It captures Bebop’s attention, and he glances that way, muttering under his breath before turning back to me. “I have respect for you, Mister Scar. I admire a man who takes what he wants, because I do the same. So I will leave you in peace, since my fight is not with you.”
He walks out with that, leaving the room, but Rocksteady lingers behind, his gun still aimed at me. He only lowers it when someone shouts from the hallway. “Markel!”
I’m guessing that’s his name, since he reacts to it. Not that it matters. Nothing about them matters to me, personally, but it clearly matters to Scarlet.
Rocksteady vacates the room. The chaos in the club dies down as the intruders leave. Everyone else has fled, or hell, maybe they’re all dead. Again, not that it matters, but I just stand here, hands still fisted in my pockets.
“Don’t move,” I say, knowing Scarlet can hear me. “I’ll let you know when it’s clear.”
I quietly stroll from the red-tinted room, crunching on glass as I walk down the hall, passing bullet-ridden walls. It’s not the worst scene I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s not exactly pretty, either. I make my way through the main club, looking around, eyes skittering past the bouncer at the front door, dead in a pool of blood.
Calling that one karma.
I stall in the doorway to the office, looking at the wall of monitors, most of them destroyed by the AR-15. Amello is nowhere to be found, probably the first to run like a little bitch when the bullets started flying.
“When the boys came out to play,” I mumble, “Georgie Porgie ran away.”
After checking the rest of the club, I make my way back to Scarlet. The police won’t be far behind, which means I need to get the hell out of here. Scarlet is still in the same spot, behind the bar, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around them.
I pause, regarding her as I pull my coat off. She’s wearing very little, still topless, trying hard to cover herself—not out of some sense of propriety. She’s just nervous. I wordlessly hold the coat out to her and she takes it, slipping it on, zipping it up. She’s so petite it almost goes to her knees, longer than the dresses I’ve seen her wear.
“Come on,” I say. “I’ll walk you home.”
I hold my hand out to her. She looks at it, like she isn’t sure if she wants to touch me, but she concedes after a moment.
She’s rattled. I can tell. Her knees are practically knocking together, her hand shaking in mine as I help her to her feet. She pulls away from me as soon as she’s upright, shoving her hands in the pockets of my coat.
Scarlet keeps her head down as she quickly walks down the hall, toward the back exit, but instead of going outside, she veers to the locker room.
“Whoa, where are you going?” I ask, grabbing her arm to stop her. “We need to go.”
She yanks away from my clutch. “I need my stuff.”
“Just leave it,” I say. “Fuck it.”
“You don’t understand,” she mutters, ignoring me as she goes about her business, heading over to a locker to pull out a duffel bag. It only takes her a few seconds, doesn’t slow us down much, so I drop it, even though it’s absurd.
It’s just stuff.
She hurries out the back door of the club, eyes surveying the neighborhood, on guard, like she fully expects the boogeyman to leap out at her from somewhere in the darkness.
My cock is an icicle within minutes of stepping outside. Every inch of me is frozen solid except my feet… my feet keep on moving, keeping up with Scarlet. She only lives a few blocks away, so it doesn’t take us long to get there. Nobody followed us that I could tell, and I’m pretty damn good at gauging when someone is watching, so I think she’ll be safe for now.
But still, there’s some part of me not yet okay with letting her out of my sight.
Curiosity, maybe.
Mind your own business and you’ll live a hundred years. Problem is, you know, a hundred years is a long time. Do I really want to live that long?
My curiosity says, ‘I don’t think so’.
So I follow her inside, and I trail her up the stairs, watching as she turns the knob to her apartment and walks right in. The place hadn’t been locked any of the times I’ve shown up.
“Locks broken?” I ask curiously, stepping into the apartment as she leaves the door wide open behind her, probably the closest thing to an invitation I’m going to get from the woman. I linger there, flicking the deadbolt, watching as it slides out just fine.
She doesn’t respond, which doesn’t surprise me, since she hasn’t said a single word since back at the club. She kicks her shoes off, leaving them lying in the middle of the floor on her way to the bedroom. She doesn’t shut herself in there, doesn’t even attempt any privacy as she unzips the coat and takes it off, snatching up a wrinkled plain white t-shirt from on top of the messy unmade bed and pulling it on, covering herself. She walks back out, lugging the coat along, and shoves it at me, punching me in the chest with the damn thing. She lets go of it and turns, heading into the kitchen.
If she comes back with a knife, I swear to fuck, I’m going to slaughter the woman…
“You’re welcome,” I call out, putting my coat back on. It smells like her, and I turn my head, inhaling along the collar. Huh.
“Thank you,” she says quietly as she reappears in the doorway, clutching a clear bottle of something. Rum… vodka… something. She takes a drink of it, lingering there, leaning against the doorframe, her eyes questioning as they regard me… as they watch me smelling my coat, like some panty-sniffing pervert.
I shrug, zipping it up. “It smells like you.”
“What do I smell like?”
“Like sex and shame,” I say, smirking at the scowl she directs my way as I inhale again. “And something distinctly vanilla.”
“It’ll fade.” She takes another large swig of the liquor, grimacing, before continuing. “It’s just my lotion… vanilla orchid. The sex, well, I’m afraid you’ll have to wash that off.”
“And the shame?” I ask, strolling toward her. “How long until that fades?”
She laughs dryly. “I’ll let you know if it ever happens.”
I take the liquor from her, glancing at the label. Rum. The bottle’s made of flimsy plastic, utterly cheap, the kind of rum that puts hair on chests and can put a motherfucker through puberty again. It’s not for the faint of heart, no, but neither is she.
She’s gritty and raw, but goddamn, the woman is beautiful. The more I look at her, the more I see it.
I take a swig, not reacting to the bitterness, and hand it back as I stare down at her. “Why don’t you lock your door, Scarlet?”
“No point,” she says. “Locks won’t stop someone determined to get in.”
“So you make it easy for them?”
“I’m just realistic. I could seal myself up in here tight, with a hundred locks on the windows and doors, but all that’ll do is trap me, like some caged animal, and I refuse to do it. Besides, you know, all of this?” She waves around the apartment. “None of it means anything to me. If people want to help themselves to it, so be it… they can have it all.”
She takes another swig before pushing away from the doorframe. Shoving by me, she strolls across the room, that vanilla scent wafting toward me.
“I hate to break it to you,” I say, glancing around, “but I don’t think you could give half of this shit away. No offense, but it all kind of looks like, well… shit.”
“That’s because it is,” she says, pausing at the window to look out. “Most of it I found or stole.”
“What do you do with all of your money?”
“Is that your business now?”
“No.”
“So why are you asking?”
Why am I asking? I don’t know. I don’t even know why I’m here, why I’m bothering with this woman at all. “Just trying to riddle you out.”
“Don’t bother,” she mutters as I stroll closer, pausing behind her. “My problems are my own.”
“Ah, come on. You can spill all your secrets to me, Scarlet. I’m good at pretending to listen.”