out.

  He grabbed her bag and met her at the hood of his truck.

  She was looking up at his pad.

  It wasn’t much. A narrow two-story Victorian wedged tight between two other narrow two-story Victorians just a couple blocks off Colfax in Capitol Hill.

  It was a hip neighborhood like a lot of hip neighborhoods in Denver were.

  Partially rundown. The odd showplace with a great yard and a paint job that had five colors, which probably meant some gay dudes lived there. Established trees and shrubs that made it shady and nice in the summer, gave it character in the winter.

  He’d picked it because it was in walking distance to some great hole-in-the-wall restaurants, coffee shops, book and record stores. It had been a score at the bitter end of the recession they’d come out of, before real estate hit the stratosphere after Colorado legalized pot. And there was just enough that needed to be done on it, he could make it his own, but it wasn’t going to be a money pit.

  It was also big enough to put his old lady in, when he found her, and start a family.

  His goal was to eventually get a place in the mountains like Tack and Tyra had. A lot bigger. Surrounded by nothing but nature. Quiet. Private. Something his woman would love where they’d finish making and raising their kids.

  But he’d keep this place because he’d be in town a lot, and she’d probably want somewhere she could crash when she went shopping or hung with her girls and shit.

  In his time there, he’d refinished the floors, reskimmed and painted the walls, stripped and re-varnished the fireplace mantels, and put in a new master bath.

  Except for the walls and floors, the kitchen—the room at the back he led Rebel into—hadn’t been touched.

  She barely glanced around and didn’t hide she had no interest after she walked in.

  He narrowed his eyes on her. “You sure you’re good?”

  “Yeah,” she said distractedly, staring at the back door he’d closed like she wanted to use it.

  “Rebel,” he called.

  Her eyes drifted to him.

  “You don’t seem yourself.”

  “I’m fine, Rush. Maybe a little hungry.”

  “I’m makin’ hamburgers.”

  “Great,” she said like she didn’t give a shit they ate hamburgers or cow patties.

  Right, he’d asked her if she was good more than once.

  She wasn’t, but she wasn’t giving him dick.

  He wasn’t going to ask again.

  But he was no longer fired up about the night and if the woman didn’t snap out of it, he’d feed her and take her home.

  “I didn’t get a chance to do much but shop,” he muttered, dropping her bag by the opening to the dining room. “Store bought potato salad and chips with the burgers. And I got beer. You drink beer?” he asked as he moved to the kitchen.

  “Yeah,” she answered.

  He’d opened the fridge and turned to her, seeing her standing there looking infinitely fuckable with that sweater drooping off her shoulder over that dress. But the expression on her face was vacant, like she was posing for a photo to hawk the outfit in a magazine.

  “You actually want a beer?” he pushed.

  Her gaze slid to him. “Sure.”

  If she said “sure” again, he might take her to McDonald’s, that before he took her ass home.

  He got her beer, opened it, handed it to her, got out the beef, tossed it on the counter, and shrugged off his cut, beginning to get pissed.

  He liked her.

  A lot.

  Too much when he was realizing he didn’t know the woman except for a couple of meetings and what he read in a file.

  And too much when he was realizing just how pissed he was getting because he read into the promise of her something that might not be there, and he was right then feeling how bad it would suck if he found it was not.

  He went to his dining room, threw his cut around the back of a chair and came back into the kitchen to see her standing in front of the framed concert poster on the wall.

  Rush went to the beef. “You like the Gypsies?”

  “Pong’s a riot,” she murmured.

  At least that was something.

  He shot a glance to the poster. The local-band-made-huge, the Blue Moon Gypsies, was on it, all posing in rock poses, cool as shit, but the drummer, Pong, was on his knees at the front holding his drumsticks in a V under his jaw, sticking out his tongue and widening his eyes in a crazy Ozzy expression that almost beat Ozzy.

  “Let’s get the talk I had with Dad out of the way,” he suggested.

  She floated to stand opposite him at the jutting countertop that faced the double opening to the dining room. Her side had stools.

  She didn’t take a stool.

  She set her hands, one wrapped around what looked like an unsipped beer, to the counter and looked to the side, apparently vaguely fascinated by the row of unopened potato chip bags he had stacked up against the wall.

  “If you’re hungry, sweetheart, make yourself at home. Open up and dive in,” he said quietly.

  She lifted her beer to her lips and swung her eyeballs around in a way it was clear she was avoiding looking at him, standing right in front of her, tearing open a package of hamburger meat.

  What the fuck?

