CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rosie
Lucas’s hand squeezed mine again.
He’d been doing that the whole ride, and I knew what it meant. He didn’t need to voice the words “I got you, I’m here,” because that gentle but fierce squeeze of my hand as it lay cocooned in his was enough. No. It was more than enough, really. Him being here, not hesitating to hail a cab without asking for the full story or details, and taking the reins of a situation I was having a hard time keeping up with was more than enough.
It was everything.
The image of the busted lip Olly had sported the last time I’d seen him flashed in front of my eyes.
God, what the hell have you gotten yourself into, Olly?
Lucas’s fingers squeezed mine again, and I thought he murmured something, something soothing, but all I was hearing in my head was Please, let him be okay. Whatever this is, please, please, please, let him be okay.
The taxi pulled up to the address Olly had texted, and I unclasped my fingers from Lucas’s grasp so fast that he couldn’t do anything to stop me from jumping out of the vehicle.
“Rosie, don’t!” He cursed. But I kept on walking. I was on autopilot.
His steps sounded behind me, quick, fast, as if he’d been running after me, and I felt like a jerk, because I shouldn’t have made Lucas run, not with his injury. But I—
He grabbed my hand and pulled at it, bringing me to a stop. He walked around me and faced me. “Don’t do that to me ever again, please.”
His hair was still wet. The clothes beneath both our coats were so damp, they weighed twice as much as they would have dry. He was probably feeling as cold as I did, and yet, I knew that wasn’t the reason why he looked so miserable.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, because I really was. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
I squeezed his hand and relief spread across his face.
With another sigh, I took note of our surroundings, the rumble of music in the distance indistinguishable. It had to be coming from the nightclub down the street, the one Olly had texted before. Pink Flamingo.
“Do you know this part of the city?” Lucas asked.
“Never been here.” I shook my head. “But it’s not exactly known for its good rep.” I paused. “There’s something I should probably tell you, Lucas.” He remained in silence, laser focused on me, waiting. “My brother… he had a black eye. A few weeks ago. And I…”
And I hadn’t done anything. Not a single thing. I’d let him walk away.
Lucas processed that information. Then, looked left and right. “Text him that we’re here. If he doesn’t answer, then we’re going to find him and get him out.”
I nodded my head, already inching toward the neon-lit entrance.
Lucas tugged at my hand. “You’re going to stay behind me, okay? I’m not playing overprotective hero, Rosie, but if someone tries to get close to you, don’t engage, yeah?” He patted his chest with his fist. “You stay with me.”
My throat worked. “But what if—”
“Ángel,” he said almost painfully. “I’ve traveled, stumbled upon people I shouldn’t have and got into a few ugly messes myself. So please, please stay with me. Just trust me with—”
“Okay.” I nodded my head. No hesitation. “I trust you. I’ll stay with you. I won’t engage.” His features relaxed. “But only if you don’t, either. I don’t want you to get into trouble, not because of me.”
Something shifted in his gaze and then, without giving me any kind of warning, he was brushing a kiss on the corner of my lips. “I trust you, too, ángel.”
And just like that, we were moving again.
Lucas stopped a few steps away from the neon sign. A bouncer stood guard, the door covered by a maroon curtain.
I took one last look at my phone to see if Olly had answered my text. He hadn’t. “Let’s go,” I told Lucas.
We stepped forward, Lucas slightly ahead of me, and the bouncer looked us up and down with a frown.
“No couples allowed. Performers through the back.”
I stepped around Lucas, coming to his side so I could explain to the bouncer why we needed to go in. Both of us.
But the mountain of a man stopped me with a hand. “No couples allowed,” he repeated, before returning to his position and parting the curtain. “The lady can go in.” He pointed to Lucas. “You, out. Or through the back.”
“No,” Lucas refused. I took another step forward, and a warning left Lucas in a growl. “Rosie, please.”
I was ready to let go of his hand, to tell him that it was okay, when the curtain opened. Then, I heard my name.
“Rosie,” my brother, my little brother, said.
And he was… shirtless. Covered in what looked like… oil. And glitter.
I threw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. “Are you okay? Please, tell me you’re okay.”
Olly’s eyes darted around.
“I’m okay,” he croaked. “But we should really go, now.”
I released him, clasped my hands around his cheeks, and inspected his face. God, when had he turned into the man in front of me? “What the hell is going on, Olly?”
The bouncer spoke before Olly could respond. “Graham, you know the rules. No hanging out in the entrance. Performers through the goddamn back. You’ve got five seconds.”
“Olly—”
My brother shook his head and ushered us away from the club. “Let’s go, Rosie. I’ll tell you everything but not here, okay?”
Lucas’s hand grazed the small of my back. “I called an Uber the moment Olly got out that door. It’ll be here in a few minutes,” he said as he came up behind us and led us away from the entrance to the club.
He took his coat off and threw it in my arms. “Put it on your brother.”
“Who’s this?” Olly asked.
I looked at my brother just in time to see him take in Lucas’s suit. Then, glancing at me and inspecting my attire. He came to a stop. “Oh God, you were on a date.”
