Good question.
Something I should absolutely not be doing, that’s for damn sure.
Without waiting on an invitation, I push forward, forcing her to take a step back. “Hey! I didn’t invite you in,” she snaps, but she doesn’t try to stop me either. Instead I catch the defeat and hopelessness in her eyes as I walk through, handing her phone back to her.
“You have a text from your other job on there. I didn’t mean to read it, but the window popped up when I picked it up. I’m sorry,” I tell her as I look around.
And the moment I see this place, that’s it. If I thought I was resolved in the car when I found her phone and read that message, that shit has nothing on me now.
A creeping fire of fury crawls up my spine and I have to take a deep breath to snuff it out. Her apartment is clean, but that’s its only redeeming quality. It’s tiny, likely no more than two hundred square feet. Half the size of a regular hotel room. She has a small, closed window despite the insufferable heat and rising stench from downstairs.
Her twin-size mattress sits directly below it with a couple of storage bins acting as her closet. She has a mini-fridge and a hot plate as her kitchen. A toilet, tiny white sink that’s affixed to the wall, and an open stall with a hand-held sprayer and a drain in the floor as her bathroom.
I turn on her, my mind going wild, spinning in a hundred directions. And I can’t contain it. I can’t stop it. She can’t live here like this. Not anymore. Not hurt the way she is.
“Pack your stuff,” I manage through gritted teeth. “We’re leaving. You’re going to stay with me.”
There’s a hard glint to her eyes. “Keith, this is none of your business.”
I know it’s not. I. Know. It’s. Not. But that doesn’t change anything for me right now.
“If you don’t do it in the next two minutes, I will do it for you.”
Anger darkens her features, staining her cheeks red but her anger has nothing on mine. I can go all day over this.
“No, you will not. My home may not be up to your standards, but I will not apologize for it. You may have helped me out last night, but I don’t know you. You do not own me, nor are you in any position to dictate where or how I live my life. Now get the fuck out.” She points to the door with her good hand.
“I can’t do that.”
“The hell you can’t!” she yells in my face, working up a good head of steam and shoving at me. “I did not invite you into my life. I have enough shit to deal with. I don’t need you adding to it. Please go!” she points again at the door, but her voice cracks and her chin trembles.
I soften my approach as I take a small step in her direction. “I’m not here to add to your burden. I’m here to help it. To make it better if I can. That’s all I’m trying to do.”
She shakes her head, not trusting me for a second. I inch in closer, expecting her to shove at me again, but she remains still, pissed-off and skeptical of my intentions.
I don’t blame her.
Men have not treated this woman well. Hell, humans have not treated this woman well. But men especially if I had to guess, considering she automatically assumed I was only helping her for sex. She’s young and beautiful and built like a playboy centerfold.
And men can be real pieces of shit sometimes.
“Do you truly want me to leave? To walk out that door and never come back?”
My question stuns her somehow and she spins around, giving me her back as she faces the window.
“Yes,” she says after a beat, but she’s lying. I can hear it. That’s her pride talking, not her heart. She’s scared and untrusting.
It’s about a hundred degrees in here, the hot late-summer California sun is beaming straight through the glass. The acrid scent of cooking drugs wafts up through the floorboards. No one lives here unless they have no other option, or they want to be off the police radar. This girl has a story. Likely not a good one.
She could be trouble for me. For my very public image.
But right now, in this room that is nothing but the definition of desperate and broke, I don’t care about my image. Or even what the guys will say when they see her… and they will have a lot to say when they see her.
She evokes every ounce of caveman-quality, alpha-male protectiveness in me, and I can’t do it. I can’t go despite my threats. “You deserve so much better than this.”
“I don’t need you to save me,” she whispers, her voice gathering strength. “I appreciate what you’re doing and what you’ve already done but now it’s time for you to go.”
She turns back around and the sorrow and torment in her eyes drops me to my knees.
I’ve seen this look before.
My hands come out and before I know what the hell I’m doing, I’m cupping her face, tilting it so she’s looking directly into my eyes. I stare back into hers with an intensity I cannot hide, and for a flicker of a second, I get lost in her. My skin tingles and my heart races. If this were any other woman in any other situation, I’d kiss the hell out of her right here and now. Part of me wishes I could just so I could wipe away her misery and replace it with something else.
I smile softly into her eyes. I like that she’s tall. I’m six-five and typically I tower over women. Not this one.
“Please do this for me, Maia. Think of it as my repayment for last night if that makes you feel better. But I cannot walk out of here and leave you behind. The thought fucking kills me. It’s not the kind of man I am.”
Tears cling bravely to her eyes, wetting her lashes, but none fall. “Why?”
There is so much pain and confusion and fear behind that one word. She’s not asking why I can’t leave her; she’s asking why I’m so determined to bring her with me.
I can’t answer that without revealing too much and I can’t go there.
“All I want to do is help you. That’s it. There is nothing sinister going on here. It’s not about sex or anything else bad that’s going through your pretty head. You need to take this, Maia. Don’t let something stupid and insignificant like pride keep you here when I’m offering you something so much better. I have a nice house that doesn’t smell like drugs and isn’t hotter than the fucking sun.”
She smirks a little and relief swims through my chest, releasing some of the tension in my muscles. My hands drop from her face and I take a necessary step back. She doesn’t understand that I have to save her. I fucking have to. Please say yes, Maia. Please.
“And where would I be sleeping in your house?”
I grin devilishly because I just said it, didn’t I? Men can be real pieces of shit sometimes and she’s just about the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen. “You don’t want to sleep with me?”
She growls and I chuckle, shaking my head and throwing my hands up in surrender.
“You’ll have your own bedroom, Miss Angelo. Own bathroom too with a real shower and a door you can lock if you want. I’ll even put you in the guestroom that’s farthest from mine.”
“Keith—”
“Maia, say yes. Please, say yes.”
She puffs out a breath and spins around, indecision warring in her mind. She looks around and then down at her broken arm that’s cradled against her chest. Finally, she meets my eyes again. “This is only temporary. Just until I’m back on my feet a bit.”