  Whatever.

  He was not fucking asking again.

  “Right, you in the middle of one of the movies?” he asked when she’d dropped the beer.

  “Always,” she answered.

  “Okay. Give notice. Tomorrow.”

  That made her look at him. “What?”

  “Dad reckons Valenzuela considers this a professi
onal relationship,” he explained. “The legal kind. And we can hope that’s true. So, give notice. Say you’ll finish the film you’re doing now, but once that’s done, you’re out. You realized porn isn’t for you and you got an offer of a job you couldn’t turn down.”

  She turned her head to stare at the potato chip bags again.

  “You got a contract that says you can’t do that?” he asked.

  “I have a contract that states what my credits will be on the films I make, and I don’t use my real name, so it doesn’t matter anyway. I didn’t want royalties for obvious reasons. Valenzuela was suspicious of that, but considering it’s porn, he let it go. I’m employed by Luxe Films, Limited, I’m salaried, not hourly, I get paid a shit-ton of money I don’t use, and that’s it.”

  “Okay, then give notice tomorrow. In writing.”

  She reached out and touched the potato chip bag with the tip of her middle finger like she was carefully stroking the cheek of a sleeping infant.

  Okay.

  What in the fuck?

  With fingers gunked to shit, he stopped forming a hamburger patty.

  “Rebel—”

  Her focus cut to him, and when it did he knew instantly she was back.

  And just as instantly, he wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

  He’d find he was wrong.

  But first he was right.

  “Don’t be mad,” she said fast. “Rush, please don’t be mad. But I’m not pulling out.”

  She could ask.

  But she wasn’t going to get that.

  He wasn’t mad.

  He was pissed.

  “We decided this,” he growled.

  “I can’t pull out.”

  “You can’t stay in,” he bit off.

  She shook her head, sharp and fast. “Really, really, baby,” she slid a hand across the counter toward him, “I have to keep at it.”

  Oh no.

  Fuck to the no.

  She wasn’t gonna call him “baby” for the first time trying to get her way to keep doing something that might get her dead.

  “We’ve been together twice, had two conversations about this, and came to a decision. I’m not talkin’ about this every fuckin’ time I see you, Rebel.”

  “Maybe we can discuss how we can work together to bring down Valenzuela and Chew,” she suggested, sounding desperate, looking it too, leaning toward him across his own fucking kitchen counter.

  She sat in his car trying to decide how to broach this with him.

  She walked into his house, not the least curious where he fucking lived, working that through her head.

  And now she was trying to play his ass to get him to agree not only to let her risk hers but help her do it.

  “I’ve answered that question,” he stated, dropping the meat and going to the sink to clean his hands.

  “Rush—”

  “Rebel, this is dinner. Talking. Getting to know the woman I thought I might like. I thought was interesting and cute and sexy and funny. The woman who is not all about Diane Ragowski and Benito fuckin’ Valenzuela and shit-for-brains Chew Lannigan and all that other garbage—”

  “Diane isn’t garbage,” she snapped.

  He tore the dish towel off the hook and swiped his hands, turning to her and firing back, “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m sorry I’m all about my dead friend, Rush,” she said sarcastically. “My raped and murdered friend.”

  “First, don’t lay that fuckin’ guilt trip on me. And second, it’s been nine fucking months, Rebel. It’s time for you to find a way past it.”

  She leaned over the counter and spat, “I am!”

  “A healthy way.”

  She reached out to the purse she’d put on the edge of his counter.

  “Maybe I should get a Lyft home,” she suggested.

  “Maybe that’s a good idea,” he agreed.

  Her head snapped up from looking in her purse, something moved over her face he felt sear low through his gut, then she turned her back on him and walked quickly out of this kitchen, by his dining room table, and into his living room, her head again bent to her purse.

  Rush tossed down the towel and followed her.

  “Babe.”

  She whirled on him, and he stopped.

  That look was not moving over her face.

  It had settled there.

  And the weight he saw there was heavy.

  So heavy it was a wonder it didn’t rip the flesh from her skull.

  Seeing it, he froze to the spot.

  “This isn’t going to work,” she declared.

  “Rebel,” he whispered.

  “Maybe if . . . maybe if . . .”

  He watched her look around, seemingly randomly. The wall to her left. Her boots. Behind him into the kitchen. Her boots again.

  Then her eyes came back to him.

  And he was at once glad they did and hoped like fuck he’d never see that look in them again.

  Jesus, fuck.

  “You have a beautiful voice,” she whispered.