I picked up my pace, pulling him after me, the answer to that question too complicated for me to elaborate. “And now I’m here. I’m so glad you called, Olly.”
Just as Lucas was nodding, I heard heavy steps behind us. I turned around—we all did—and took in the man that had just exited the club and was now looking our way.
“Jimmy,” Olly muttered. “Fuck.”
“Well, well,” Jimmy drawled. “Olly, if you were going to invite your pretty sister to watch a show, you should have given me a heads-up.” He looked me up and down with a sneer. “I would have cleaned up.”
I recognized him as the man who had picked up my brother outside Penn Station weeks ago.
Both my brother and Lucas moved forward, partly in front of me.
But I managed to make eye contact with Jimmy. I knew a bully when I saw one.
“Not even a hello?” He clicked his tongue. “That’s not very friendly, now, is it?”
Lucas, who I noticed now had been inching toward Jimmy, came to a stop a few feet in front of Olly and me.
I watched the muscles in his back straighten, his shoulders somehow expanding. “Don’t talk to her,” Lucas said in a hard voice I’d never heard from him. “Don’t even look her way. You have something to say to her, or Olly, you go through me.”
Jimmy snickered. “Well then, tell pretty boy next show is in fifteen. The crowd is already feral, so he better throw on some more oil and get in.” Next show. It really dawned then, Olly, my brother, a performer. A stripper. “Or now that his girl is tucked away he’s not taking the stage anymore?”
Tucked away. Oh, Olly. Whatever trouble he’d gotten into was over protecting a girl, of course, it was.
Jimmy’s words were still echoing in the night when a vehicle came to a stop behind us.
I watched the man’s eyes narrow.
Lucas didn’t turn to look at us—at me—when he said, “Rosie, get your brother in the car.”
Still shocked, I hesitated. Lucas stood there like a statue, serving as a wall between Jimmy and me and my brother.
“Ángel,” Lucas’s deep and commanding voice came again, breaking through my hesitance. “Car, now. Please.”
Snapping into action, I linked arms with my brother and headed for the Uber. Once my brother was sitting inside, I turned back to check on Lucas. He remained in the same position, only now Jimmy was right in front of him, the two of them talking. Nothing more than gritted words between their teeth, not loud enough for me to make out a single thing.
I didn’t like it. Not one bit. Every cell in my body demanded that I go to Lucas and drag him away.
“Stay in the car, Olly,” I said, and gestured for the driver to wait.
I had dragged Lucas into this mess, and I’d be damned if something happened to him because of me. I had almost made it to Lucas, my arms ready and stretched in his direction, reaching for him, when Jimmy threw back his shoulders and shoved at Lucas’s chest.
The man I loved so much for his kindness, his warmth, his selfless heart, stumbled back before straightening. And instead of retaliating, instead of returning the shove or throwing a punch, he took another step back.
“You’re a lucky man,” Lucas told him, ice in his voice. “I promised her I wouldn’t engage.”
The other man scoffed, the sound weak and his next words uncertain: “Oh yeah?”
Lucas stared down the other man for a long moment, and then, he turned, leaving him behind. He was keeping his promise to me; he wasn’t engaging.
But then, so quickly the motion hardly registered, Jimmy charged forward, his boot making impact against Lucas’s calf. His right calf.
Lucas went down, falling to his knees with hardly a sound. His head hung low between his shoulders, and his chest heaved.
My vision blurred, my ears rang, and everything turned red. As if I were no longer myself, I darted forward.
“You son of a bitch!” I cried.
“My bad,” I heard Jimmy drawl. “See, promises don’t mean much to me.”
Ignoring all caution, my rage bubbled to the surface.
I looked around, desperate to do something, anything, to make him hurt, finding nothing but my purse hanging off my shoulder.
I gripped it by the handle and raised my arm, ready to fling the clutch at him if it was the best I could come up with, overlooking how harmless it would really be. How ridiculous.
Warm fingers wrapped around my wrist, and the only voice in the world that could have stopped me from doing something so stupid spoke, “Rosie, no.”
My lips parted, and I heard myself saying, “Yes.”
Those fingers spread, their touch anchoring me. Grounding me. “Don’t engage. You promised me.” I had, but that had been before Lucas had taken that ugly hit. “Put down the bag.”
It wasn’t the plea in his voice. It was the knowledge of him standing on his feet, the pain lacing his voice, that made me obey. I looked at him, and he even managed a smile. “He’s not worth it.”
He wasn’t.
But for the first time in my life, I wanted to choose violence.
“Let’s go home.” Lucas’s fingers pulled at my arm, extricating my purse from my death grip. He slipped it on his arm, even when I told him I could carry it myself. But Lucas didn’t listen. He straightened and threw an arm around my shoulders, leaning some of his weight on me. He walked with me, and I could tell he was biting through the pain. When we reached the car, Lucas turned. “I have nothing to lose, Jimmy. Nothing. And you’d be wise to remember that, because next time I won’t be walking away.”