This wasn’t the reunion she had wanted. He wasn’t honest with her. He wouldn’t answer her questions. She understood his remorse for the bite and the uncertainty in seeing her again after she had run out. But it wasn’t enough. Not when he was so secretive. Not when they had moved backward instead of forward. Not when Penelope was still between them.
Her hands came out and instead of twining in his suit coat, she pushed him backward. It didn’t budge him more than an inch, but she took a step back.
“Stop,” she gasped.
Any warmth in his eyes shuttered and dissipated.
“I can’t do this again. I spent eight weeks wondering when you were going to save me. When you would storm into the room and carry me out of my hell. I dreamed of our reunion, Beckham, and it wasn’t this,” she said, her voice hollow. “But I won’t…no, I can’t live in a world where Penelope stands between us again.”
Beckham took a step backward. “She’s…it’s complicated.”
“Then you should go.”
“Go,” he growled at the dismissal.
“Come back when you can talk to me like you once did. When we don’t have to play games. Because I’m through with the games.”
She watched as he moved away from her and toward her closet. She followed him, wondering what he was doing. Then she saw it. A door handle. He had come in through a secret doorway in her closet. Of course. Because he wouldn’t want anyone to see him.
“Becks,” she whispered as he stood there, frozen.
His hand rested on the doorknob. “Sydney will want to see you. You’re…important to the organization. This was where you should have been all along. Not with me.”
Then he strode out of the bedroom and became a shadow, disappearing into the darkness of the corridor.
She couldn’t believe that after all this time and everything she had dreamed about this day, he was going to walk out…walk away from her. No. She couldn’t have that. She didn’t want him to walk away. She wanted them to talk. To actually talk. She wanted to make things right.
Her heart thudded as she rushed toward the door. Rushed back toward Beckham. She could right these wrongs. They could make this work. Talk it out.
Her hand closed over the doorknob, ready to rush after him. But as she twisted it, there was no give. It was locked…from the outside. A way for Beckham to get in, but not for her to get out.
Reyna’s knees hit the carpeted floor as her heart cracked open wide. What had they done? This wasn’t how any of it was supposed to happen. She wanted a do-over. For him to come back and for them to actually figure all of this out. Instead of the nightmare that they had just walked through.
She’d stood her ground and refused to give in to him when he’d evaded all of her questions. She’d made him go even though she’d wanted nothing more than for him to stay.
And now he was gone…maybe forever.
Chapter 13
“Let me get this straight,” Jodie said, later that day. “Homeboy shows up in your room to see you and you flip?”
“Um, sort of,” Reyna admitted.
“You’ve been mooning over him for however long you were in that hellhole. You get out of said hellhole. Then your dream man shows up for you. And what do you do? Turn him away?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Seems that simple to me,” she said, lounging back on Meghan’s bed. They’d dragged a cot in for Jodie to sleep on until they got her a place to stay more permanently. “You know what you should have done?”
“What?”
“Fucked him.”
Reyna choked on her laughter. It felt nice. Waking up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and confronting Beckham about Penelope hadn’t been her best move. But him completely avoiding the question and acting like a total stranger hadn’t been that great either.
“I’m for real!” Jodie said when Reyna didn’t respond.
“I know you are, but…I don’t know. It wouldn’t fix everything.”
“It would sure as hell fix the lack of orgasms.”
“I can’t even argue with that.”
“ ’Course you can’t.”
“But come on, wouldn’t you argue with a guy who was possibly engaged to someone else before sleeping with them again?” Reyna asked.
Jodie tapped her finger on her lips. “If I’d just gotten out of prison and been on a dry spell, I’d probably have to think about it for a second beforehand.”
Reyna tilted her head back and stared up at the white spackled ceiling. “What do I do?”
“If you want sage advice from a girl who has been locked up for longer than you, I’d say find him and fix things. We both know that time is fickle and we might not make it out of this.”
Reyna suspected Jodie had been in Visage a lot longer than her, but she had never come out and asked about it. She figured there was a lot that Jodie wasn’t ready to talk about.