“That’s exactly why I shouldn’t leave him alone.” He raises his hands, palms up. “A guy can’t think straight when he’s got his dick inside a girl. A guy can’t think at all when his heart is stuck in there, too. Guys can’t even tie their shoes when they get carried away in love.”
I look down at my shoes and tip them sideways. “Mine are tied just fine.”
“Wait, are you in love or just screwing her?” he asks.
“I never said we slept together.”
“That’s not an answer. Wait, what? How come you haven’t screwed?” He closes his eyes and waves his hands. “Hold on.” His eyes shoot open. “Are you in love? Answer that question first.”
I light a cigarette and blow smoke at his face. A knock at the door saves me from having to continue with the interrogation.
“I’ll get it. Let me, let me.” Riley dashes past us. “I’m dying to see her dress.” She opens the door and pulls Autumn inside. “Hi. Wow. Super hot outfit. Where’d you get it?”
Autumn’s black wool coat is unbuttoned to show off a stylish black dress, the top snug, with intricate lace from her cleavage to the neckline, the bottom flaring at the knees over burgundy tights.
“Online,” Autumn replies.
“Are the sleeves long or short?” Riley snoops inside her coat to see.
“Short and capped,” she answers.
“Oooh, and they’re velvety like your scarf. I love it.”
“Thanks. By the way, I’m Autumn.” She holds out her hand, showing off a fingerless sequin glove.
“Oooh, pretty.” Riley blinks, running her fingers over it. “I’m Riley.” They shake.
“You look gorgeous,” I say, kissing her on the cheek. Her hair is in a bun with copper strands framing her face. Her makeup is light, using a hint of mascara and eyeliner, the focus on her burgundy lipstick.
Sean steps in. “Make sure you notice his tie.” He swings it back and forth. “Took him an hour to get it on.”
“Leave us alone, would you?” I make him step aside. “I feel like my parents are hovering over my prom date.”
Autumn straightens my tie and stares longingly at my face. “The tie matches your gray eyes perfectly. You look super handsome, babe. Ready?”
“Have him home by midnight,” Sean says, half-joking, half-serious.
“He’ll be home by ten.” Autumn pulls me out the door, giggling. “Ten in the morning. Don’t wait up.”
Riley pulls Sean back inside when he starts to follow. “ Stay here. He’ll be fine without you.”
He kicks the doorframe. “Be home tonight, or you’re grounded, mister. No TV, no video games, no nothing!” He slams the door, but a second later I hear his playful laughter from inside.
“He’s entertaining. It’s good to have a few close friends.” She tosses me the keys to her silver Forester, and I scoop them out of the air with one hand. She stands next to the passenger-side door, waiting for me to open it for her. I hold her hand as she settles into the seat, making sure she doesn’t slip in her heels. It drizzled today, a whopping forty-two degrees, turning the snow to slush and uncovering month’s old ice.
“You haven’t mentioned any … any friends, I mean.”
“My friends are now my enemies.” She steals the cigarette from my fingers, swinging her legs inside the car. “The guys on the force and the people I used to call friends—the ones who work in the government offices around my loft—they think I’m a traitor.” I glance at her, and something flares in her eyes. “But it doesn’t bother me,” she adds. “I’ll be respected and loved once I shed a little light on a certain situation. People will wake up to the truth eventually.”
I close her door and walk to the driver’s side, questioning what all that means.
Her seat is still warm when I drop inside. She tells me the address as I pull away from the curb. Referred to as Millionaire’s Row, the area is about three miles from here, in the heart of the city.
“You excited?” she asks.
“Yep, a nervous excitement. I haven’t done anything like this in a while.” I tug my coat sleeve down and shift anxiously in the seat.
“Dressing like a gentleman means you have to behave like one.” She tilts her head and smiles. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”
I laugh. “It’s a challenge. Lowly Polish guys don’t go to the Mayor’s Mansion for parties with the police commissioner’s daughter.”
