“I don’t know if I’m ready to forgive. All I know is you made me feel safe last night and right now.”
I stroked up and down her back while my stomach roiled. “That’s a lot. Youaresafe with me, baby. But I need to know what happened. Who did this?”
She shook her head. “You can’t go after him. He’ll kill you. If I hadn’t had his money last night—” A rough tremble took over her entire body. “I think he would have killed me. And then he would have gone after my mom and sister.”
“Amir?” I guessed.
“No. I mean, Amir was here, holding Zadie hostage while I was at work. But he isn’t in charge of everything. His older brother, Reno, is. He’s an absolute psycho.” She pulled back, cupping my jaw. “Listen to me, Theo. You cannot go after Reno. He’s untouchable to you. I need you to hear me.”
I heard her, but I was distracted by her black eye, the crusty cut on her cheek, the other cheek swollen and abraded. Her neck bore finger-shaped bruises that made my blood boil and struck a fear like I’d never known in my heart. She wasn’t broken, and she was still beautiful, but fuck, my girl had been banged up. I hadn’t even looked at her torso yet.
“I hear you. I need you to hear that I’m not letting this stand. You’re not going to owe that man money anymore. Your connection with him is over.”
She slumped against my chest. “I owe him a lot of fucking money. With interest...it’s going to take me until I graduate and have access to my trust to pay him off. I’ve got years of this over my head.”
“No, Helen.” Taking her head in my hands, I tipped it back carefully. “Listen to me. I am going to handle it. You have nothing more to worry about. That part of your life ceases to exist now that I’m here.”
Her chin trembled, but she clamped down on her bottom lip to make it stop. “I won’t let you do that. I know you’re working now, but you don’t have the kind of mon—”
I covered her mouth with mine, taking what I needed and giving back to her. Her gasp allowed me to delve my tongue between her lips, sipping her taste and letting it spread through my veins like a shot of pure heroin. Helen was calm, smooth, euphoric. Nothing had been right without her.
“Shut up,” I murmured against her lips. “No more.”
“We’re not kissing, Theo. I’m not there with you.”
“I know. I jumped the gun, but I needed you to shut your mouth, baby. This isn’t your worry anymore. I’m taking it.”
I didn’t have the money, but I’d find it. There were myriad paths I could take from here, but none of them involved me standing by while Helen gave more and more of her money, time, or self to the man who’d left her beaten in a parking lot last night.
“I stripped last night. Not only that, I lap danced. My ass was grinding on multiple men. I shook my tits in their faces. My friend Carina is a stripper, and she makes it look good. I admire her. When I do it, I feel like I’m never going to be clean again. But that’s the thing. I’ll do it again and again. Your promises are nice, but this is reality.”
As soon as she laid out what she saw as facts, she climbed off my lap and went to her dresser. She was digging around, but not taking anything out. I got the clear sense she needed space from me, but I’d already given her a hell of a lot. That was done too.
I crossed the room, bracing my hands on either side of her on the edge of the dresser. My chest was pressed to her back, and I bent down to nuzzle the side of her face.
“I didn’t know I wasn’t breathing until I met you.”
Her shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t move otherwise. I brushed her hair to the side, leaving a kiss on the bruise mottling her neck.
“I’ve been in survival mode since I can remember. My body was my weapon. But the war I was fighting wasn’t worthy of the sacrifices I made. The training, the starving, the doping.” My fingers skimmed her shoulder, and her head tilted, giving me enough of her to see she was hanging on my every word. These were things I’d never said out loud. Thoughts I’d never allowed to fully form for fear they’d tear down what I’d built.
“I would’ve done anything to get out of my old life. That meant when I moved here and the coaches my dad hired introduced me to performance-enhancing drugs, I took them without question. When they taught me how to game the system, I followed their rules to a T. The testing was different in college, but I heard of this guy who had access to something new—something the tests didn’t pick up.”
“Amir,” she breathed.
“Right. Amir. I took what he gave me blindly. Injected it straight into my muscles without concern for the consequences. The only consequence I gave a shit about was being shipped back to my old life. I was all wrestling, every hour of my life was focused on the goal of being the best, ensuring my dad had a reason to keep me here. I lost Abby, but I kept going and going until I ended up in the hospital with what I thought was a heart attack. It wasn’t, but it was a wake-up call. Because what was the point of turning myself into a weapon if my own blade was being shoved deeper into my chest with every stride I made?”
“Theo, you don’t have to tell me this.”
Taking her by the shoulders, I spun her to face me. “I need you to understand why I get it. I’m going to make it so you never have to strip again, but I also want you to know I get why you had to.”
Her eyes met mine. They were so damn pretty, yet so damn sad. “When Amir told me about the doping, I was disappointed in you.”
I nodded, taking the weight of the way I’d let her down onto my shoulders. “That’s fair. If I were a better man, I’d send back every trophy I ever won. All my victories are unclean. I’m not going to say I didn’t deserve them, because I trained my body like a machine, sacrificed almost everything, and I was damn good, but I’ll never know if I would have won without the drugs.”
Something hard in her expression fell away. “I’m an asshole for being disappointed. I realize that now. I have no room to judge you for doing what needed to be done to survive. And I guess that includes dumping me—”
“Shut up, Helen. There’s no excuse for how I treated you. Don’t give me an out. I won’t take it, not when I haven’t proven to you I’m willing to stand by you and stand up for you. I asked you for soft, but the second I needed to give you strong, I failed. That won’t happen a second time.”