by Stasia Black
The man’s wary expression disappears and a wide grin cracks his face. He grabs my hand and gives it a vigorous yank up and down. “I just knew when I saw you, I said to myself, now here’s a man who knows sense when he hears it. I’ll be sitting right over there by that big window. I’ll save you a seat.” He shakes my hand one last time and then he salutes me before continuing on down the line.
I keep up my smile just in case, and sure enough, he looks back at me. I give him a thumbs up. When he turns around again, I wipe my hand on my thigh and put my glove back on. Fuck’s sake. I’ll have to disinfect my goddamned hand with Lysol when I get home.
“That was really great,” says a soft voice. “How you handled him.”
I look up, ready to paste my patented smile back on, internally counting the minutes until I can get out of this hellhole and—
Holy shit.
There’s a fucking angel standing in front of me.
I shit you not.
Gorgeous, cherubic face. Porcelain skin, rosy cheeks. Heart-shaped pink mouth. White blonde hair wrapped in braids around her head with little tendrils escaping here and there. She looks like she was dropped right out of a Grimm’s fairytale and straight into the den of the big bad wolf. Because looking at her I feel very, very hungry. Not that she’s wearing anything revealing. The total opposite in fact. She’s got on a thick, flannel shirt and shapeless oversized overalls. Even though everything she’s wearing looks worn, she’s tidy and clean. She seems utterly out of place amid the grime and stink of this place.
“Hello?” she laughs and gives a quick little wave.
“Um. Yeah. Hi. I wasn’t lying about the uncle. He was a crazy bastard. Um.” I shift on my feet. “Soup?”
What the fuck? Did I just really stumble over my words like a little bitch there? What am I? Fourteen and talking to a hot chick for the first time? I’m Kennedy fucking Benson. I flirt as easy as breathing. I’m the king of smooth.
She laughs and I swear it’s like the tinkling of little bells. I wasn’t kidding about this being some fairytale shit. “Yes, I’d love some.”
I blink a second before registering she said she wanted some soup. I ladle some and am proud of myself when I manage not to spill it all over her damn tray. But then I wince as I hand it over. Usually I pride myself in not serving anything I’m not positive is the best quality. “Sorry about this. I’m not sure it deserves the title soup. It’s hot, but that’s pretty much all it’s got going for it.”
She smiles, flashing a gorgeous set of straight, white teeth. “I’m not picky. Hot soup on an autumn day is all I’m looking for. Have you been outside today? It’s insanely beautiful out there. I was in the park earlier and even saw a couple trees that had leaves changing color.” She sighs and her smile turns wistful. “It’s the only thing that bums me out about living in this part of the country. I’ve always thought it’d be so romantic to live in a place where the trees turn colors and then all the leaves fall. And then snow.” Her eyes light up. “Snow always looks so magical in movies. I’ve never lived where there’s snow.”
I scoff lightly. “I grew up in New York. Believe me, it’s overrated.”
Ten points for me. I managed to say something intelligible.
Fuck, her eyes are blue. Like, blue blue. The kind I thought only happened in photos that had been retouched in Photoshop.
She laughs and nods. “Isn’t that the way it always is? Grass is always greener and all that? Besides, I’m sure if I ever moved somewhere cold, after one winter I’d be fed up with it. Having to dig my way out of my own driveway if I wanted to go anywhere?” She shakes her head, but then a soft look takes over her eyes again and she tilts her head sideways. “But doesn’t it make such a lovely picture in your head? Drinking coffee and looking out the window while the snow falls?”
I find myself nodding. Yes. Yes, it does make a nice mental image, but only because I’m picturing her through that window. She looks absolutely gorgeous as she sips coffee and watches the snow, thinking beautiful thoughts. And then maybe I come in from the cold and sit down beside her and—
“Oh my gosh,” she looks embarrassed, glancing over her shoulder. “I’m holding up the line. My mouth just runs away with me.”
“No, it’s fine,” I say, talking over her again as she says, “Oh.”