“No?” She raises a brow.
“Lowly men from Northland don’t go anywhere; except to work and out to the bars, maybe to football and hockey games, sometimes to pool halls or bowling to pick up chicks.”
“Bowling, to pick up chicks?” She leans in and places the cigarette in my mouth. “I’m skeptical about that. Bowling and finding a date don’t seem to go hand in hand.” She takes the cigarette away after I inhale. “Did you tell your friends what I do?”
“Yeah, and Sean had the same reaction as me.”
“Well, like you, he’ll get over it.”
“I’m not entirely over it.” I tug my tie down, feeling choked. “I should’ve asked you more about the party. Do we dance, or eat, or what’s happening tonight?”
“It’s a social event. So yeah, dancing and eating.” She cracks the window. “Can you dance?”
“No, not really.”
“Well, there’ll be lots of important people to mingle with, people in high government positions, like my dad. The last two years I went solo, and before that, I used to go with my parents. It’s the first time I’ve had a date.”
“You never went with Nick?”
“Hell no.” She clutches her coat closed at her chest. “Nick didn’t take me out in public.”
“That should’ve been a red flag.”
“Yes, it should’ve been, except spending time with a guy who’s in a powerful position can make a woman’s head spin. Being starry-eyed got the best of me. Or maybe”—she presses her fingers to her lips—“it flushed out the worst in me.”
I wait for her to elaborate. Then have to ask when she doesn’t. “How so?”
She shrugs. “I’m not going to bore you with all the details. I just made a bad decision, that’s all.”
I keep a blank expression and try to appear uninterested, but I’m aching to find out. Typically, former bed buddies are meaningless. But it’s clear there’s something off about this Nick guy.
“Do you talk to him a lot?” I ask.
“Only when necessary.”
“But he invited you tonight?”
“As always. Either Nick’s wife or his assistant compiled the list. And before you ask, no, his wife doesn’t know I was with him.”
“With him, how? Was this a long-term relationship or just a casual fling?”
She snubs the question. “Nick always looks for me at these parties. He expects me to show.”
“Why’s that?”
She pivots in her seat, putting her hand on my forearm. “He knows I enjoy nosing around. It’s the perfect social event for someone in my line of work, but dreary when I get hit on. And single women always get hit on.” Her hand slips away. “One time, a guy asked me if I wanted to boink in one of the hallway closets. He said that, Dylan. Boink. Does that turn you on? Would hearing that word turn anybody on?” She leans back, waving her finger ahead. “Don’t miss the turn … here, make a right.”
“No worries. I got it.”
She flips down the passenger-side visor to check her hair. “The party is in a big ballroom in the back of the mansion, and the drinks are out of the way in an enclosed back patio. I haven’t seen many other rooms. Nick and I didn’t screw here, in case you’re wondering.”
“I wasn’t.” But yes, I was.
“We used to go to his other house in the burbs.” She pauses to smoke. “He said he was protecting me from having my face plastered all over the news. It was sleazy now that I think about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took
other women there. I was stupid for thinking I was special.”
“You are special, Autumn.”
She flicks the cigarette out the window, waits a minute for the smoke to clear, and seals us in.
I can tell she’s tense, brushing the bottom of her dress, wringing her hands. Like all of us, Autumn’s damaged. She’s not an oddity who doesn’t feel, who doesn’t have moments of pain or regret. No one’s an escape artist when it comes to emotions. No one can make it through life without experiencing an event that changes them considerably. I think Nick was Autumn’s event. But like me, she doesn’t want anyone’s pity. She just needs to vent. We all need to vent. And often.
“I don’t know if you should hear any more about him,” she says in a hushed voice.
“Yes, I should. You sound bothered when you talk about him.”
