Bent not Broken (236 page)

“Um, I don’t know. I lost count. Dozens, I suspect,” I called from the kitchen, watching as she picked up a few that had caught her eye. I joined her, handing over a glass of red wine. She took a long sip and hummed her approval, causing more than one of my body parts to swell with pride.

“I like to pick up a few whenever I visit a new place.”

“You like to travel?” she asked, fingering one with a red, animated crab on the side that said
Myrtle Beach
.

“Yeah,” I said, before taking a sip from my own glass. “You?”

“I guess,” she shrugged. “I mean, I have traveled quite a bit, so I guess I should say I enjoy it.”

As if she didn’t mean to offer so much about herself, Kami cringed before taking another hefty gulp. I noticed that she didn’t like to talk about herself. At first, I found it a refreshing change from the normal chicks that would prattle off about any and every trivial detail of their lives. I thought maybe she was a bit shy or just a really great listener. Kami hardly ever divulged anything about herself, though. I wouldn’t even know her full name, age, and birthday if it hadn’t been on her job application.

Not wanting to spoil our easy banter, I decided not to push for more. I set my glass down and made my way to the stereo system. Kami loved music, and my hope was that it would soothe her enough to open up.

I was right. As Imagine Dragons crooned out the first haunting notes of “Demons,” Kami began swaying from side to side, singing along softly. I couldn’t really hear her, but I knew she had an amazing voice from the few times I had heard her sing along with AngelDust. She didn’t think anyone could hear her - I could tell she wasn’t singing for attention or praise - but Kami was a natural. Any note that Angel could hit, she matched it effortlessly. She knew every run and even incorporated her own adlibs when she was really into it. I wanted to ask her why she didn’t perform with the band but I knew she would just brush me off. Either that or clam up and withdraw. Tonight was all about the opposite. I wanted Kami to open herself to me in every way.

“You like them?” I asked, situating myself behind her, close enough that her ass lightly brushed against my front, as she continued her little dance. Her wineglass was empty, and I knew she was feeling the effects. I took it from her and set it down, freeing her hands to explore further.

“Mmm hmm,” she answered in her singsong voice. She picked up a shot glass with a picture of a green leaf on it and turned to face me with an accusatory glare.

“Amsterdam,” I answered with a shrug.

“You’ve been to The Netherlands?”

I nodded and reached past her to grab one that boasted the Eiffel Tower. “It was closed when I went but it really is spectacular. Especially at night. I’ve heard New Years is crazy there! I definitely gotta do it.”

“Wow,” she said, exchanging the memento from the marijuana capital for one from the city of romance. “That’d be awesome. I can only imagine.”

“Go with me.”

I pinned her big green eyes with my gaze, not a trace of humor in my expression. I meant every word. I wanted to show her things. I wanted to take her places she had never been before. I wanted to create a world so safe and secure for her that she would never, ever feel the need to shut down again. And I didn’t even know her. Not the way I yearned to.

“That’s crazy,” she muttered, putting the shot glass back on the shelf and picking up one of Big Ben.

“Why is that?”

“Well, for starters, I don’t even know you, Blaine.”

Gently, I pulled her face towards mine. “Get to know me.”

My lips were on hers in an instant, my tongue tracing her pouty lips. I kissed her deeply before pulling back. Her eyes fluttered open, dilated and hooded from eroticism and wine.

“I’ve wanted to do that since the first day I met you,” I whispered, my thumb stroking her cheek.

“You damn near did,” she smiled.

“Hmmm, that’s not how I remembered it. I believe it was
you
who tried to kiss
me
.” I made a tsking sound before placing another peck on the corner of her mouth. I couldn’t help myself. She had the sweetest, fullest lips I had ever tasted.

“Whatever! Don’t pretend that you weren’t practically wagging that metal studded tongue at me! You knew exactly what you were doing!”

I narrowed my eyes and took a tiny step back. “So you like the tongue ring?”

“What?”

“Do you like it?” I rasped, dropping my voice an octave. “Does it feel good to you?”

“Um, uh,” Kami sputtered before swallowing. Without bothering to ask, she grabbed my wine glass and downed its contents.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I laughed. She tried to feign offense before succumbing to her own amusement.

