Rastor (Lawton Rastor Book 2) (20 page)

Standing there, the cold, hard reality slammed into me. All this time, she'd been hurting for money. But she hadn't asked me for a dime.

Her "vintage" car wasn't vintage. It was just old.

I thought of the dead battery that had kept Chloe from driving home the other night. I'd been such a dumb-ass. Yeah, I'd given the battery a jump. And I'd driven the car back to her place. And then, what had I done? I told her in a half-assed way that the battery needed replacing.

A new car battery – it would've cost me almost nothing. What? A hundred bucks? To me, that was pocket change. But I'd been poor once. A hundred bucks was a fortune when you didn't have it.

And then, there was the house. Chloe lived on just the other side of my fence. But she wasn't really
living
there, was she? She was working there.

No wonder she hadn't wanted me inside. It wasn't a home. It was a place of employment. I thought of all the money that I'd pissed away on stupid shit that didn't matter. It wasn't a fortune. But to someone who didn't have any, it might as well be millions.

All this time, I'd been blind and stupid. What the fuck was wrong with me? Here, I claimed to love her. But all I'd seen was a rich girl in a rich neighborhood. And then, when I'd figured out that she wasn't exactly what she seemed, what had I assumed?

That she was a fucking prostitute.

If she left me now, it would rip out my heart. But I deserved that. So, somehow, I made myself say what needed saying. "Okay."

She was still glaring at me. "Say it."

I could hardly choke out the words. "I promise."

She gave me a slow nod, and turned away, walking toward the door.

I should've let her go. It was the decent thing to do. But even now, I was a selfish bastard at heart, because I couldn't stop myself from saying, "Wait."

She turned around. The look in her eyes said it all. Even now, I was living down to her lowest expectations.

And she was right.

But I had to tell her something. "I'm not giving up."

Her gaze narrowed. "Well so much for your promises." She made a sound of disgust. "What'd that last? Two seconds?"

She didn't get it. I wouldn’t be bothering her. But I
would
be waiting. And by some miracle, she walked back into my life, I'd consider myself the luckiest guy on Earth.

I met her gaze. "I'll keep it, even if it kills me."

"I mean it," she said. "Even if you see me in the supermarket, just keep on going. Alright?"

I thought of the places I might see her – my own back yard, the restaurant where she worked, the sidewalk in front of my house. The thought of seeing her, but not speaking to her, not holding her, not knowing she was mine, it was a nightmare I didn't want to face.

But it was a nightmare I'd brought on myself.

Somehow, I made myself nod.

But I couldn’t leave it at that. I looked into her eyes and tried one last time. When I spoke, my voice came out in a strangled whisper. "You call me. I'll be waiting."

Her voice was quiet, too. "Then you'll be waiting a long time."

"I don't care," I told her. "Call me anytime. Day, night, middle of the night. I don't care. Just call me. Okay?

"Don't count on it," she said. And then, with Chucky in her arms, she turned away, heading toward the front door. I didn't try to stop her, but I couldn’t just stand there like I didn't give a shit. So like a dead man walking, I followed after her, haunting her steps and silently begging for her to turn around.

She didn't.

Instead, she opened the door and walked out, taking her little dog with her. I stood in the open doorway and watched, wondering how I'd managed to fuck this up yet again.

I'd already done this once – watched her walk away because of something stupid I'd done, something that had hurt her, something that showed I was didn't deserve a girl like that.

When she reached the front walkway, she set Chucky down. But he didn't move. Instead, he flopped down on the concrete and refused to budge.

In his own way, he was saying the thing I couldn't.
"Don't leave."

If someday, I ever won Chloe back, I wasn't going to forget this. In fact, I decided, I'd carry his favorite doggie treats with me wherever I went, on the off chance I ever got near him again.

It was stupid, I know. But everything was stupid.

I'd been stupid.

When Chucky refused to cooperate, Chloe picked him up and started walking toward the front gate, with Chucky wriggling in her arms. As for me, I still hadn't moved. I couldn't, even though I desperately wanted to.

What if this the last time I saw her?