“I’m not bothered; I’m embarrassed. He humiliated me. He turned one of the most precious things a woman has into some weird operating expense. Unreal.” She takes a clutch purse out of the glove compartment, her pink handgun exposed before it’s snapped shut. “I didn’t make the best choice when I was with him, but it was definitely my own. He didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to do; he just distorted the idea of what I thought it was.”
“You plan on killing him?” I nod at her purse.
She laughs. “Of course not. If I wanted to kill him, I would’ve done it two years ago. He’s a total scuz-bucket, but a necessary friend if I want to be successful. My job would be over if the mayor turned against me.”
“So I don’t have to beat him up tonight?” I smile.
She smiles back and shakes her head. “No, but when you meet him, keep in mind that he has an agenda. Don’t be fooled by anything he says.”
“An agenda with who, me?”
“Everyone. He’s a politician. What he asks of people is for his own personal gain. Be cautious of that.”
“Did that ‘personal gain’ come into play in your relationship?”
“Absolutely.”
“How?” I glance at her. “Can’t you tell me what happened so I stop daydreaming about it? Like, was he rough and tied you up?”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm? Hmm what, Autumn?”
“Last turn is up ahead. Pull into the second driveway and park around back. There’s a lot behind the house for visitors who come to tour the home.”
“Don’t dance around this conversation.”
She reaches into the back seat and pulls out a small gift wrapped in black paper and a gold bow. “Dylan, I don’t have much else to say about my sex life, other than it’s been almost nonexistent since him.”
I park in the space farthest from the mansion. “Quit holding back on me.” I grab her arm before she can get out of the car. “If you like me, don’t shut me out. It’s better if I know what this guy did before I meet him.”
She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. “Okay,” she says softly. After a slight hesitation, she sucks in a breath and holds it. “We were together for a few months.” She exhales. “I gave in when he told me he loved me. Then he paid me.”
“For sex?”
“For my virginity.”
“Ugh.” I close my eyes. “He paid you? You agreed to that?”
“Jesus, Dylan.” She gives me a harsh look. “Of course not. I didn’t know that was his plan. He left me with a grand after we fucked. I was duped and treated like a prostitute. I spent months with him thinking there was more, and he spent months waiting for it, just to toss me aside when it was over.”
I rub my temples, feeling another throbbing headache coming on. “Sure I can’t beat him up? Or kill him?”
“It made me stronger,” she says.
“It shouldn’t have happened.” I pause, wanting to apologize for something I didn’t do. “Autumn…” I rest my hand on her cheek, staring into her eyes. “… It sucks, and I’m sorry it happened. Someone needs to say that to you.”
She draws in her bottom lip, flashing a cute half-smile. “You don’t think any less of me now?”
“No. I’ve lost all respect for him, not you. You actually still talk to this creep?”
“I told you, I don’t have a choice. Nick’s the mayor. This is political.”
“Sounds like my relationship with Ed.”
“Exactly.” She places the gift in my lap, gesturing to unwrap it. “We’re done talking about it. Open my gift so we can go inside and get a drink.”
“You got me something?”
She nods. “Open it.”
I put the bow on the dash and tear open the paper, lifting the lid off the box. “Holy shit.”
“It’s a Glock.”
“I know what it is.” I pull the gun out, immediately feeling an incredible surge of power.
“I’m not dating a man who doesn’t carry.”
I hold it up higher, and she forces it down.
“It has a belt clip. Put it in the back of your pants for now. And be careful. It’s loaded.”
“I’m not taking it inside.” I start to place it back in the box.
“Yes, you are. You’re taking it everywhere.”
“After what you just said about Nick? No way. I have to leave it out here.”
She stops me from putting it away. “I’ll take care of things if we get frisked at the door. Take it.”
“Autumn.”
“Dylan, listen to me.”
I can’t stop staring at it. My hands are even shaking a little bit. She got me a gun. Autumn got me a gun. “Thank you. It’s terrific.”
“You’re welcome.”
I look down at the heart tattoo on her finger, and up into her eyes, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Remember that thing you said about people only being interesting when they have a story to tell?”
