“Almost done?”
She screamed.
Shit.
Her eyes went wide as saucers. I turned and shook my head. “I scared her. Nothing’s wrong.” My associates nodded and walked off.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
I leaned in, almost plastering myself against her as I breathed in her scent. “I could ask you the same thing.” Her eyes beckoned me, as if she was asking me some sort of hidden question that she was too afraid to voice out loud. I could get lost in those eyes. They were the same as… hers. Adrenaline surged through my body. Was it possible?
Her breathing turned ragged.
Yeah, I was probably scaring the shit out of her.
“Brown. Interesting.”
“They’re plain,” she whispered.
“They are beautiful. Don’t let anyone tell you any different, Bella.” I used the nickname I used to call my childhood friend — the little girl who used to chase me around the house and call me names. The little girl whose name I never even knew because when I was little, I’d decided in my heart that she deserved a beautiful name — to equal her beauty. So I’d called her Bella… beautiful.
She didn’t flinch.
And the hope that had once blazed inside me slowly died. It wasn’t her. She was lost to me. Never to be found.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The light bulb of cash
Nixon
“GLAD TO SEE YOU’RE buying enough food so you don’t starve in between classes.” I smirked. It irritated me that Trace didn’t want to eat with us anymore — that she was so offended by my presence that she’d rather eat fake meat.
I’d never been that guy.
The one girls ran from.
Well, actually, that wasn’t entirely true. But still… I hated that she didn’t want anything to do with me almost as much as the fact that she seemed to be scared shitless to be in my presence. Not that I was doing anything to alleviate that phobia.
“It’s your fault I have to buy food,” she said through clenched teeth, tossing packages onto the conveyer belt like she wanted them to explode and get all over me.
“What do you mean?” I licked my lips and gave the cashier a polite smile.
“My keycard, you asshole!” Trace threw her hands into the air, and a bag of corn went flying by my head, nearly taking me out. Was it wrong to want to hide my gun and any sharp object from her?
I rolled my eyes at her dramatic outburst. “Stop being difficult. You have two keycards.” The one I’d given her the first day of school, and then one that Mo had begged me for a few days back.
“Huh?” She squinted her eyes. “Are you high?” A bag of potato chips went sailing past my ear, grazing it with a crunching sound. “Phoenix stole my card the night you made him set me up! The same night you were off-campus doing who knows what! I only have the red card that you gave me the other day!”
I swayed on my feet. It was rare to take me by surprise — but suddenly I was sick.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“In the hall!” She continued tossing food onto the belt, not caring that I was ready to strangle Phoenix. “You said it was the best you could do and—”
Her lips were moving. In theory I knew she was talking, but it was falling on deaf ears, because nothing was adding up. At all. I never let anything get by me. Set her up? Was she talking about Tim? How the hell was it my problem that she got drunk and—
Damn it!
They wouldn’t.
Would they?
Behind my back?
The more she explained the sicker I felt. “Bastard. I’ll deal with it. Do you still need all this food then? If you’re going to be eating with us now?”
“Yes.” Her eyes darted to the floor.
I knew that look.
I wore that look as a kid, when my dad tortured me, when he tortured Mo. It was fear.
And I’d been the one to cause it.
Had she been starving this whole time?
“That will be one hundred dollars and seventy-two cents.” The checker interrupted my thoughts.
Trace slowly pulled out a wad of dollar bills that would probably take an eternity to count out. Why didn’t she just use a credit card? Were they that backwoods? They didn’t even have credit cards?
The bills fell to the floor.
Trace reached for them and then paused.
“Something wrong?” The line was building up behind us, and I wasn’t in the mood to be gawked at. People knew who I was, or at least they assumed. It’s not like I wasn’t ever in the news. Or gossiped about.
I owned this city.
They knew me.
They all freaking knew me.
“Uh, no, yeah, umm…” Trace slapped the wad of cash into my hand. Confused, I looked down.