Even after the hideous questions the journalists would shout at me whenever they had their chance.
Even after having everything I owned taken from me.
Even after losing my job.
Even after walking into multitudes of stores and restaurants and seeing people’s faces change when they recognized me.
And even after hearing some of the things they said, either straight to my face or under their breath.
Truthfully, it wasn’t that big of a story. We were just another in a never-ending cycle of greed, ugliness and negativity the public at large consumed with wild abandon like the news was a daily Bacchanal.
But Rogan was young, handsome, a fallen golden boy, and some of the details were salacious, and those kinds of descents from grace lived a life much longer than anyone’s fifteen minutes.
As for me, I was forced into the role of the chump. The putz. I was so stupid I didn’t know that my husband was living large from stealing people’s pensions. Sleeping with high-class call girls in New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas. Squiring them around, drinking champagne, eating at the finest restaurants, giving them presents as well as paying them for sex.
I didn’t know, but some people believed I couldn’t be that stupid. Some people thought I put up with it for my fancy house and my fancy car and my fancy clothes (and I did have all that, but it wasn’t that fancy). Some people thought I enjoyed my beautiful life living off other people’s misfortune as handed to them by my thieving, cheating husband, and I’d turned a blind eye so I could keep that life.
Either way, everyone—and that was pretty much everyone nationwide, but definitely in Phoenix—felt I got what I deserved.
I got what I deserved for being stupid enough to fall in love.
I squared my shoulders and buried the pain before I looked back at Buck, locked eyes and replied, “No. I didn’t know about the whores.”
“Toots—” he whispered.
I cut him off. “What did she expect?”
“Darlin’—”
I turned away and walked back to the tequila.
It was me who poured two new shots, grabbed both in one hand and walked back to him. I lifted the shots and watched his hand take one, but I didn’t watch him shoot it. I just shot mine, flinched, belted back a gulp of beer and put the shot glass on the side of the table.
I looked at him again.
“What did she expect?” I repeated.
Buck studied my face a moment before answering, “She expected me to keep our lives as they were and not make any waves.”
“And those waves you apparently were making?” I prompted.
“Sorry, Toots,” he said gently. “That’s another question.”
“Right,” I stated. “Fine, then ask one of me.”
“I’m thinkin’ we should focus on pool for a while,” he told me.
I nodded instantly and turned to the table.
“Great. Perfect,” I declared, examining the table. “What do I do now?”
“You’re solids, babe. You see your shot?” he asked.
I stared at the table, focusing on what would possibly be my shot. I found it, set my beer aside and pointed.
“Good girl,” he murmured, and I felt his body move into me. Forcing mine down, he situated the cue on the table. “Hands on mine,” he instructed.
I did as I was told.
He moved my hands to where he wanted them and said in my ear, “See how this is lined up?”
I didn’t. I wasn’t paying attention to much except his heat at my back, his power surrounding me, the fact that I was careening toward drunk and the hollow feeling of despair that had a permanent hold of my stomach but was now sharpened to the point I wondered why I was still standing.
“Yes,” I lied.
He again drew the cue back and then jabbed it forward in a controlled way, hitting the ball. The white ball cracked into the other ball at an angle and it shot straight into the side pocket.
“Finesse,” he whispered into my ear.
“Right,” I replied, pushing back against his body to straighten.
He allowed this and I walked away from him and grabbed my beer.
I sucked some back as I heard Buck call out, “Driver, another Lite and another Bud.”
“Gotcha,” the young biker called back.
I dropped my hand, looked at Buck and informed him honestly, “You should know, I’m already drunk, and if I have much more, I’ll be very drunk and unable to operate my vehicle legally. You should also know I have exactly twelve cents in my purse and one dollar and fifty-seven cents in my bank account, and therefore I will be unable not only to order a taxi, but also to buy a bus ticket. And lastly you should know that, even if I wasn’t wearing four-inch heels, I live too far away to walk home.”
Buck studied me another long moment before he got close.
So close I could feel his warmth and his hand came up and curled around the side of my neck, sliding to the back.
I was shocked by this even after the pool lesson touching. He was so close I had to tip my head far back to catch his eyes and find he was actually so close that, if I lifted half an inch up on my toes, my mouth would be on his.
Oh dear.
“And you should know, Clara,” he murmured, using my real name for the first time in his gravelly, deep voice, making it sound like another name altogether. Another name that belonged to another woman, that woman not me, but that woman being a woman I wished I could be. “That I know exactly what’s in your account and I know you haven’t had lunch and I know you haven’t had breakfast, and I know it’s because you can’t afford either. I know you’ve got a master’s in library science and I know no one will hire you because his mud stuck to you. I know Tia Esposito is the only thing you got, which means that put you in the path of her husband. And I know Enrique Esposito is the kind of cockroach that’s able to sniff out vulnerability and manipulate it purely for shits and grins. And last, I know that you’re tryin’ to do your best with the hand you got dealt, but even so, babe, you are totally fuckin’ this shit up by makin’ all the wrong plays.”
Something about that angered me, and with that, my heightened emotion and the tequila in my system, I didn’t guard my reply.
“Okay, West,” I stated. “You may know all that, and I suspect you know more. What you do not know is what it means to be me. There are a fair few people, thank God, who know what it means to be me. So, what I know is you don’t know that first thing about how to play the hand I’ve been dealt. No one can know that unless they spend time in my shoes. So don’t you stand there and make judgments about me. You have no clue, no clue, what it is to be me. And I not only know that because you’re not me, but because, earlier, you said I entered this game. You were wrong. I didn’t enter it. I was shoved into it. So you don’t know everything, West Hardy. You know a lot, but you don’t know anything that’s important. So you cannot tell me I’m making the wrong plays because you don’t get what it means when every breath is an effort at survival. I’m breathing so my take on this is, I’m doing all right.”
He stared down at me and I held his stare.
Then, apropos of absolutely nothing, he asked, “Are you a vegetarian?”
I felt my head jolt and my brows shoot together before I answered, “No, why?”