“Is it me, or is it colder here in Jersey?” I asked, following her up the walkway.
“I’ll keep you warm, big guy,” she said with an exaggerated wink.
I gave her ass a slap. And then immediately shifted gears into preparing a safety lecture with some significant yelling when she opened the front door without unlocking it first.
That lecture was put on the back burner when I followed her inside.
“What the… Tell me you don’t actually live here.”
What I assumed had been a living room at some point was a tidy ruin.
“It’s not that bad,” Ally said with a roll of her brown eyes. It wasn’t really her fault that she wasn’t taking this seriously. Basking in the glow of the impressive number of orgasms that I’d personally delivered, she hadn’t noticed how pissed off I really was. “Just watch your step,” she cautioned.
“There’s a hole in your ceiling.” It was the first of many, many problems I had with the room.
There was a gaping hole in the ceiling. The plywood floor was water-stained in a six-foot radius. The carpet had been removed at some point, but the strips of tacks were still in place, offering a nice dance with tetanus to anyone who ventured too close.
The spot against the wall where I assumed a TV had once been was bare, the drywall behind it stained and bowed. Capped wires hung out of a hole.
“It used to be a lot worse,” she said cheerfully. “There used to be a bathtub right there.”
She pointed to the spot.
It was freezing in the house. I blinked at the thermostat reading. Fifty-two fucking degrees.
“It happened right before Dad was diagnosed. He forgot he left the faucet running. It overflowed and ran all night. The tub fell through the floor. It wrecked the entire bathroom and part of the hallway and bedroom upstairs. Down here. Well, you can see. The worst was the piano,” she said sadly, gesturing toward the ruined instrument. “My father loves music. We used to play together, make up silly songs. Just the two of us. On his good days, we used to joke that he couldn’t have done more damage if he tried.”
“Why are you living like this?” I asked.
“You don’t really want to hear yet another Morales family story of woe,” she said lightly, but I could hear the note of strain in her voice.
Oh, but I did. I pinned her with my gaze.
“Geez. Fine. So my mother stealing my father’s savings was just the first problem.”
I needed to move, so I wandered around the room while she talked. I paused at the piano.
“No shit,” I spat. I was so fucking angry that the woman I’d spent my evenings lusting after from my warm, cushy Upper West Side townhouse had been living here. Like this.
She picked up a box of drywall screws and put it on an end table.
I stopped pacing and leaned against the wall.
“Once upon a time, I had savings too,” she sighed.
I waited. Not trusting myself to keep the anger roiling beneath the surface contained.
“After I moved back, I hired a contractor. A contractor who came in twenty percent below the other bids. I thought I was being smart with my money, but…” She waved her hand around the room. “It was the worst thing I could have done. He took the check and ran. Twenty thousand dollars. “
I swore ripely. Besides touching Ally again, my second priority was to find this contractor and punch him in his face until he had no teeth left.
“Yeah, pretty much my sentiments,” she agreed. “With my savings gone, I cashed in my retirement savings to cover the nursing home. That’s all gone now too.”
“I want the contractor’s name and contact information. Your mother’s too,” I said.
“Good luck with that. The business number is disconnected, and the Facebook page is nothing but posts from people demanding their money back. My mother is out of the country building schools or planting crops. Anyway, the rest of my savings went to the nursing home. Again, astronomically expensive, but my father deserves the best care I can get him, and I’m not letting him go back to the other place.”
I’d heard enough. I was going to hunt that fucking contractor and her thieving, holier-than-thou mother down and wring them dry until every cent they owed Ally was paid back.
“Get your things. You’re not staying here anymore.”
“Dom. You’re overreacting.”
“It’s fucking freezing in here! There’s a fucking hole in your fucking ceiling. If you take one step to the left, you’re going to end up with dirty fucking nails in your foot.” I was yelling now, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to stop.
“Look, I know it’s not the Four Seasons,” she snapped.
“The Four Seasons? This isn’t even a burned-out hull of a roach motel frequented by toothless prostitutes and meth-addicted johns. You’re not staying here.”
She drilled a finger into my chest. “Breaking news, Dom. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
I felt physically ill. Thinking about all those nights I’d been fantasizing about her in my big, warm bed. In my comfortable home with food in the fridge and heat and money. And she’d been here. I thought about the balance of the trust fund I’d touched once. The one that could have saved her from all of this.
“Ally, don’t fight me on this. You’re not spending another night under this Swiss cheese roof.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“If a codes inspector showed up right now, he’d rule this place uninhabitable. You’re not staying. Pack your shit. Now.”
“Just because we had sex doesn’t give you any right to tell me what to do.”
I dragged her a step away from the tack strip she was standing too close to. I was so angry the edges of my vision were going red. “Listen to me, Ally. I don’t care if this is inappropriate or high-handed or controlling. You aren’t staying here. I’m not fucking around. And you’re not winning this one.”
“I know you’ve never had to deal with not having money, but staying someplace better involves rent money. A lot of it. And the more money I pay out to expenses like that, the less I have for my dad.”
I closed my eyes. Clenching my jaw, I tried to count backward from twenty. I was so fucking pissed at her, at myself, at the assholes who screwed her over, that I didn’t trust myself to speak.
“Dom—”
“You matter to me, Ally. Do you get that? I care about you. And yet you insist on not taking what I can offer you. I need you safe. I need you warm and happy and fed and rested. Goddammit, Ally. You are killing me with this stupid pride.”
She was staring up at me wide-eyed and dazed.
“You can’t make me leave you here. You have to understand that, Ally.”
“Why are you so mad?” she whispered.
“Why? Because I live in a three-bedroom townhouse with all the heat and food and fucking solid floors I could ever want. And this whole time you’ve been here. Your front door doesn’t even lock.”
“Don’t push your privileged guilt off on me. I never asked for—”
“Anything. You never asked for any fucking thing. I can make all of your problems go away. I can fix all of this, and you won’t let me!” I needed to take a step back. I needed some space for this helpless rage that was clawing its way up my throat. But I didn’t want to not be touching her.