  Why did she tell him that?

  Where was she now?

  Wherever it was, he had to get her the fuck out.

  “Baby, come here,” he whispered back.

  “Maybe if—”

  “Rebel, please come to me.”

  “I got that call.”

  “What call?” he asked when she didn’t keep going.

  “In the middle of the night telling me if I cared about Chantilly, I needed to go to her.”

  Chantilly was Diane’s porn name.

  That he knew.

  But . . .

  She got a call?

  Hawk’s file didn’t say dick about a call.

  Rush had a different feeling in his gut, one that tightened his chest and the muscles in his neck, but Rebel kept talking.

  “I went. The door was . . . I went. And called the cops. And waited as they went in. Sat there in my car and waited. And then to the station. And Hank. And Eddie.”

  She wasn’t making any sense.

  He didn’t say a word.

  He just stood there, holding her eyes, and listened.

  “We went to Paul and Amy. We told them.” She nodded her head. Shook it. Nodded it again. Christ, she was gone. “We told them,” she repeated.

  But her voice cracked.

  That he got, without her words making much sense.

  He couldn’t imagine being there when cops told two parents their daughter had been murdered.

  Raped and murdered.

  He didn’t want to imagine.

  But Rebel didn’t have to imagine shit.

  She’d been there.

  “Sweetheart, come to me or I’m comin’ to you. Serious.”

  He didn’t move when the new look hit her face. The wet hit her eyes. Hovering there.

  “You have such a beautiful voice, Rush. Maybe if you’d been there. Maybe if you’d been there to go to. Maybe after we told Amy and Paul that Diane had been killed, if I could have gone to—”

  Fuck it.

  He took the three steps to her and yanked her into his arms.

  He was just in time.

  She dropped her phone and purse to the floor, face-planted in his chest and lost it.

  He gathered her closer.

  She clutched his shirt into her hands and pressed it to her cheeks like she was trying to hide from him.

  But she did this sobbing and begging, “Talk to me.”

  His voice.

  He dipped his head to put his lips to her ear and tightened his arms further, using one hand to stroke her back.

  “I’m right here,” he murmured. “Get it out.”

  “I can’t stop.”

  “Then keep crying.”

  “No,” she wailed. “Valenzuela.”

  Goddamn it.

  “Just feel what you’re feelin’ now, baby. We’ll deal with that later.”

  “Mom a-sked us t-to Thanksgiving. It w-was after that. A
-after I’d started my p-plan o’ vengeance,” she stuttered. “I w-was d-deep in my p-plan o’ vengeance.”

  Say what?

  “Honey, where are you goin’ now?” he asked.

  She threw her head back, pounded his shirt into his chest and snapped, “Mom! She couldn’t leave well enough alone! She had to ask us to Thanksgiving!”

  “Okay,” he said carefully, “I’m not following.”

  “Fabulous,” she snapped.

  “Reb—”

  “You’re going to think I’m a nutcase, and I like you.” Another chest pound. “You have a beautiful voice, you don’t mind being teased and you’re a really good kisser.”

  He beat back a grin.

  Good to know.

  But not where they needed to be right now.

  “How about you cry it out then we’ll talk about Thanksgiving and after that, we’ll talk about Valenzuela again.”

  She shoved her face back in his chest. “You don’t want to talk about Valenzuela.”

  “That was before I knew how much you liked my voice.”

  She made a sound like a laugh that ended like a sob and slid her arms around him.

  He held on, and he held on thinking it was freakishly uncanny how his father could read shit.

  It took less time than he thought it would before she turned her head, rested her cheek on his chest and let out a big sigh that he heard and felt.

  He lifted one hand to wrap around the side of her neck and used his thumb to stroke the skin there.

  “You good?” he asked.

  “Not really,” she answered.

  “Rephrase. You done cryin’?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think you can let me go so I can cook and we can talk?”

  Her arms squeezed tighter. “No.”

  “Babe—”

  “I think I cried my makeup off.”

  He smiled and bent his neck to say to the top of her hair. “You’re beautiful, Rebel, probably just as beautiful or even more without makeup.”

  “Not with raccoon eyes.”

  “Let me see.”

  “No fucking way. Just close your eyes and point me to the bathroom.”

  He removed his hand from her neck and took hold of her chin.

  “Let me see, honey.”

  She fought it a few beats but then tipped her head back.

  Jesus.

  “Bathroom’s through that door, behind the stairs.”

  Her lips twitched “That bad?”

  He bent his head again, this time to brush his mouth to hers.