A horrible thought occurred to me. That wasn't even her house. For all I knew, she'd be moving tomorrow. To think, I'd spent all those years wanting her, searching for her, and then, I'd lost her, not only once, but twice, because I'd been too blind to see through the bullshit.

From where I stood, I could still see her. She was almost to my front gate. If I wanted, I could be at her side in ten seconds, maybe less. But I had promised. And breaking that promise now would just prove that she'd been right. It
was
all about me.

So I stood there, knowing that I had to let her go. Not for my sake. But for hers.

Even if it killed me.

When she passed through the gate, Chucky gave a long, plaintive whine that cut me to the bone. This was all my fault. I was losing the girl. I was losing the dog. I was losing my mind.

I watched until she disappeared from sight, and then I trudged back inside the house and tried to figure out how in the hell I'd live without her.

Bishop's voice cut into my consciousness. "What the hell are you doing?"

It was dark. It had been dark for a while now. How long? I had no idea. I'd gone straight from the front doorway to the nearest chair. Hours later, I was still sitting there.

Bishop switched on a nearby lamp and stared down at me. "What's wrong?"

I shrugged. "Nothing I want to talk about."

He was quiet a long moment. "Where's Chloe? I thought you two were hanging out today."

Great. So
now
he remembers her name? Screw it. What did it matter? What did anything matter?

My voice was a monotone. "She's gone."

"To work?"

"No. Just gone."

His eyebrows furrowed. "For good?"

"Yeah." I almost choked on the words. "For good."

"What happened?"

"What do you care?" I said. "You never liked her, anyway." It was true. He'd been giving me grief from day-one. Probably, this was
good
news to him.

His voice was quiet. "I never said that."

"Yeah, whatever." It wasn't Bishop's fault that she was gone. And it wasn't Chloe's fault either. It was
my
fault. And me getting mad at Bishop wasn't going to solve a damn thing. Or maybe, I just didn't have the energy to fight with him.

The last couple of weeks had been a roller-coaster of ups and downs. But this last down – it had knocked me on my ass.

I stood. "I'm going to bed."

"But it's only seven o'clock."

Was it? Did it matter? It was November. This time of year, the nights were long, and darkness came early. Just yesterday, I had been looking forward to long, winter nights curled up with Chloe. Now, they'd just be long and cold.

No Chloe. No little dog. No one to blame but myself.

Without another word, I turned away, feeling Bishop's eyes on my back as I left the sitting area and trudged up the stairway. He knew the way out. Or shit, maybe he was planning to stay a while.

Either way, I didn't care. I didn't care about a lot of things.

That night, I couldn't sleep. And I didn't sleep all that great the following night either, or the night after that.

Over the next couple of weeks, I spent an obscene amount of time at the office and too many hours hitting the weights. And, no matter where I was or what I was doing, I spent every waking moment, thinking of Chloe.

Like a dumb-ass, I was still carrying around those doggie-treats in the pocket of whatever I was wearing, even to places where I knew Chloe wouldn’t be – at the office downtown, on the basketball courts at the gym, to some anti-poverty thing, where I was supposed to be the keynote speaker. I'd done a piss-poor job of it. They wouldn’t be asking me back.

About the treats, maybe they were just part of the punishment. Sometimes, as I moved, I'd hear the package crinkling in my pocket, and it would remind me all over again how stupid I'd been.

For whatever reason, Bishop was sticking around. We didn't have any side-ventures planned, so I couldn’t see the point, unless it was to keep me from slitting my wrists – hard to do with no knives in the house.

I hadn't bothered to replace them, and Bishop didn't seem inclined either.

But I wasn't going to kill myself. For one thing, it was too easy. I didn't deserve easy. So I kept on going, cursing myself for the promise that I'd made to stay away, and cursing myself even louder for the things I'd done to make that promise necessary.

What a cluster.

A couple of weeks after Chloe had walked out my front door, I found myself standing in the same doorway, staring at different girl, Brittney.

Damn it.

I stared down at her, wondering what the hell she wanted, because let's face it, Brittney, the last girl I wanted to see on my doorstep.

Like too many others things, this was probably my own fault. These days, the front gate was always open, because stupid or not, I still had this crazy hope that one day, Chloe might walk back through it.

So far, she hadn't. And the way it looked, she wasn't going to.