“Hey, where’s this one from?” she asked, once we had both calmed down and diverted our attention back to the shot glasses.

I took the blank, nondescript glass from her hand and turned it over in my fingers. “Dive.”

“Dive? Why would you take one from the bar you work at?” Picking up another unmarked glass, she frowned with confusion. “This one from Dive too?”

“Yep.”

“O-kay. Seems kinda silly to put these up with all the other ones that are obviously significant to you.”

I smiled, stepping in closer to her. Close enough to smell the vanilla and orchid scents of her shampoo. “These are significant to me too. The most significant. This is the shot glass your lips touched the first night I met you. This is the one you used when we shared a Screaming Orgasm.”

She stared at me in stunned silence for a beat before clearing her throat. “So… you just go around collecting every glass I drink from?”

“Yep.” I took a step forward, causing our fronts to touch. I could feel her heart beat faster with the move. “Every. Single. One.”

She drew in a mortified breath, her eyes growing unbelievably large before I broke into a peel of uncontrollable laughter.

“Oh my God! You should see your face,” I howled at her confused expression. “Relax, Kami. I swear I don’t creep around in the shadows, stealing your drinking glasses!”

She shook her head in disbelief. “You are such a creepy asshole, Blaine Jacobs!”

“Awww, come on now.” I set the glasses back in their designated spots before wrapping my arms around her narrow waist. “Seriously, I’m not a creeper. But I did save those two. Maybe I was having a semi-creeper moment but, hey, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again after you ran outta the bar that night. And when you popped back up, I knew it was fate. I wanted to commemorate that. I believe in celebrating the things that are meaningful to you, no matter how petty they may seem. If they made you feel something at one time, if their memory incites some type of emotion, then they deserve to be acknowledged.”

“Wow,” she whispered, her eyes low and sultry. “I must be tipsy, because that was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.”

I chuckled before placing a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Come on, let’s get you off your feet.”

I led her to my living room sofa, killing the music and clicking on the TV instead. “I’ve got the movie channels; anything in particular you wanna watch?” I asked, scrolling through the menu.

“I don’t know. Any horror flicks on?”

I cocked a brow. “Horror? Seriously?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I just pegged you for a chick flick lover. You know, guy meets girl, they fall in love, and skip into the sunset or some equally sappy shit like that.”

“Blech,” she replied with a mock shudder. “That’s way scarier than any horror movie. Besides, the real monsters aren’t stalking in the shadows with masks and butcher knives. They don’t have fangs or claws. They’re all around us, hiding in plain sight. That’s what’s scary.”

Her solemn words hit me like a ton of bricks, reminding me of why we were really here. I cut off my flat screen and turned towards her. It was time to say “Fuck it” and put all the cards on the table.

“The real reason I brought you here is because there are things I need you to know about me. Things that may help you understand why I say some of the shit that I do.”

She nodded. “Ok. I think there’s some stuff I need to tell you too,” she replied with an edge of uncertainty. She chewed her bottom lip and cast her eyes down to her hands knotted in her lap.

I took a deep breath, preparing to dive in headfirst. “Ok. I had sort of a rough patch after my mom died. I was the typical out-of-control teen, not giving a fuck about grades or my future. I skipped more than I attended. And I had a temper. Shit, honestly, I still do.

“There was this girl named Amanda. Cheerleader, blonde, perky…and I was wild, rugged and had already collected quite a few tattoos and even more piercings.”

“Really?” she asked with genuine interest. “What kinda piercings?”

“Other than the ones you know about…eyebrow, lip, septum…”

She couldn’t hide the flush of her cheeks as her eyes wandered to my crotch, worrying the hell out of her bottom lip.

“Um, no. Hell no,” I smiled, with a slight shake of my head. “Nothing down there is pierced. But good to know you’re concerned.”

Her cheeks went from pink to beet red. “Oh God.”

