“Should I snap this or post it on Instagram?” The nasally voice punctured through Luke’s thoughts like an air horn after a night out drinking. He’d had a night of drinking. Just not out. He’d sat outside that bar, staring at the shithole that the love of his life was drowning her sorrows inside of, torturing himself with memories, cursing himself for being a coward and not walking in and taking her, claiming her. Imagined how he’d do it, the way she’d taste, her sweet body writhing under his. Fantasized about her in his car like some kind of sicko.
It wasn’t even the sex stuff that got his dick hard. The thought of lying with her, imprinting her scent onto his pillows, onto his body. Seeing her smile, watching her fucking laugh.
That empty look of hers in the hospital haunted him. Taunted him. Showed him what a fucking failure he was. He wasn’t good enough. Didn’t find her in time. Something beat him to it, whatever it was that sucked the life out of those once vibrant eyes.
She was still beautiful—more so, if that was even possible—but it was a cutting, harsh sort of beauty that was difficult to look at. Hurt to look at. Because he knew to get that fucking beautiful, she had to see horrors, real ones. Not these fucking bullshit ones that the airhead he was working for called disasters. Bad photo angles. A snub at some awards show. People talking shit about her online. Ones that idiots like this movie star couldn’t even act out in some stupid film, let alone experience.
That’s what made Rosie that much more beautiful. That pain. Because you knew she was strong enough, deep enough to withstand it. Something powerful and ugly enough to change the very foundations of her, yet she still lit up a room like no superstar ever could.
He’d seen that and he’d been so angry. More than he already had been since that day. He’d been carrying his anger around like a dead weight, his cross to bear for the mistakes, the sins of his past. It was unfamiliar and ugly. Ugly because wearing that anger was becoming too comfortable. He was growing used to it.
He was pissed at her for running. Disappearing. Leaving him with the fucking skeletons she’d let out of both of their closets, to bury them alone and then to function without her. Furious.
He was most angry at himself, for spending his life absorbed in so much hate that he couldn’t see a fucking scrap of truth.
So he’d stewed in that anger in his car, outside that shitty bar, until he couldn’t breathe around it. Until he scared even himself with the magnitude of it. Then he’d driven both him and his anger home and drowned it in Jack.
Hence the headache. And the hangover.
The headache being the movie star.
“I think I’ll just do SnapChat. Makes me more accessible—hey! What are you doing? I told you, no one is allowed to drink Pepsi in this house. I have a phobia.”
Yes, the bitch had a fucking Pepsi phobia. Among other things. Like no one was allowed to wear white. It was her color. Everyone who entered her house had to wear stupid little booties on top of their shoes so they didn’t track dirt into her house.
Never mind the fucking carpet-pissing dogs that ran around shitting everywhere. Not that she noticed. There was a designated person for picking up the shit. Yes, this person literally picked up shit for a living.
And he took it from this vile creature. But not the booties. He’d been firm on that.
“My job is to protect you. I’m not gonna be able to do that when I’m wearin’ fuckin’ booties,” he’d spat out. This earned him a sharp glance from the manager who hired him.
The starlet blinked at him, obviously unused to having someone not obey her every whim. Her botoxed forehead had twitched and he thought she might yell. Fire him. He’d hoped for it. This assignment was bullshit, despite the fact that it paid three times more than his salary as a sheriff. He would rather shovel shit for money, as long as it wasn’t for this bitch. But he wouldn’t quit. He wouldn’t. He’d done that enough.
But she didn’t fire him, merely nodded and instructed him to keep his boots clean. “I do admire a man who takes protecting me so seriously,” she’d purred, her vulture eyes inspecting him.
He’d restrained a glare. “It’s my job, ma’am,” he said flatly, hoping to communicate his immense disgust in the proposition she was making with her eyes.
She hadn’t seen it, or had ignored it. Because after that, she’d relentlessly and horrifically come onto him at any moment she could.
Even if she wasn’t a raging bitch, Luke never would’ve gone there. In fact, if it was just that, he probably would have. Women who stood for everything she didn’t were the only kind he took to bed. Some kind of warped respect for the woman he couldn’t have. The woman he loved. So he only let himself take the most horrible women to bed. As his punishment. Reminding him that he had a good, wonderful woman within reach and he’d fucked it up. Majorly.
But it wasn’t just the fact that she was horrible. She was like a Monet. Maybe pretty from a distance, airbrushed and covered in makeup, but up close she was a mess. Her skin was sallow and almost yellowing, the effects of all the cocaine she did on a daily basis, Luke guessed. Every bone in her body stretched over her skin, protruding like a starving child. She would never eat. She couldn’t. She’d order all sorts of shit at some restaurant and just push the food around, then have it taken away. Her fridge was stocked with everything imaginable, most of it untouched and thrown away after a week. It was disgusting, her waste. Luke knew of the people struggling to put one meal on the table and here she was throwing two weeks’ worth in the trash, too dense to even donate it.
Everything about her was hollow. And ugly.
She tapped away on her phone, the fake claws on her fingers clicking on the screen.
He wasn’t supposed to be in there, watching her tragic life play out. He sure as fuck didn’t want to be in there. He was supposed to be stationed outside, on the perimeter. Despite the fact that in the two months he’d had this gig, he had never even sniffed a threat, she’d apparently contacted Greenstone because of her serious concerns for her safety.
Luke was beginning to think that she thrived off the attention, and also that she’d heard the stories of the men who worked for Greenstone. They were quickly becoming one of the most sought after agencies in the city, with Keltan having to employ more men. Which was how Luke tumbled into the gig. He’d first come to LA after handing in his badge to employ Keltan to help him find Rosie. He’d tried himself, with the resources at his disposal. That was why he delayed handing in his gun and badge, not because of reluctance to leave the only job he’d ever known, the only job he thought he’d ever have. No, he’d stayed so he could misuse his power to find her.
Something his self-righteous past self would’ve rebelled against. But he had already crossed that line he’d set in the sand the day he put on his uniform.
Once he’d crossed it, there was no going back.
He didn’t want to go back.
Which was why he’d left. Searching for her. He hadn’t planned on staying; his plan was just to get a lead, chase her. He’d stayed because he realized that she wasn’t like any other women. She wasn’t running because she wanted to be chased. To be rescued.
He just had to wait for her to come back so she could rescue him from the hell he’d been renting in her absence.