For several long seconds she watched him go, wondering who the hell he was and why she reacted so...positively toward him. As he disappeared down the street, head and shoulders above the few people still rushing about, she told herself it didn’t matter.
Whoever he was, she wasn’t going to see him again.
A chance encounter that wouldn’t be repeated.
After Liam fractured her trust and their friendship, she had no one left. The phone company had cut off her cell phone so he couldn’t get in touch with her, but if he had...she wouldn’t have replied. Wouldn’t have answered his calls.
He could have stabbed her in the heart and not hurt her as much as this.
Bodie never wanted to trust anyone again. Her family could go to hell. Liam could join them. And as for Mr. Mysterious...well, whatever his problem was, he’d just have to deal with it on his own.
People couldn’t be trusted.
Even the one who’d been with her through thick and thin, the high times and the periods of wading through shit so high she thought she might drown in it. The one she’d supported when he’d come out of the closet, when he’d had no one but her to lean on.
She was done with the whole fucking population of planet earth.
With her sodden gear in hand, feeling like a gutter rat caught in a storm drain, Bodie plodded home. The cold was seeping into her bones, making her feel fragile. The boombox seemed to weigh twice what it did earlier in the day, and she wasn’t sure it wasn’t just a useless pile of junk now.
Maybe she should just toss it and her dreams in the trash once and for all. Let her ambitions of dancing float away on the wind and just fade into a meaningless existence where serving fast food was the highlight of her day.
She was tired of fighting for something she couldn’t keep.
By the time she reached her crappy apartment, her body was no longer connected to her brain. The cold eroded every last nerve ending into painful numbness, and thanks to the SUV that drove through the puddle right next to Bodie at faster than wise speed, she was as wet as she could possibly get.
She had indeed thrown the boombox in the first trashcan she could find.
Her key scraped into the stiff lock, turned with effort she couldn’t quite muster the first time. Her fingers were frozen, useless. The door stuck, then popped open when she kicked the bottom corner. She almost fell into her hallway, barely managing to catch herself on the wall.
She shut the door, shivering madly now she was out of the wind and rain. Droplets landed on the carpet, and as she staggered down the hall, she left dark footprints in her wake.
Dropping her moneybox on the armchair in the living room—one of the last pieces of furniture she had left after selling just about everything else to try raise some cash—she headed into the bathroom and stripped out of her heavy clothes, leaving them in a sodden heap.
The cold nip in the air stole her breath as it bit into her wet flesh. Knowing it wasn’t going to help much, she flipped the shower on and stepped under the pitifully weak stream of water that wasn’t more than a couple degrees warmer than the fucking rain.
Miserable, feeling depressingly alone and unloved, she squeezed her eyes shut and forced the tears away. Pitying herself was no excuse to let her weakness get the better of her. She was stronger than that, had spent years making damn sure she was stronger than anything and everything that came her way. Being held captive by her emotions was not going to happen.
Twenty-seven years’ worth of memories had been systematically repressed to ensure nothing had the power to send her to her knees.
So she’d had to sell just about everything she owned. It was just possessions, the trappings of society. She didn’t need a couch or a TV. Why have a bed when a mattress on the floor worked just as well? Taking her life to the bare essentials was enlightening, freeing, good for the goddamn soul.
When her breath hitched threateningly, Bodie bared her teeth and slapped some sense into herself. She needed to get dried, get dressed, and get her ass into gear. There might be enough loose change from her takings today to get something filling from the store.
No more moping or feeling sorry for herself.
When rock bottom was the only thing she could feel beneath her feet, it meant the only thing she could do was claw herself back up. Claw and gouge her way out of the shit and prove to everyone she wasn’t a failure. That she could take care of herself no matter what was thrown at her. That she was worthy of being loved.
No.
Bodie curled her lip as she shut off the water and reached for her towel. Her hands moved angrily, sharp movements of the towel soaking up the water on her skin as she glowered to herself.
She didn’t want or need to be loved. Love was a weakness no woman could afford—it was used as a tool to manipulate emotions, to twist and bind a person into serving another person’s whims. Used to break people down, keep them under a booted heel, reel them in with vows of I love you and shatter them when the thrill of power was gone.
With the towel wrapped around her body and another around her hair, she rushed from the bathroom to the almost empty bedroom in search of dry clothes. She found a pair of jogging pants and a hoody in her dwindling supply of clean clothes and, once dressed, walked back into the living room to find her hairbrush and attack the damp mess attached to her head.
Still cold, shivering slightly, her shoulders sagged. Only a few weeks before, this room had reflected everything she wanted in a home. She’d taken her time selecting the paintings on the walls—nothing fancy or expensive, but artwork she liked—and she’d had pretty little ornaments on tables and the big dresser she’d picked up at a flea market. Books had lined the shelves; now they were stacked in heaps in a corner of the room.
Now it was barren, empty. She’d kept the armchair simply because it was too ratty and unkempt to pass on. Ridiculously comfy, it was a solitary comfort on a night when she came home to the remnants of her life.
All because of an accident that wasn’t her fault.
Bodie moved the box off the seat and set it on the floor between her legs as she collapsed into the chair. Her stomach grumbled in annoyance, sharp hunger pains cramping her belly, but there was little she could do about it.
Wet strands of hair fell over her face as she dropped her head into her hands and pressed her fingers to her eyes.
She shouldn’t have turned down that damn dancing job at Avalon. She could admit to herself she’d allowed pride to rule that decision, combined with the raging pain Liam had caused her.
She sighed and rested her head back, staring at the ceiling with blind eyes. That was the crux of things. She’d trusted Liam with nearly everything in her life for over twenty years, loved him like a brother. And he’d tossed her family in her face, hadn’t trusted her with an important part of his life, because he thought she was like them.
Angry and sad all over again, unsure how she was supposed to deal with the two emotions battling it out inside her, she shut it all down. Brought her defense system into play so she felt nothing. It had been a valuable resource as a teenager, perhaps even in the tender years before then when the vitriol her family spewed all over her was just beginning.
She couldn’t say how long exactly—so many of her memories had been repressed over the years that she’d lost periods of time, forgotten much of the trauma she’d suffered through.