Breathe Me In (19 page)

Gross. Fighting the urge to roll my eyes, I approached him. “Hey.”

“Well, look who blew back into town.” He puffed away. Given that he was all of twenty-five years old, it really seemed pretentious.

But what concerned me more was that he knew I’d been gone. “What makes you think I was gone?”

“I know when someone who owes me money disappears. I wasn’t going to come after you, you know. I don’t really give a shit about a few dollars. I spend that much on liquor in one night. So I find it really interesting that you’re here right now. You’re either really smart or really stupid. So tell me which one it is.”

“I’m just here to pay back my debt. I don’t like owing anyone anything.” I pulled an envelope out of the waistband of my jeans. “I appreciate you did what you did for me.” I wasn’t going to bring up Asher. I couldn’t. I held the envelope out.

He took the envelope without looking inside it. Turning to the woman who was still just perched next to him like some sort of accessory, he snapped his fingers. She pulled something out of her cleavage. Diego stood up, taking whatever it was from the woman. “Your honesty is admirable. Now get the fuck out of here.”

“No problem.” I accepted the one-armed hug he was offering, sweat breaking out on the back of my neck. I was expecting a gun to go into my ribs, or a knife to suddenly enter my gut in a cold, steel slide. But he just passed the cleavage-held packet into my hand and made a sound with his lips.

“For old times sake.”

Then all hell broke loose.

When I got picked up on the way out of the club, I knew he’d done it on purpose. As a joke, or a lesson to not fuck with him. Whatever. But I had a packet of coke and a cop on my ass and that was that. As I was processed I debated who to call. Rose would have a heart attack. My friend in Queens who I did trust and would have preferred to call didn’t have the bail money. Chloe would fret and in the end, she would have to stay with Asher and it would be Ethan who would have to come to New York and that seriously wasn’t fair to him. Which left Kane.

It wasn’t fair to him either. Plus he was already pissed with me for leaving. But I was out of options so I called him. I knew he would come. He was that kind of guy. I also knew he would be mad, and he was. He sounded like he was fighting the urge to scream expletives at me.

But he hadn’t. And for some reason, when I hung up the phone in a hurry, the guard gesturing to me to get off the phone, I said, “I love you.”

I didn’t mean to say it. I didn’t just say that to men. People. Anyone. I said it to my son and that was it. But it fell out of my mouth like I’d said it a hundred times before. Which terrified me. Did I love Kane? Did I actually know how to love someone?

As I was led back to my holding cell, I ignored the disdain of the guard and the curious stares of the other women. Since it wasn’t going to be long term, I wasn’t all that afraid of being incarcerated. It wasn’t my first time. Being a teen on the street, I’d been picked up for loitering, pickpocketing, soliciting. They only thing I had actually done was loiter, but after years of navigating social services, I knew how to keep my head down when I needed to, and when to fight back. I wasn’t afraid so much as I was annoyed. It was time and money I hadn’t been prepared to spend.

There was also the niggling fear in the back of my mind that this was the sort of shit that got kids taken away from mothers. I couldn’t lose Asher. Not now. Not ever. Kane had been right. I had known he was right. I shouldn’t have tried to take on Diego on my own. But I’d been afraid and I’d wanted to do the thing that would appease a drug dealer and that was just stupid. By wanting to protect Asher I’d put him at risk for being snapped up by social services. It made me want to vomit.

Now it had also made me even more dependent on Kane. I owed him even more. He was bailing me out and when it came down to it- it was never going to hurt my cause to be dating a cop. It could only help me. And only hurt him. What would the people he worked with think of him dating a chick who got busted for drugs, whether they were mine or not? I knew what he was risking.

Was that why I had told him I loved him? Because he was there for me? Or was it because I actually loved him?

I didn’t know. I didn’t know love. I’d never had it.

As I sat in my cell, I thought about Kane and I wanted to cry because I knew that I was all wrong for him. He deserved better than me. Better than this.

Ignoring the woman next to me who was crying, I leaned my head against the cold cement and played with the ends of my hair. Yeah. Kane definitely deserved better than this.