“Yeah.”
“That includes you. Don’t be afraid to open up to me, no matter what.”
“Let me add to that.” She opens her door. “It’s quite all right to tear out some of the pages of the story.”
I grin. “True. I have a few I’d like to put through a shredder.”
We walk through the parking lot, my eyes drifting over the mansion, darkness upon us. I listen to the distant voices coming from inside, wondering which is Nick’s.
Autumn takes my hand and gently swings it as we step closer to the door. My skin crawls and burns, knowing the gun is on me.
Maybe I won’t feel contempt when I see him.
My usual calm when I’m with her wanes, replaced with a sense of some impending doom. I feel it, something ugly brewing inside, poised on the end of my tongue.
Maybe this one time I’ll be able to keep my mouth shut.
22
“Call Nick.” Autumn folds her arms, sticking her nose in the air at the security guard working the front door.
I knew I should’ve left my gun in her Forester, but Autumn said she’d take care of it, and she is.
“Autumn. Autumn Black. Tell Nick we have a Glock and a Walther. It’s my Walther P22. He knows it. We’re not carrying anything else.”
The guy listens to Nick on the other end of his cell. “Sir, you sure about that?” With his mouth closed, his tongue moves over his bottom teeth, causing a bulge under his lip. “Whatever you say.” He puts his cell away and hands me the gun. “Mayor Faulkner said to keep it out of sight. If it comes out, you’ll be taken out.”
Nick Faulkner—mayor, scum, the ass who hurt my girl—just welcomed me into his mansion with a threat. I’m gonna be taken out? Well, fancy that.
Autumn takes my hand and pulls me down a long hallway filled with gold furnishings and dark portraits of old men, through a set of double doors, and over to a cloakroom attendant who checks our coats. We head toward a second set of double doors elaborately carved with dead game birds, powder horns, and oak leaves. I reach out to touch the imagery, but the ornate doors swing open to a majestic bal
lroom before I have a chance.
“Whoa.” I tilt my head back to check out the Civil War battle scene painted on the ceiling. “Where are we?”
“Don’t expect puffy clouds and cherubs from Nick.”
“I can see that. It’s mind-blowing.”
“Pompous.”
“Maybe so, and oozing with testosterone.” My eyes travel quickly over the two-story room. Gold chandeliers, hardwood floors so dark they look like a sea of black, and a balcony at the far end, teeming with silhouettes of men smoking cigars. “Autumn, this is way outta my league. This place is full of money-in-the-bank, gun-wielding men.”
“Nick doesn’t carry a gun.”
“Even so, I feel like I’m in a movie.”
“Dylan”—she tugs my arm—“close your mouth, please.”
My head is flooded with thoughts of her asking me to kill the mayor. “Why do I need my gun on me again?”
“You don’t. But having it puts you in a position of power. Don’t let Nick’s security think they’re the only ones in control of the room.”
“You’re using me.” I bet that’s true. I’m on display for her ex. She wants him to know her new man has a Glock.
She puts her hand on my hip. “Your past was about being a street-smart snitch, and since you never ended up with a bullet in your head, you must’ve been a good one. But now you need to learn how to be savvy with a group of very different people.” She pulls me closer, whispering, “On the streets, you never mention you have a weapon. It’s always hidden. You act like a normal guy looking to score a hit. Here, you walk in and show off what you got. Flaunt it from the get-go and you’ll be respected. Build trust from the start.”
I nod, my anxiety off the charts. I need a drink. “Where’s the liquor?”
“Back this way.”
We walk through a swarm of women out on the dance floor. They sway their hips to the “Macarena” in a continuous snaking line, smiling at whoever’s near, having a ball snapping their fingers and kicking their feet, putting their hands behind their heads, then down on their hips.
“Heyyyy Macarena!” the crowd shouts.
“I need a drink, fast,” I gripe.
The Lost Night Page 20
