Menace (Scarlet Scars #1)(10)
I wave it away, grimacing. Gross.
“Sorry,” he mutters, puffing on the thing a few more times, back-to-back, before throwing it down and stomping it out, twisting his boot-clad foot on it so feverishly that he tears it to shreds.
Sorry isn’t a word I hear often, especially not from any of the men I encounter in life. I kind of feel bad for the guy. Something’s got him frazzled, and really, who am I to judge someone’s vices?
“It’s okay,” I say. “Rough night?”
“You could say that,” he says, eyeing me warily. “You one of Amello’s girls?”
“You could say that,” I tell him, repeating his words.
He nods. “How much?”
“How much what?”
“How much do you go for? How much to take you in one of those back rooms right now and turn you out for an hour?”
The sympathy I felt just a second ago? Gone. “I’m not one of those girls.”
He laughs dryly. “Come on, name your price.”
“Not happening,” I repeat. “So if you’re looking for *, look somewhere else, buddy.”
I go to walk around him, but he grabs my wrist to stop me. I snatch my arm away, scowling, and turn to him, stepping right up to him. “Don’t touch me.”
“Sorry,” he says again, this apology not at all genuine, a small smile tugging his lips, like I amuse him. Like me being upset that he touched me is in some way funny. I want to smack that look off his face, but it wouldn’t make a difference.
Wouldn’t change what I know he’s thinking.
Would probably get my ass locked up on an assault and battery charge tonight, really, which would lead to a whole host of other problems for me.
Big problems.
Can’t risk it.
I take a few steps away when I hear him chuckling under his breath, mumbling, “* probably isn’t even that good, lady.”
“Nice one, Slick Rick,” I call back at him as I keep walking. “Your bitterness isn’t showing at all there.”
“Fuck you,” he says.
“Yeah, you wish, *.”
I hear the music in Mystic cut off, the DJ’s incoherent mumbling replacing it. Closing time. Four o’clock. Shoving my icy hands in my pockets, I walk away, my feet painfully tingling, in that place right before numbness where everything just stings.
It’s only a few blocks back to my apartment building, on the same street as the cheap bar, Whistle Binkie. My footsteps are hurried as I watch over my shoulder, making sure I’m not being followed. My shoes are gone when I reach the corner, no longer were I kicked them off. Figures.
What the hell have I gotten myself into this time?
Chapter Four
“There’s no place like home.”
The little girl swung her feet as she whispered those words, tapping her bare heels together, but it wasn’t working. Maybe she needed a pair of Ruby Slippers, like Dorothy. The house was big like a palace, so it might’ve been Oz, even though the road hadn’t been yellow bricks leading to it. No, they had been normal streets, with so many cars, and so many people, none of them Munchkins singing songs, not even a pretty pink witch in a bubble.
Just a bunch of flying monkeys.
They belonged to the Tin Man. He didn’t have the monkeys in the story, but he did in real life. Her mother called them that sometimes, which confused the little girl, since they didn’t have wings. But whatever they were, she didn’t like them. They were all loud, and they laughed like everything was so funny, but it was the kind of laughing that sounded mean. They said ugly words and called people bad names, and they didn’t like girls, although they claimed they did. They kissed them on the mouth, like the Tin Man had kissed her mother, but then they pushed them around like they meant nothing.
The little girl didn’t like it there, in that big palace, sitting on the stool at the bar in the kitchen, her legs so short they just dangled.
“There’s no place like home,” she whispered again, barely hearing herself over the loud chatter, knocking her feet together.
Still not working.
“What are you doing, kitten?”
The little girl raised her head, eyes lifting from her lap, meeting the Tin Man’s gaze across from her, the only other person sitting down. His eyes were like metal, cold and gray like clouds.
“I wanna go home,” she whispered.
He stared at her. “You are home.”
She shook her head.
“You are,” he said again. “This is your home, kitten. This is where you belong.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You will get used to it.”
“I want Mommy.”
“No.”
His voice was sharp as he barked that word, silencing everyone in the room. No one liked the sound of it, not even the flying monkeys, who didn’t think it was funny when the Tin Man got angry.
Tears stung the little girl’s eyes, her gaze on her lap again as her bottom lip trembled. “Please.”
She could feel so many eyes on her, everyone watching, waiting to see what would happen. A moment passed, where nobody reacted, before the Tin Man crooked his pointer finger beneath her chin, raising her head up with it to make her look at him.