Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(54)

I watched my friend drive away. Happy. I’m happy with Drew. We have some…intimacy issues to work out but otherwise…

I tipped the valet and climbed behind the wheel of my Mini. The memory of Cory’s kiss was as fresh in my mind as if it had just happened. I couldn’t remember any of Drew’s kisses. Not one.

“I also can’t remember feeling this dissatisfied with Drew until after the robbery. It’s the trauma of it and nothing more.” I pulled the therapist’s card from my purse and dialed the number before activating the car’s Bluetooth.

“Dr. Kinley’s office. How can I help you?”

Make my life go back to the way it was.

“Yes, hi, I’d like to make an appointment,” I said. “As soon as possible.”





Chapter Twenty


Cory



I stood in the hospital bathroom, shirtless. The fluorescent lighting stole the color out of the roses around the face of the Santa Muerta tattoo—Saint Death, in Mexico—that covered the muscle of my left shoulder. Georgia always thought it was morbid, but I loved it. Santa Muerta reminded people of their own mortality. Then again, so does being shot, I thought.

It was the scar on my chest I studied closely. A white circle over my right pectoral that was the circumference of a straw, where an EMT had stabbed me. I’d been drowning in my own blood until then. Nearly dead.

I turned and glanced over my shoulder. The tattoo on my right shoulder blade was vibrant, but my eyes were drawn to the white horizontal seam beneath it, halfway up my back where they’d pulled a bullet from my lung and replaced part of two ribs with metal rods. Hard to imagine it was only two weeks ago.

I inhaled deeply, but slowly. Carefully. No pain. It was, but for those white scars, as if I’d never been shot at all. And now they were letting me go.

I put on a white sleeveless undershirt and a plain t-shirt over that. My jeans felt a little looser, but wearing them was infinitely better than having my ass hanging out of a hospital gown. I ran some water through my hair and glanced a final time at my reflection.

“I’m the same guy.”

Only I wasn’t. The nurses said everyone called me the Hero of United One. It made my stomach churn.

“You saved fifty-three people!” they constantly cooed at me.

I couldn’t tell them the truth. That I wasn’t thinking of fifty-three people that day. That my distracting Dracula long enough to let the cops do their job was a happy coincidence. The police saved the hostages. I had only ever intended to save one.

Just one.

But she was gone and all I had to show for it were two shiny white scars and a mountain of debt.

Now Georgia can take Callie to the moon for all I’ll be able to stop her.

And then there was Georgia. Prior to the robbery, she’d had a strange grip on me, pulling strings to get what she wanted, hooking me on her line, using Callie as the bait. Now, when she’d come to visit me over the last two weeks—only twice, only once with Callie—her tossed off comments about my job, my living situation, my good-for-nothing boss meant nothing to me. I let it all slide, my thoughts occupied by the memory of Alex sleeping in my arms at the bank and that sudden, stolen interlude in the office when she’d been mine completely.

Almost as potent was the memory of her kiss in the hospital. It was supposed to have been a peck on the cheek. I would have bet my truck—my most prized possession—on it. But I had turned or she had—I preferred to believe it was the latter. That kiss…

Such a contrast to the hard, emotionless kisses Georgia gave me whenever I was stupid enough to allow myself to spend the night with her. If she kissed me at all. It had been ages, now that I thought about it.

But Alex…her mouth had parted for me, her tongue stroking mine until I was hard as a rock and desperate to have her again for one more night. No, every night.

I brushed those kinds of thoughts aside, buried them deep with every other thing I wanted from life but could not have, could not work for. Alex was gone. That kiss had been goodbye, and even so, she was from another world. A world of money and privilege, and expensive lunches and cars. She was grateful to me for saving her life, and that was it. She’d gone back into her cushy life and there was nothing I could do about it.

“You have bigger things to worry about,” I told my reflection.

And that was true enough. As I’d suspected, my landlord had evicted me from my cruddy little apartment in Culver City. And cruddy though it was, it had had two bedrooms, one for Callie when it was my weekend to have her. Now it was gone, those weekends gone with it.

I put my hand to my chest, wincing, a pain almost worse than being shot. My girl…

I emerged from the bathroom. Vic Ruiz was scanning the room for stray items to toss into a duffel. “About time. Thought you fell in.”

“Hey man,” I said. “Thanks for getting the guys to salvage my stuff. And for letting me crash at your place for a few days. I appreciate it.”

“Por nada, my friend. Carla’s happy to have you. She’s going to feed you until you burst. Be warned.”

“I won’t be there long enough, but she’s welcome to try.”

“When’s the hearing?”

“Friday.”

“In two days? How you gonna find a new place by then?”