Even if I did love him.

Because I did. This had to be what love felt like. Otherwise why would it hurt so much?

Anya looked small and vulnerable as she came out into the waiting room after being processed out, her head down. But my initial relief at seeing her okay was followed by a wave of fury. I still couldn’t believe that she had thought it made sense to just go head to head with a drug dealer on her own.

Biting her lip, she looked up at me and said softly, “Hey. Thanks for coming.”

“You’re welcome.” I couldn’t say it was no problem because that was a fucking lie. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Arraignment is tomorrow. Then I should be able to leave if the judge says it’s okay. I passed the drug test, obviously.”

“Obviously,” I said, and if there was a hint of sarcasm, I couldn’t prevent it. “Well. Let’s get a hotel. You hungry?” It took everything I had to contain my frustration with her until we were in a private place.

“We can do whatever you want.”

There was an ironic sort of submissiveness in her voice that further irritated me. So now it was whatever I wanted? It would have been nice if that offer had applied at any other point in our relationship. The lid on my control promptly shot off and the minute we left the building and when I hit the sidewalk, I rounded on her.

“What the fuck happened? What were you thinking? Oh, my God, Anya, do you have any idea how dangerous what you did is?”

She started walking. I wasn’t even sure what street we were on. New York confused me, and I hated the smell, the traffic, the blinking lights and the trash bags lining the curbs. There was a distinct fried food odor around us and I knew my truck was to the right, but otherwise I was relying on Anya and my GPS. Her footsteps were sure and quick and she didn’t even pause at the street, but plowed right through the intersection, like she had known instinctively the light was about to turn red.

“Just give it a rest, okay? I know it was stupid. But it was necessary. I paid him the money back. He gave me the drugs and had me picked up as a lesson, but that will be that. I can basically guarantee he’ll leave me alone from here on out. So there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about? Did you forget about Asher?”

She rounded on me. “I did this for Asher! Don’t you dare tell me how to protect my child.”

I knew that she did everything in her power to take care of Asher, but sometimes she was over her head. “So you supposedly got the dealer off your back. But now you have the law on your ass! This is how people lose custody of their kids!”

The fear and the fury on her face almost made me regret my words. Of course she knew there was a possibility that she could lose Asher. It was a fear that sat on her every day. It was a fear that drove all her actions and forced her hand. It made her make poor choices and I was a dick for pointing out the thing that scared her the most. But she had scared me, and in the end we both wanted the same thing- the both of them safe and together.

“Fuck you,” she said, her voice trembling. “Don’t you think I know that?”

I felt contrite, but God, I was frustrated with her. “Why can’t you just admit that you need help? That you need my help?” It mattered to me that she see me as a partner, not a combative. We were on the same team, or at least I hoped we were. Wanted us to be. It couldn’t be me playing by her rules all the time, half of them a secret.

“I don’t need your anything!”

“Good, because I can’t do this. I really can’t.” I didn’t mean to start this conversation walking down a freaking New York City sidewalk, a T-shirt shop in the background, but I couldn’t keep it bottled up any more. I’d been stewing over it for hours driving down, getting more and more agitated with each mile I’d driven south. I couldn’t do it.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m breaking things off. I don’t think this is going to work. I don’t want to see you again.” There was no easy or good way to say that, and even though I realized I sounded cold, harsh, I couldn’t stem the flow of words.

Anya’s mouth dropped. “You can’t break up with me! I’m breaking up with you first. Right now.”

For some reason that totally shocked me. I had thought she would be a little bit torn up. Angry. Resistance. Hell, maybe I had wanted to shock her into great compliance. It had never occurred to me she might be debating how to end things herself. I lost my shit. Completely just lost it all right there on the fucking sidewalk.

“Well, you’ve got a lot of goddamn nerve!” I yelled. “Breaking up with me after I drove my ass down here from Maine to bail you out of your mess? That’s seriously cold, Anya.”

She gave a laugh that sounded more hysterical than amused. “Are you for real right now? You could have said no, you know. It’s not help or a favor if you make me pay for it. And I told you that I love you. L-O-V-E. Love. And you’ve got nothing but judgment for me. You and everyone else I’ve ever met.”