She laughs, tilting her head again and smiling at me. Damn, those eyes. Bright, intelligent blue eyes. Fuck me.
“Nice chatting with you.” She nods and lifts her tray. “Thanks for the soup. Have a lovely day.”
And with that, she’s moving away.
My heart starts hammering. She’s tall in spite of how thin and otherwise tiny she is. I can tell in spite of those ridiculous clothes she’s wearing. Her hands were so delicate when she took the bowl. If she let those braids down, how long would her hair be? And more importantly, why the fuck does she have to get food from a soup kitchen?
“Hey. White boy. You gonna give me some soup or I gotta jump this table and get it myself?”
I break my gaze from staring after…shit, I didn’t even get her name. I continue serving the rest of the line. In between clients, I search for a head of white blonde braids. But I don’t see her sitting anywhere in the crowd of tables. Damn it. Where’d she go?
Maybe I can just cut out early. This is all bullshit anyway. I go to pull off my gloves…and that’s right when the fucking photographer shows up.
Stella will kill me if I blow this off. I call her my PA because she still runs my schedule, but she’s actually a partner. She bought into the company and liaises with our CFO more than I do at this point. She thinks this public relations shit is important. And what would I say if I left? There was this mystery beauty that I just had to get to know? Stella wouldn’t just punch my shoulder. She’d go straight for the balls.
So I put on the smile and amp up the charm as I ladle my little cold plastic heart out. The pap thought it’d be great to get some shots of me cleaning up in addition to just serving. Jane, the Jesus Saves lady smiled big when she overheard that. She handed me a mop and said I was on bathroom duty.
Do you know what homeless people do when they get access to bathrooms after not being welcomed by any other establishments all week? Let’s just say it’s not pretty. I don’t think my Salvatore Ferragamos will ever be the same.
I scrub at my forearms with soap in the back kitchen after I’m finally finished with the bathrooms. It’s my third round of washing with water so hot there’s steam rising from the sink. But Christ, when I get home, I’m burning everything I’m wearing and will turn the shower to scalding to get rid of the filth I feel coating my whole body.
I turn off the sink faucet with my forearm. But fuck if I feel like any of the towels around here are actually clean. Well, up to my exacting standards of clean. This whole place is a cesspool. I saw a cockroach climbing over the coffeepot earlier.
Stella better be satisfied with the shots the pap got of me scrubbing shit off the bathroom walls because I’m done with this in-person humanitarian bullshit. I throw money at problems. That’s my M.O. She should know that by now.
I give up searching for a towel and just shake my hands to get the water off while I head for the back door. I reach in my pocket and pull out my Bluetooth headset. It barely finishes ringing before I start talking, right as I slam open the doors to the outside. “Stella, I swear to Christ they better have gotten some great pictures out of this because—”
“What’d I say, bitch?” a man’s voice demands. “Gimme you’re fuckin’ money.”
I jerk my head to the side and see four men at the far side of the church parking lot that leads into an alley. Surrounding a small figure with white-blonde hair. The fairytale woman from earlier.
Oh Christ. My stomach hollows out and I take off at a dead sprint toward them.
She cowers with her hands up covering her face and screams something I can’t make out.
“Hey!” I shout.
The bigges
t of the men raises his fist.
“Hey!” I start sprinting toward them. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
The woman screams again but fuck, I’m still too far away. Fuck, fuck, no.
The fist lands and she crumples.
He’s fucking dead. I’m going to kill him. My legs pump harder than they have since I was a teenager running from the cops.
“You fucking bastards!” I roar.
All the guys look my way. One of the smaller ones leans over and rifles through the girl’s pockets, comes up with what must be money. Then he hightails it down the alleyway, looking over his shoulder at me. The others are quick on his heels.
Motherfuckers. I’ll slice every single one of their coward bastard fucking throats. I throw every ounce of energy into covering the last bit of distance, but when I finally get to the girl, as much as I want to keep chasing after those bastards, I stop in my tracks.
