I watch as she talks into her phone, and she looks sad, which tears at my heart. But then a glimmer of a smile appears on her face and a wave of pain engulfs me, and I look down at the counter, into my glass which is now replenished with fresh whiskey. She’s talking to him, she’s telling him she wants him, and I can’t fucking deal with that. But I’m gonna have to be stronger than this. I’m gonna watch her lie in his arms; watch him touch her and kiss her – put himself inside her, and I want to cry out in frustration. This shouldn’t be fucking happening.
I glance back up, and she’s sitting at a slot machine now, absent-mindedly running her fingers over the glass front, and she’s so beautiful. Even from a distance she takes my breath away.
She should be mine.
But she isn’t.
She never was.
She might never be…
Kira
He looks up as I walk over to him, and the second I’m close enough he reaches out and snakes an arm around my waist, pulling me against him, his mouth gently brushing over mine in the softest of kisses.
‘We need to go home,’ he whispers.
His hand splays out in the small of my back, pushing me closer to him, and I nod. He’s right. We need to go home and sort this mess out.
‘Yes. We do.’
I touch his cheek, resting my palm against his warm, smooth skin and I’m so confused now I really don’t know what to do anymore. I’m working on auto-pilot here, and nothing feels real. It’s a fucked-up kind of fairy tale I’m living, and right now I can’t see a happy ending for anyone.
‘Did you talk to him?’
I nod, and the pain inside my chest is so real and so raw I can’t speak, it’s knocked the breath right out of me. ‘We don’t have to do this, Neal. We really don’t, I can…’
‘Talking isn’t gonna work, Kira, we’ve been through this. It isn’t gonna work.’
I drop my hand and he takes it in his, squeezing it tight.
‘We’ll get through this, baby.’
I bow my head, staring down at my hand in his. ‘Will we?’
‘Look at me, Kira. Please. Look at me.’
I raise my gaze and meet his beautiful blue eyes, and every memory of everything we ever did together; everything he made me feel, it all comes rushing forward like a tidal wave, hitting me with a force so violent it almost knocks me off my feet.
‘We’ll get through it. Somehow.’
I have to believe him. I have to believe that when Jon touches me, it won’t feel the same as it felt before Neal walked into my life. And I remember Joey’s words – he told me Neal was my breakthrough, my reason to walk away from everything that was dragging me down. Everything that had once hurt me. But Jon never really hurt me. If anything, I hurt him, walking away like I did. But the relationship we had, yeah, that was dragging me down. And Neal gave me a chance to walk away, to leave it all behind. And I was doing that, it was working. Until Jon found me. Until he brought everything I was trying to walk away from right back to confront me.
‘Do you want to go back to the house?’ he asks, and he smiles, and for a second or two my world is lit up by that smile and everything feels OK. But it isn’t OK. It’s so far from that. Yet, all I want is to feel some level of normality tonight. I want to spend a night as any other normal couple would spend a night here in Vegas. I want to play the slots, watch the roulette wheel spin round and round and get excited as that tiny white ball attempts to land in the colour I chose. I want to drink and party and walk the Strip, looking up in awe at the bright lights of this crazy town. I want to watch the fountain show outside The Bellagio. I want to walk from hotel to hotel through the maze of tunnels that link some of them together. I want to hold his hand and pretend we’re OK. Just for a few, magical hours. And then I want to go back to his place, and I want him to make love to me. I want this beautiful man to hold me and love me like everything is normal.
But our world isn’t normal.
It never was.
And once we get back to New York, and I sleep with Jon; after Neal watches me do that, nothing can ever be normal again…
Twenty-Six
Neal
I didn’t want to go straight to The Playroom. Alan and the staff have done a pretty good job of keeping that place running while me and Kira were away, so, I’m sure they can manage for a few more hours. Besides, I’ve got Barry and his shit to deal with before I can even begin to think about sorting mine. But I’m gonna have to. Later. Tonight.
‘Nice break?’
I look up as Barry walks into my office at the gallery, all cocky swagger and arrogance. But I’m so over him now. In fact, he has no idea just how over him I really am.
‘What do you want, Barry?’
‘You know what I want, Neal. I want you to make a decision – her, or this business. But I can’t have you a part of this if you continue to run some seedy underground sex club with your ex-hooker girlfriend.’
Once-upon-a-time I would’ve been out of my chair and on him so fast he wouldn’t have had time to take a breath before my fist connected with his face. But that’s what he wants. He wants that reaction, and he isn’t getting it. He can say what he likes, it’s all bullshit. He might have himself a team of first-rate lawyers, but mine pretty much wipe his out. He hasn’t got a fucking leg to stand on. He can’t get me out of this business without one hell of a fight, and I know he doesn’t have the bottle for that. I’m well aware that he’s got his legal team looking for any loophole they can find, no matter how small, but they won’t find one. Like I said, my team are better. Any loophole there might have been, they’re busy closing them. He isn’t getting rid of me. I just have to bide my time and stay calm until he’s told that in no uncertain terms.