That was going in my face? “You have a serious chip on your shoulder. I have never judged you. What I’ve done is worry about you. Worry that you are putting yourself in danger. That’s it.” I realized that people were staring at us as they walked by, but I didn’t care. This was New York. They weren’t going to get involved and I was grateful for that, nor could we have been the weirdest sight they’d ever seen.

“Whatever. I’m giving you an out. Take it. Walk away, Kane, right now.” She hastily put her hair up in a ponytail, the wind whipping it around her face.

“That’s your way of dealing with shit. Walk away. That’s the easy way out. If you get uncomfortable, you just ditch out.”

We stood there, staring at each other. This was going nowhere. “Let’s just find a hotel, okay? We’re tired and we’re upset.”

She rolled her eyes, which made me want to just walk away. Walk away like she always did. What would she do if I just left her there to clean up her own mess? How would she feel then? Would she see that I needed her to meet me halfway?

But I would never do that. I could never walk away and leave her standing on the sidewalk penniless.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said. “I don’t want to put you out.”

“No? You’re going to walk back to Maine? Take the bus?” Part of me wanted to let her do it. Just be that guy. Just walk away. Fuck it. Let her figure it out. I just wasn’t drawn that way. But once we got back to Portland, I was done. I couldn’t invest myself in someone who didn’t want me to.

Her eyes flickered. “I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

The bravado eased some of my anger. “Come on. Let’s just get a hotel and we’ll deal with everything else later.”

“Thanks.” She was icy and stiff.

I wasn’t much better. She directed me to a cheap hotel- cheap for New York anyway- and I lay on the bed while she showered. I thought about jail and how it must feel to go through the booking process and how tough Anya really was. She was a strong woman and I knew that she had every right to be defensive and secretive and mistrustful. I didn’t know how to earn her trust. I didn’t know if I even wanted to.

The room was dark and smelled a little musty. It was also the size of a shoe box. There was barely room to move between the bed and the wall. I felt penned in, smothered by the small space. By my own emotions. Anger sat on me like a lead balloon and I couldn’t shake it off.

She opened the bathroom door and came out, her hair damp, steam following behind her. She was wearing her shirt and panties and nothing else. My body and my heart ached for her.

She said nothing.

I said nothing.

Kane lounged on the bed and I ran my fingers through my damp hair as I climbed up next to him, wishing I hadn’t been the one to make that look appear on his face. The disappointment. That’s what killed me. Not the anger. Not the worry. But the disappointment. The thing I never wanted to see on anyone’s face ever, and there it was.

My body was weary, but that was just par for the course. The tension of the travel, the confrontation with Diego, the defensive posture in the holding cell. I’d turned the water on as hot as I could stand and let it try to wash away the stench of prison. The shame lingered. I wanted to be someone a man could love. Be proud of. My whole life I had wanted an unconditional love and I’d never found it. It hurt that Kane didn’t understand why I did what I did, that he couldn’t just accept me as me. I’d thought he had. But now I wasn’t so sure. If I was more liability than asset to him, he had every right to protect his own interests.

Even if it hurt like hell. Even if it broke my heart. The heart that despite what I’d said, I hadn’t shown to him. Not really. I’d been hedging my bets. Asking everything of him, but offering very little of me in return. That wasn’t fair.

Neither was curling up beside him without a word, and resting my head in the crook of his shoulder, my hand on his waist. I wasn’t asking for sex. Just…comfort. It was selfish of me. I knew it was.

But if I didn’t look after me, who would?

He kissed the top of my head.

Kane.

That’s who. Whether we were together or not, he would. Despite his disappointment, I knew that about him, and it was the most reassuring yet heartbreaking realization ever.

I could trust him.

And it was too late.

Anya and I didn’t talk. We fell asleep holding each other and we woke up and said nothing. She wasn’t the bullshit small talk girl on the best of days and she wasn’t going to make polite conversation just to make me more comfortable. That was her. It was something I actually liked about her.