I laughed it off and took her hands in mine before she wrung them raw. “I don’t really do the piercings any more. I guess I grew out of them. Well, most of them,” I shrugged. “But yeah… I was rough around the edges. Not the guy you wanted picking your daughter up for a date. Amanda was always nice to me though. We started as friends; we’d hang out, talk…nothing more. She was dating this guy - captain of the football team - and one night he beat the shit outta her. She showed up at my house, busted up and bleeding, scared to tell anyone because his dad was some douchebag politician. Anyway, you can guess what happened next.”

Kami nodded. “You beat the guy up,” she said just above a whisper.

“Yeah. After that, it made sense for me and Amanda to be together. She was scared to go anywhere without me, and I felt like I needed to constantly watch her. Eventually, we became more than friends. Then, after graduation, we got married.”

Her jaw dropped before pulling down into a horrified sneer. She snatched her hands from mine. “You’re…
married?
”

“Divorced. Amanda and I tried to make it work for a couple of years, but we just weren’t right together. We had nothing in common. We were from two different worlds. Other than sex, there was nothing to bind us.” I looked away, searching for the best way to make Kami understand. “And even that faded.”

My eyes met hers, and I swear I saw something soften in them. They reflected mine, so full of confusion, pain, anger, longing. Maybe she understood more than I knew. Maybe she could see and accept my past just as I had hoped to accept hers.

“Amanda ended up pregnant. But not by me.”

“What?”

“Yeah. She cheated on me. I found a pregnancy test in the bathroom trash, and I asked her about it. Eventually, she admitted the affair and left me for the other guy.”

“What a minute - how did you know the baby wasn’t yours?”

I scrubbed a hand over my face a bit more forcefully than I intended. I hated reliving this shit. I was undoubtedly over Amanda, but that didn’t make it any easier to rehash.

“I always used protection. Even with her. Amanda didn’t want to get on birth control because she claimed it would make her fat or some shit. I knew condoms weren’t 100 percent so I thought there was a chance the baby could be mine. But she admitted to having unprotected sex with that motherfucker.”

“Blaine,” Kami whispered, the sweet sound of her voice pulling me out of my past hell and bringing me back to the present with her. “I’m sorry.”

I brushed my fingers across her jaw. “Don’t be, baby. It was for the best. See, you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. They have to want to fight, too. They have to see that they’re actually worth the fight. Amanda didn’t see that. She went right back to that asshole, right back to the guy who roughed her up. I agreed to step back and let them be happy. I knew that we should have never gotten married. If that was her choice, I wasn’t going to stand in her way.”

Her hand covered mine on her cheek, and she nuzzled into the touch. “But?”

I nodded. Of course there was a “but.” These stories were never cut and dry.

“The guy, Clark, came into Ms. Patty’s diner one day with his friends. I would help out over there sometimes. He knew that and wanted to rouse me up. He and his shit-stain minions started being obnoxious, ordering food and sending it back, throwing shit on the floor. I approached him, told them to leave. He didn’t take that too well, so I taught him some manners.”

“The charges?”

“Yeah. I got carried away. Put him in a coma. I told him to leave; I told him to walk away. I didn’t want to hurt him like that but he would not fucking listen.” I sucked in a sharp breath, willing myself to calm down. “I was charged with 1
^st
Degree Assault and would potentially face jail-time. I hired Edward Maren, not remembering that Kenneth Walters was such a dick. We went to high school together and never got along. I was from the wrong side of the tracks. He and I never came to blows, but there was always tension. But earlier at the bar… that was a whole new level of dickheadedness from him.”

“Yeah,” she cringed. “About that… I used to be his secretary.”

“Just his secretary?” I asked playfully, though my blood was boiling just under the surface. I knew what was coming next.

“And we dated for a couple months. The first day I came into Dive…I had just broken it off with him.”

“I see.” I swallowed the anger I felt at imagining his hands on her, touching her, kissing her…shit. I couldn’t even think about him doing more without wanting to punch something.

“Being who he is, he obviously didn’t take it well, so I vowed to never get involved with my boss again. I can’t risk being out of a job again.”

I nodded, taking it all in. If she was being forthcoming, I wasn’t going to interrupt her.

She looked at the thin silver watch on her wrist, and something inside me twisted into a knot at the thought of losing her.