‘You finished?’ I ask, looking back down at the stack of papers in front of me. I don’t even know what they are, what they’re for; what I’m supposed to do with them. Summer was putting them down on my desk when I walked in this morning, and I’m sure she told me what they were, but I guess my head wasn’t in the game at that point.
‘Come on, Neal. I can’t fucking believe you’re still doing this shit.’
‘You and Helen still together?’
I raise my head and meet his eyes, and he knows. He knows I’m not in the mood. ‘OK. I was wrong to try…’
‘You were wrong?’ I laugh, a short, sharp, cynical chuckle and he steps back from my desk. ‘What you did was pathetic, Barry. Trying to set me up with another woman while my girlfriend was in the same fucking room… Jesus Christ, how old are you? This isn’t some playground game. This is people’s lives you’re messing with. And Helen didn’t deserve to be some pawn in your stupid game.’
‘She was quite happy to help me out.’
‘Then I can only think less of her for being sucked in by you, I mean, what did you promise her, huh? That once this “phase” of mine was over I’d come running to her for some kind of comfort? Did she honestly believe anything you told her?’
‘She genuinely cares about you, Neal. And she is an incredible woman – cultured, smart, intelligent…’
‘And Kira is, what? An idiot?’
‘She’s a whore, Neal. She sold her body for sex so that men like you could have their fucked-up fantasies brought to life.’
I laugh that laugh again, still keeping my eyes fixed on his. ‘Yeah. And you never used escorts, right?’
‘I didn’t fall for one. I’m not that stupid.’
He turns and walks towards the door, stopping just before he reaches it, turning around to face me again.
‘Think about this, Neal. Please. Is she really worth all this crap?’
I don’t say anything. I don’t need to explain anything to anyone. How I feel about Kira; what she means to me, that’s nobody’s business but ours.
He closes the door behind him and I sit back in my chair, dragging my hands through my hair as I let out a restrained sigh of frustration. But then I pull myself together, sit up, an
d start concentrating on that stack of papers Summer left on my desk.
I’m getting my head back in the game.
This game.
Because there’s a real possibility it might be all I have left to fall back on.
Kira
‘I love Vegas,’ Joey sighs as he hands me a mug of tea and sits down on the stool beside me.
‘You’ve never been,’ I point out as I sip my drink.
‘I’ve never met Matt Bomer, either, but it doesn’t stop me from loving him.’
I smile and take another sip of tea – made hot and very strong, just how I like it.
‘Anyway, angel, did you have fun?’
I look down, and then I realise that was a mistake, and quickly look back up but it’s too late. Joey’s already got his mood radar set to red alert.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing’s happened.’
‘I’m going to ask you that question again, Kira, and this time you’re going to give me an honest answer. Is this something to do with Brunette Barbie?’
I just look at him, and he seems to be OK with that reply.
‘She never really was a problem, Joey. And she never will be.’
He crosses his legs and rests his chin in his palm as he eyes me warily. ‘He’s still here, isn’t he? This Jon guy. He’s still hanging around.’
I drop my gaze and stare down into my tea.
‘Will you just talk to me, Kira? Please? We used to be able to talk, and yet now… You’ve got secrets, angel, I get that now. Secrets you couldn’t even bring yourself to tell me…’
‘I couldn’t, Joey.’
‘Well, yes, you could. You could have told me. You could have told me anything, kiddo.’
I look back up at him, and he isn’t angry or frustrated with me – he’s concerned. And I feel a wave of now-familiar guilt swamp me.
‘If there’s one person out there who is never going to judge you, Kira, that’s me. That’s me, angel. All I ever want to do is look after you, make sure you’re happy and safe and… Will you just talk to me? Please?’
That guilt takes a tighter hold of my insides, crushing them with a force so real I can’t breathe for a second. I can’t tell him what’s going on. Not the full story, anyway. But he’s helped me through so much crap before that I think I need him now. I need him to tell me what to do.
‘I think I might still be in love with him, Joey.’
‘Jesus, Kira…’ He sighs and edges his stool closer to mine, taking my hand. ‘What kind of a bloody mess have you gotten yourself into this time, sweetheart?’