“Shit, are you okay?” I bend over, falling to my knees and cradling her head as gently as I can. Fuck, her lip is split and her cheek is cut-up too. That fucker must have been wearing a ring. “Are you all right?” What a stupid fucking question. Of course she’s not okay.
“Can you hear my voice?” I just need to know if she’s conscious at this point.
She blinks but then winces at the action, her tiny hand coming to her bloody cheek and lip. “Oww, I—”
“Shh, shh, don’t try to talk, I’ve got you.”
Her loose blonde braids have come unpinned and hang in disarray over her shoulders. She looks like a gorgeous, tragically battered angel. It’s just fucking wrong. For something so beautiful, for someone to—
She blinks again, looking completely disoriented, and tries to sit up. Immediately she cries out and grabs her rib. She lies back, her startled blue eyes wide with pain. Fuck. Those bastards must have hit her even before I came out of the building.
“All right, I’m going to lift you up now.” I slip my arms underneath her knees and her back, cringing at the same time she winces in pain.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I whisper it over and over as I lift her up off the ground. Every jostle brings another strain of pain to her features. Why am I such a clumsy fuck? I deal with asshole chefs, rich douchey club and restaurant goers, and cutthroat businessmen—not delicate things.
I hurry as quickly as I can back across the parking lot to where I parked the car, trying to smooth my usually jerky stride as much as possible. The woman in my arms—Christ she’s so slight I barely feel her weight—is completely tense. She hugs her arms to her chest. Her jaw clenched and she has her eyes squeezed shut. Being so tightly strung can’t be doing anything for her pain. I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure that the more you loosen up, the better it is.
“I never did get your name. I’m Kennedy. It’s a pretentious fucking name, but my mom said anyone could grow up to be president.” Talking helps people relax, right? “Which tells you way more about my mom than me. She was this total idealist in spite of the shit circumstances we grew up in. Fuck, I probably shouldn’t be cussing so much. You don’t even know me and that’s not a very good first impression.”
I see the Bentley and head toward it. “Mom was in love with JFK. She said it was because he was the first Catholic president but I think it was because she thought he was handsome and secretly had a crush on him.”
Her small laugh startles me and I looked down to see her wide blue eyes looking just as surprised. I pause right as I come upon the car. And even though I notice peripherally that my $180,000 car has been vandalized with bright red and yellow spray paint up and down the sides—something which at any other moment would have me flipping the fuck out—I can’t look away from her eyes.
I’m not a man who gets captivated by women. Hell, I don’t get captivated by anything anymore. Not even the money, which I chased very hard for a very long time. Not even the thrill of opening a new business and shutting down any possible threats to my latest enterprise. But this moment, right here, with this bleeding beauty in my arms, I feel—
Christ, maybe that’s it in itself.
I feel.
I feel awake. Alive. Like I’m just opening my eyes for the first time in months and seeing in color, everything finally coming into focus after a long blur. I feel the wind on my skin. I feel the softness of the woman in my arms.
“I’m Scarlett,” she whispers. Then she winces and wipes at her mouth, smearing the blood there.
And I come out of whatever the fuck trance I’ve been in.
“Shit. We need to get you to a hospital.” I start to gently lower her to her feet so I can help her into the car when she tenses back up again.
“No.” Her eyes open wide. “No hospitals.” She starts shaking her head adamantly and as soon as I have her on her feet, she steps away from me like she’s intending to run.
“Stop. Your head,” I reach forward but then stop at the last moment before touching her. “That guy—” I shake my head, biting back my fury. “We need to see if you have a concussion. And your ribs,” I look down at the tiny waist I felt hidden beneath those ridiculous overalls she’s wearing. “We need to see if any of them are cracked. You need to get checked out.”
Her eyes flash at this. “We don’t need to do anything.” Her easy demeanor from the soup kitchen is gone, replaced by steel. “No hospitals. Ever.”
Then she wobbles on her feet and leans back against the Bentley.
Which of course sets off an earsplitting alarm. Her hands fly to her ears.
