Taming the Bad Girl (13 page)

The wreck of a man was crying. Tears streaming
down his face, and even from my distance I could hear the sobs and words mixed
together.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m
sorry.

Lucy halted her exit, dropped her bag on the
table and smiled. The smile was not a pleasant one. It was almost helpless.
Like she didn’t know what else to do.
Eventually she sat
herself down on the empty bench across from him, so that her face was in
perfect profile and I could only watch as she sighed, her forehead puckering in
that maddening way it did when she was confused.

I stood up, ready to move across those four
tables and take her away from this.
The nasty area, the
horrid stench and most of all him.
The wreck of a man she’d come here to
see. As I walked forward and took a deep breath, her words reached me then,
across the café and I knew what she was going to say before she even did, like
I’d breathed them in.

“
It’s
okay, Alex. It’s
okay.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Lucy: Knight in shining armor? Well okay then.
 

Alex was looking worse than ever. He’d lost
weight again and he couldn’t really even be affording to lose anymore. His
clothes were dirty, ragged. The combat jacket was soiled along the front and
grimy around the sleeves. I couldn’t bear to think about when he’d last
showered.
Months ago probably.

He looked up at me, tears streaming down his
eyes, and I frowned. “
It’s
okay, Alex. It’s okay.”

He shook his head and I sighed, feeling my heart
drop. Maybe it would be easier if he wasn’t such a wreck. If he didn’t make me
feel so guilty every time I saw him.

“When did you last eat?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I
dunno
.”

“I’ll get something for you,” I said, beckoning
to the guy behind the counter.

Alex shook his head. “You’ve done enough. I’m
sorry my texts were so…I used the pre-paid cell phone you got me. I didn’t sell
it,” he assured me. “Not like the last one.”

Tears pricked my eyes. “Good. That’s good.”

“Lucy—”

“We need to talk, Alex,” I said slowly, before
he could start apologizing again because that was the way these meetings went.
He’d be demanding when he needed the money but as soon as he had it guilt would
fill him. He’d sob and tell me it was the last time ever. That he’d never
bother me again. Only he would. He couldn’t help it. The addiction held him in
a grip so tight nothing would make him let it go.

My fault.
All my
fault.

“What is it, Luce?” he asked, though I could see
his leg twitching. He was in a hurry to leave.
To go and
score no doubt.

I decided to be blunt. “I can’t give you any
more money, Alex,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t.”

He shuddered. “That’s fine.”

Of course he didn’t mean it. When he was strung
out he’d beg and scream until I caved in. “Things are different now,” I
continued, needing to explain my decision to abandon him. “My life is changing,
and I can’t afford to lose so much money every month. I’m going to have responsibilities.
This morning…well…I realized….and…” I shook myself because it was Giles who
should hear that news first, not Alex. “I have some money put aside though,” I
added. “It’s not a lot, but I looked online earlier today and I think it will
just about cover a treatment program.”

“Lucy—”

I held up a hand. “I know you keep saying you’ll
think about it. But
it’s
crunch time now, Alex. We
need to do something.”

He looked up at that and I saw something there
in his eyes. A spark of the man I’d once known. “What do you mean?”

“Like treatment.
An addiction
recovery program.”

He shook his head. “No.
Before.
How is it changing?”

Absentmindedly I reached down and placed a hand
on my stomach, a thrill of pleasure shooting through me again at the thought.
“Well…”

“I think I’d like to know that too.”

Oh. My.
God
.
My heart froze, blood rushed through my head, and I squeezed the
countertop, barely able to believe I was hearing that voice.
“Giles?”

There he stood.
Dressed in his
office clothes too.
His hair in its usual disarray.
Looking beyond scrumptious.
The father of your child
.
I
gulped and took a deep breath trying to center myself. Almost afraid to look
into his eyes, worried about what I’d see there because what the hell could he
be thinking.
Me in some sort of shady rendezvous with a drug
addict?
Because it was obvious that was Alex exactly.
The
thinness, the grime, the shifty look in his eyes.
Any fool could spot it
a mile off, and Giles was no fool.

 
“Lucy?”
He placed a hand under my chin and lifted my eyes so that they met his. He
looked…tender? The anger I’d thought to find was not there at all. “Are you
going to introduce me, Luce?” he prompted. “This is Alex, I presume.”

I nodded mutely, unable to think of a single
thing to say.

Giles slid in the booth next to me and nodded to
my ex and only other boyfriend. “I heard your conversation as I walked over,”
he said. “So I know what’s going on.”

“And who are you?” Alex asked.

“Lucy’s partner,” Giles replied and I sucked in
a shocked breath. “Or her boyfriend, if you prefer that term.”

He reached out under the booth and took my hand.
His was warm and felt so solid. My eyes pricked, and I exhaled shakily. It had
to be the hormones making me feel like this.
So weepy and
pathetic.
But he’d just declared himself, hadn’t he? And despite the
dodginess
of the situation, because it seemed obvious now,
he’d read my freaking texts! The thing I’d accused him of in the very
beginning, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I was hungry, tired and I just
wanted this over with. I just wanted to go home.

“So here’s the deal,” Giles continued. “You take
Lucy up on her treatment offer, which I will be paying for, or you stay the
hell away from her. Those there are the options. There aren’t any others. Not
anymore.”

Alex shifted in his seat. “I don’t need help.”