‘I know.’ I throw back my head and blink back tears I never wanted to cry, I am so done with crying. For almost ten years I never let myself cry, over anything. What Simon did to me, I don’t think I cried a single tear over that after the night Joey took me in. When Jon appeared back on the scene, begging me to stop what I was doing and come back to him, I cried after he’d left. I cried for hours; cried for the life I could have had with him; for the life I knew I never could have with him. But then I stopped. And I dealt with the situation by distancing myself as best I could while still being able to spend time with him, but in hindsight, that was the biggest mistake of my life. Because it led us all here. To this messed-up situation that’s about to happen later. ‘OK.’ I breathe out and compose myself, shaking my hair out and pulling my hand from Joey’s. I don’t need his support. I don’t need anyone’s support. I can do this on my own, and I think it’s best that way. The less people who know what’s going on, the better. ‘I’m just being stupid. I can deal with this.’
Joey narrows his eyes as he looks at me, but I’m right. I can deal with this. Neal isn’t going to see what he thinks he’s going to see when I open my legs and let Jon back in. He isn’t going to see a woman who’s back in the arms of the man she once loved. He’s going to see Kira Blu, at work, doing what she does best.
‘Do you ever wish we could go back, Kira?’
Joey’s question shakes me out of my thoughts and I look at him with a slightly confused expression. ‘Go back?’
‘To how it was before. Before Neal. When it was you and me against the world, and it felt as though nobody else was ever going to get in the way.’
Yeah. I do kind of wish I could go back to that, because those days seem so far away now – the days when all I had to do was go to dinner with a man and pretend I was enjoying his company; fuck a few of them for money and pretend I liked having their cocks inside me for the short time it took them to come harder than most of them had ever come before in their lives. But those days were full of lies, in reality. Lies I chose to tell. Secrets I chose to keep. Those days were never real.
‘It doesn’t pay to look back, Joey.’
He keeps his eyes on me for a second or two longer and raises an eyebrow as he slides down from his stool. ‘And that’s advice you might want to heed, angel.’ He leans over to kiss me. ‘You know where I am, if you need me. OK? For anything. For God’s sake, Kira, just call me, alright?’
I nod and watch as he sashays over to the stage. I’m so lucky to still have that man in my life, after everything that’s happened. And I regret pushing him away, regret shutting him out because without him I’d be in an even bigger mess than the one I’m already in. But I really can do this without involving anyone else. I need to do this without involving anyone else.
My phone rings and I dig it out of my jeans pocket, staring down at the caller ID. It’s him. It’s Jon. And I continue to stare down at the phone as it rings out, even though every cell in my body is screaming at me to answer it. But it’s another few seconds before I do.
‘Hey. Where are you?’
‘Outside. Across the street from the club.’
I look over towards Joey, throwing him a smile and a wave as I head out of Bam-Bams. ‘OK. I’m on my way.’ I shield my eyes from the bright autumn sunshine as I reach the street outside. And when I glance across the road I see him leaning back against the low wall that surrounds the small park opposite Bam-Bams, and I swallow hard as he smiles at me. His smile is nothing like Neal’s; it’s not as beautiful or as bright but it still makes my heart surge with a shot of painful electricity as more memories flood my brain. ‘Stay there. I’ll come over to you.’
I might not have been in New York all that long, but I’ve still become quite adept at navigating the traffic, and I run across the road, dodging the cars and cabs with ease, although I’m slightly out of breath by the time I reach him.
‘That was quite hot to watch.’ He grins, and I try to ignore the feeling deep in the pit of my stomach.
‘You hungry?’ I think lunch might be a good idea. It’ll give us a chance to talk, because, maybe we need to do that, before tonight.
He shrugs. ‘I’d rather we went somewhere a bit more private than a restaurant.’
I move a little closer to him, but I keep my hands in my pockets and my expression almost impassive as I look into his eyes. ‘I need you to come to the club tonight, Jon.’
He frowns. ‘The club?’
‘I’m working, early on, but once I’m done…’ I don’t feel altogether comfortable now. This all feels a touch strange, like I’m planning some kind of set-up, but isn’t that what this really is? He doesn’t know Neal’s going to be watching us. He has no idea what’s going on, and that feels wrong. All this man is really guilty of is loving me. Does he deserve this kind of deception? But that’s what my whole world has been built on for as long as I can remember – deception. And I’m not sure that’s ever going to change now.
‘What’s going on, Kira?’ He reaches out and cups my cheek and I once more ignore what’s going on inside of me. ‘Does your boyfriend know what you want me to do…’ He kisses me so lightly his lips barely touch mine, ‘to you?’
‘This isn’t about Neal,’ I breathe, wishing he wasn’t this close; too close. And I want him to be closer, I really do want that, and I hate that I do; that I want that. I hate it.
And I hate that I’m lying, because this is all about Neal. And whether or not he and I have any kind of future together. I just wish we could find the answer to that in a way that wasn’t this twisted and wrong. But I don’t think we can.
Obsession (Forbidden #2) Page 26