Instead, here I was, looking at someone who annoyed the piss out of me. I didn't bother to hide it. "What do you want?"

She frowned. "Aren't you gonna invite me in?"

"Hell no."

She made a sound of frustration. "Well, this is special. First
her
, and now you. I'm starting to think you
both
have issues."

Just a couple of hours earlier, it was Amber on my doorstep, complaining about Brittney. Supposedly, Brittney had been spreading some rumor about Amber getting a boob job. Was it true? I didn't know, and I didn't care. Why they chose to put me in the middle, I had no idea.

From what Amber had told me earlier, she'd retaliated by spreading a rumor of her own – that Brittney couldn't tell the difference between a
real
designer purse and a
fake
designer purse. The same with shoes.

Just shoot me now.

I looked to Brittney. "Not my problem. If you're unhappy, take it up with Amber."

"Amber?" She shook her head. "Why her?"

My head was pounding. Last night, I'd had about six beers too many, and I was still feeling it.

Shit, who was I kidding? I felt this lousy every day, whether I'd been drinking or not. I reached up to rub the back of my neck, wondering if I should grab another beer now, just to take the edge off.

"Well?" Brittney was saying.

I was still rubbing my neck. "Well what?"

Did I even
have
beer? Damn it. That's right. I'd gone through the last of it last night. Maybe I should give my house-keeper a call, have her put it on the list. Was
today
grocery-shopping day? I had no idea. It's not like I'd been eating a lot lately.

Brittney gave me an annoyed look. "I wasn't talking about Amber. I was talking about your girlfriend."

My girlfriend? Now
that
got my attention. She must mean Chloe. At the thought of her, I felt that familiar ache in my heart. She wasn't my girlfriend. She was the girl I'd driven away.

But Brittney would know that. Right? After all, she and Chloe worked together. But then again, they weren't exactly best buddies, were they?

For all I knew, they didn't even talk at work. If
I
worked with Brittney, I sure as hell wouldn’t be talking to her. Hell, I didn't want to be talking to her, now.

But suddenly, I was curious. "Why are you here?"

"Because I've got a message for Chloe, and I didn't want to give it to her at work."

A nicer guy would've told Brittney that she was in the wrong place. A nicer guy would've confessed that I couldn't give Chloe anything, no matter how much I might want to. A nicer guy would've admitted that Chloe wasn't here, and probably never
would
be here.

But I
wasn't
nice. And I was dying for news of the girl I'd lost.

For too many nights, I'd walked along my fence, desperate for the smallest glimpse of her. I never spotted Chloe, but I did see other things – the trashcan by the curb on garbage day, lights glimmering through the bare branches of the trees, Chloe's car in the driveway, sometimes in one spot, sometimes in another.

From what I could tell, she'd been going about her business like nothing had changed. Well, that made one of us. As for me, I was letting everything go to shit.

I heard myself ask, "What's the message?"

At this, Brittney smiled. "Tell her that when the flu is over, she's outta there."

I shook my head. "Out of where?"

"Work. You know, her waitressing job." Brittney went on to explain that the only reason that Chloe hadn't been fired so far was because too many other employees were down with the flu.

Brittney gave a mean little laugh. "But once they're all better, Chloe's totally fired."

God, what a bitch.

That aside, I didn't get it. Why would Chloe be fired? From what I'd seen, she was amazing at her job. But then I recalled something else. A couple weeks earlier, I'd caused a scene at that restaurant, beating up my own fucking car. At the time, her boss hadn't looked too happy.

Shit. As if I hadn't done enough damage already.

Brittney finished by saying, "So if Chloe wanted to save herself some humiliation, she'd just go ahead and quit already."

With a pang, I recalled Chloe crying in my arms. She had no money. She had no home. All she had was her job. And she was about to lose it, thanks to me.

I looked to Brittney. "Where'd you hear this?'

Brittney was still smiling. "From the manager." She gave a toss of her hair. "He tells me everything."

The manager had to be Chloe's boss – the guy Brittney had been, as Chloe put it, "boning in the back seat" of that Lincoln Town car. What was the guy's name? Keith?

Maybe it was time to pay Keith a visit.