“If you don’t need help you don’t need money
either. Personally, I’d walk away without offering you anything. God knows
you’ve bled Lucy dry. But she cares about you. I don’t get it but she does. You
know she told me once that I’d never understand the situation between you two.
Not in a million years, and I didn’t realize then what she meant. I do now.”

“Giles,” I whispered. “You don’t understand.”

“Then tell me.”

I arched my head in Alex’s direction, because
now was so not the time. I didn’t want to remind him of what had happened
between us. Mostly he didn’t even think about it. Too high to bother, but now
and then he did and he still got angry during those moments. But then who could
blame him? I’d abandoned him after all. “Not now. Not here.”

Giles gripped my hand a little tighter. “Home it
is then.” Like he’d read my mind.

He slid out of the booth, dragging me along with
him, but not like the night outside the bar. This was different. He sort of
tugged me in a way that I could have easily pulled out of if I wanted. I
didn’t.

“You have Lucy’s number,” Giles said to Alex.
“Let us know your decision.”

I paused for just a moment to look at Alex and
he
at me. Our gazes held and almost at the same time we both
mouthed the same words.
I’m sorry.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Giles: Shock is a good thing. It wakes you up in a way nothing else
can.

I took Lucy to mine. I didn’t even think,
because over the last month it had almost become ours. I liked to see Lucy
there.
Cuddled up in my bed, stretched across my couch.
Puttering around in my kitchen.

I sat her down on the sofa, laid a flowery
comforter—a present from Penelope—over her and took her hand in mine. “So tell
me,” I said, wanting to understand everything. Much was obvious to me now of
course. Alex was a drug addict. Lucy had been giving him money. Question was
why.

“You read my texts,” she said.

I shrugged, a little uncomfortable. “Well, yes.
But I already paid for that didn’t
I
? Months ago, so I
feel like I should be let off now.”

Lucy laughed slightly. “I’m not even really mad.
Relieved maybe.
I can’t even believe sometimes I got
so mad about that before.”

I rubbed her cold hands. “So who is he?”

“My ex-boyfriend.
My first ever one in fact before you.”

Shock held me still a moment at that. “But…there
were always men….”

Lucy shook her head. “No, Giles, there were
flirts.
Dates.
But no men before you
but him, and then after?”
She waved her hands and scrunched her face. “I
was so mad at you.
So angry.
I couldn’t tell you about
Alex. Part of me was ashamed. Part of me guilty and there you were pushing me,
and after that everything just sort of fell apart.”

“Why guilty?” I asked, taking the easiest
question first.

Lucy pulled the comforter closer around her tiny
body and sighed.
“Because Alex is my fault.”

I started at that. “Huh?
How
so?”

“Because I abandoned him.”

“Abandoned him?”

Lucy grimaced. “I grew up in a trailer park,
Giles.
Dirt poor.
Alex and I were the only two kids
our age around. We looked out for each other.
Ran interference
with our abusive parents.”

I tensed and Lucy squeezed my hand. “Not abusive
like that. They just used to beat us, there was never enough food—that sort of
thing.”

Ignoring her causal dismissal of her childhood I
closed my eyes. My parents would love her. Mom would mother her to death. I
would see to it. “So you were friends?”

“Exactly.”
She nodded. “But, Giles, I wanted out. I hated it there, and I did
whatever it took. I worked hard at school. I was always creative. And I worked
jobs whenever I could. My plan was always to get out as soon as possible.”

“But not Alex.”
It wasn’t a question because it was so fucking obvious to me now.
Alex was Lucy’s past. The person she’d left behind when she made something of
herself.

“No,” she agreed. “Not Alex. He got in with the
wrong crowds. Got involved in all sorts and we grew apart. The day I told him I
was leaving he was so shocked. He thought we were going to move in together.
To start a family.”
She shuddered. “He didn’t get it at
all.”

“You left him?”

“Yes. He got into the drugs not long after.”

“But, Luce, you know that’s not your fault,” I
said, baffled. “He made the choice.”

She shook her head. “He did it because there was
nothing left for him. I’d destroyed all his plans.
Though I
didn’t realize.
A bitch, right?
Cold?
Ambitious?
Self-involved?
That was me. But, Giles, it was the only way.”

“You felt guilty?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I did. But I never
thought…the first time he asked for money I gave it to him because I felt so
bad, and the next and the next. Every few months he’d come asking for more,
intermittently over the years. But then I moved here and lost touch. He got my
number somehow, though I have no idea how. And for the last seven months I’ve
watched as he’s fallen apart. How could I not give it to him?”

“You’re feeding his addiction,” I said gently.

“I know. But every time I see him I think of all
the beatings he took for me. The food he’d bring me home from his burger job
when I was so hungry. My stomach used to crunch and crunch and Alex stopped that.”

I sighed.
Understanding more
than she probably knew.
She thought she was a bitch, thought she was
hard. Hell, she had everyone thinking that. But fact of the matter was Lucy was
far from that. She was soft inside, easily manipulated. Maybe a little lost.

I would take care of her now. She’d never feel
lost again.

“You’re not to see him again,” I said. “I’ll
deal with this.”

She gasped. “No!”

“You want to watch him drag himself even
deeper?” I asked

“No, of course not.
It’s awful of me, but I’ve wanted him out of my life for so long,
and not just because of the money, but because I’m sick of feeling guilty! I
just…I can’t ask you to pay for his treatment, Giles.”