She bats her fake eyelashes. “Okay. If you say so.”
I tip my head toward her untouched beer. “Are you going to drink that?”
“Yeah.” She jumps off her barstool and straightens her skirt to cover her panties, but not before I’ve caught a glimpse of the candy-pink lace. “I just have to visit the ladies first.”
Shooting me a smile, she pushes out her small tits. She’s not wearing a bra. Her nipples pebble under the thin fabric. She drapes the sling of her bag over her shoulder and grabs the beer, taking both with her down the hallway to the toilet, presumably so I don’t spike her drink.
Wise girl.
The guys at the bar check out her butt when she sashays past. One of them straightens, adjusting his cock as he follows her progress with his eyes. I know what’s going through the cocksucker’s mind. He’s envisioning a quick, juicy fuck in the toilets. He’s imagining slamming her back against the cunts and other crass words written on the wall and groping her tits while sinking his cock and balls inside her. He’s thinking about shooting his load up her pussy and letting it dribble down her thighs as he pushes a twenty in her cleavage before going back to his drink.
It’s not going to fucking happen.
I get off my barstool and flick my leather jacket open, making sure every person with a dick sees the gun in my waistband before I follow the woman down the hallway. The door of the toilet swings shut behind her. It’s one of those doors with a gap at the top and the bottom. I’m tall enough to see over the top and immoral enough to look, making sure I hang back in the shadows. She doesn’t enter the toilet stall, but stops in front of the basin and leaves the beer on the edge. Taking a brown bottle from her bag, she uncaps it and shakes out two pills.
It’s as if a bucket of ice water was dumped over my head. Frost douses the fire in my veins. My heart stops and starts, and my whole body turns into a live wire. Anyone else could’ve easily mistaken those pills for MDMA or LSD. Not me. I’m intimately familiar with the brown bottle and the logo that reflects in the mirror.
It’s a beta blocker, a chronic medication for heart disease.
What the fuck?
I look at her face again. If I scrub away all that gaudy make-up and put blond hair on her, she could be Cas. She’s got the same build, the same attitude.
Stumbling back a step, I lean against the wall and rub the heels of my palms over my face. Maybe I’m hallucinating. Maybe I’m going crazy. It wouldn’t surprise me. But what are the chances of a woman who takes the same medication Cas used to take walking into this bar on the anniversary of her funeral?
My body is numb with shock, but I refuse to hope just yet. I need to walk her out of this bar and figure out who she is and what her plans are. I need to get her into that motel room and assure myself that my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me. I have to strip her from those godawful clothes to ascertain it’s her. With make-up plastered in thick layers onto her face, her features can lie, but her naked body can’t. Her smell and accent can lie, but never my body’s reaction.
When she washes her hands and checks herself in the mirror, I go to the end of the hallway and wait. She barges through the swing door and gives a start when she spots me. Her steps slow as if she’s worried I’d back her up into the toilet and have my way with her, but when I offer her a smile, she squares her shoulders and walks over.
Taking the beer from her hand, I leave it on the bar counter. “Ready?”
“Yes,” she says, narrowing her green eyes for the minutest of seconds. Then she paints a saucy smile on her face and leads the way to the door.
My heart is galloping like a wild horse in my chest. The echo of those runaway hoofs reverberates in my skull. Blood rushes through my veins. Every part of my body is electrified with awareness. I’m alive, alert, as I follow her into the night.
She stiffens when I place my palm on the small of her back. For my part, it’s an instinctive act, a point of contact I need but also to guide her safely across the dark lot. She quickly recovers, visibly relaxing her shoulders and pretending the touch doesn’t bother her when goosebumps run over her arms. I resist the urge to remove my jacket and hang it over her shoulders. My only aim is getting her across the street and into her room where I can strip her down to the truth.
She’s my Cas. I know it. I know it with an inborn instinct. But why? Why would she hide away for a year and let me believe the worst? Why would she let me go through that hell? Why come back as someone else? Why pretend?
Questions turn in my head while I get drunk on her presence. I’m shit scared I’ll open my eyes and discover it’s a dream. Yet the naked skin of her midriff under my palm is real. So is the heat emanating from her body and the shiver that runs over her when I brush my thumb over her spine.
Why?
I’m about to find out, and I won’t stop until I have every answer and every detail I crave.
Her heels clack across the street. She leads the way to the motel and stops under the yellow light that illuminates door number six. I’m a mess inside, battling to get a handle on the relief, anger, and disbelief warring in my chest. She’s facing the door with her back turned to me as she goes through her bag, presumably for the key. I have an unstoppable urge to press her against that wood and slide my hand up her thigh under the skirt. To feel her. To be sure.
She’s fumbling, her body growing tenser by the second.
Bracing a palm on the doorframe, I lean in. Our bodies barely brush together, but every inch of her length burns my skin through the layers of our clothes. I tilt my head to the arc of her neck and inhale that erroneous scent of candy while she’s going through her bag, ignorant about the fact that I’m sniffing her like a dog in heat.
The words grate my throat, cracking with rusty lust. “What’s your name?” I will her to say it, to utter the name of a ghost.
“Cindy,” she says, stiffening more.
For a hooker who’s been very intent on getting into my pants, she’s suddenly strangely nervous.
I slide an arm around her waist, hold out my palm in front of her, and order in a gruff voice, “Give me the key.”
“Okay,” she says, finally extracting what she’s looking for from her bag, but instead of dropping the key in my palm, she twists around and presses her back against the door.
Her eyes, those wrong green eyes, simmer with something like hurt. No, hatred.
Then I look down and see what she’s pointing at my stomach.
A gun.
Chapter 4
Cas
Seeing him is too much. My heart can’t cope with it. He’s wearing his brown leather jacket, the old one, with a pair of jeans, looking more manly than ever. There’s a new edge to him, something more dangerous. I can’t put my finger on it, but that something I sense is irresponsible and volatile, like taking uncalculated risks without caring about the consequences.
What’s worse is he’s still wearing the Nyaminyami pendant. The god of the river hangs just above the V-neck of his T-shirt. He kept his promise to never take it off. It would’ve been easier if he’d broken that promise. Only sheer willpower prevents me from staring at it.
It takes everything I have and more to act the part of a hooker in need of a lay. What isn’t a lie is the dampness in my slutty underwear. There’s no need to fake that. He still has the same, devastating effect on me. I only hate him more for it. Pulling the trigger will be so much sweeter.