“Christ. Fuck.” I fumble in my pockets until I find the square key fob and press the button to turn off the alarm. It’s probably why the fuckers spray-painted on it instead of breaking the windows to try to steal it. A car this fucking expensive has a top of the line alarm system and even people in this neighborhood know it. Maybe especially people from this neighborhood.
Scarlett’s eyes flick between me and the edge of the building that leads around to the sidewalk. Shit. Is she thinking about just going off on her own? Without any money? Does she even have any place to go? She was just eating at a food kitchen. And why no hospitals? Is she running from something? Some one?
The last thought makes rage fire through my blood all over again.
“Why no hospitals?”
She glances up at me and then away, back toward the sidewalk. “You wouldn’t understand,” she mutters.
“I can protect you.” I take a step closer. “I swear, you’ll be safe. You need to get checked out.”
Her eyes flick back up to me and for a second, she can’t disguise her quick look of disgust.
And I get it, I really do.
I must seem like some rich asshole who doesn’t have the first clue about what her life is like. Which tells me two things—she has no idea who I am and has certainly never seen Kennedy Benson: A True American Rags to Riches Story. Even if she had, she still wouldn’t know the things I managed to keep hidden from the film crew, the documentary researchers, and Access Hollywood. That fucking documentary got the tame story of my life. No one knows the real fucking hole I crawled out of—or the deals I had to make with devils along the way to get where I am.
Scarlett only looks tired and beat down the next second. Her eyes are gentle when she looks back at me, but sad. “Look, it’s not the first time I’ve taken a hit.” She looks up at the sky and takes a deep breath in. “I can tell nothing’s broken. I’m okay.” She closes her eyes and repeats it, “I’m okay.” I get the feeling it’s something she has to reassure herself of on a regular basis. Or maybe only on the good days. And how many good days does she have in her life?
Because if I deal in devils, I get the feeling this woman has a bit of angel in her. Fifteen minutes in her company and I’ve never been more certain of anything. There’s this purity about her, in spite of this shithole neighborhood where we’re standing.
She breathes out long and deep, head falling back against the car and eyes going to the sky. It’s the second time she
’s done that, lifted her face up like that. I glance up but it’s just a regular San Francisco day. Blue skies after the morning fog burned off. It’s warm in the sunlight even though it’s late October. Scarlett shakes her head and the slightest of smiles comes back over her face. When she looks back at me, the contentment I remember from inside the soup kitchen is back.
“Everything’s going to be okay.” She stands up straighter and again I notice how tall she is. She’s wearing what look like combat boots and she comes up to my nose—so probably about 5’9 or 5’10. Christ, with her looks and height, she could be a model.
“You can’t live in the past.” She shakes her head. “You don’t know how often I’ve heard that advice.” She smiles at me wryly. “Seems like a good day to listen to it. Here’s to moving forward.” She raises an invisible glass and mimes toasting me. Then she laughs self-deprecatingly.
“All right, well,” she takes a step back. Like she’s about to leave.
No. No no no, she can’t go—
“Wait!” I lift an arm and then freeze, my arm just there in mid-air.
“Yeah?” Her eyebrows lift and then lower as she looks at my arm. I drop it to my side, then run it through my hair.
“Um.” Fuck. Get it to-fucking-gether. “So, do you have a place to stay?”
Because she’s not a fucking idiot, she hears the question I’m really asking: Are you homeless? And yeah, that’s just as awkward as you can imagine.
Her cheeks go pink and her eyes drop. “Oh, you know. I stay here and there.”
That’s not fucking acceptable. I don’t care how rude I’m being.
She looks away from me and wraps her arms around herself. In spite of the thick flannel she’s wearing, I can tell how thin she is. I had her in my arms.
“Look, none of this is your problem. Thanks for helping me out and all, but I should just get go—”
“Come home with me.”
Her eyes widen and I hear how that sounded. “No, not that,” I wave a hand. “I mean, you know, not like—”
