“Listen.” He crouched so that our eyes were level with each other. “Remember, it’s just me. The boy in your room. You’re Cleopatra, okay?”
I squinted at him in question. I wore the necklace still, and his finger pulled at the chain. It fell from my sweater and glinted in the light.
“Remember you stood in a space full of men tonight and the night I met you. No one harmed you. You hold cards, huh? Don’t fear me. I’m not here to hurt you,” he repeated, but then he tilted his head as if thinking about it. “At least not yet.”
I studied Rome, his strong jaw, the way the back of his hand rubbed across my collarbone as if to soothe me. It was in a single moment, us standing there in that small bathroom, that I found everything I’d been missing since I lost my father.
Suddenly, I was hopeful in another individual.
I nodded, my body warming up after a year of being as cold as ice. He lifted his hand from my mouth like a man stepping back from a wild, beaten animal. He spread his fingers and waved them in front of me, showing me he wasn’t trying to pull anything over my head.
“Did you know about Sasha?” He got straight to the point.
My heart squeezed, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he thought I did or because I suddenly longed for someone to care for me as he did his lover.
“No.” I wiped my mouth and glanced into the tiny mirror. It was cracked, and a piece of it had fallen out, but I could still see that my hair had frizzed out. My makeup was smudged and my lip-gloss was nearly nonexistent. I turned the water on, cupped a splash of it to my mouth, and rinsed it out. Then, I splashed my face. “I only knew he went to see other women. I tracked his whereabouts sometimes. I knew he was trafficking women. Mario’s guy brought me a cell and let me know that I needed to cooperate with them.”
Rome pulled at his dark hair. “They shouldn’t have involved you.”
“I was sleeping with the enemy. Of course they involved me.”
“You’re a child, Katie.” He eyed me with disgust and disbelief.
“Am I now?” I shot back at him. “Aren’t you too? You can’t be much older than me.” I rubbed the mascara under my eyes and reached for a paper towel.
Of course, the metal dispenser was empty. Rome lifted the bottom of his shirt, and I saw a flash of his abs before he grabbed the back of my head and smeared his shirt all across my wet face to dry it.
“I’m old enough to know right and wrong. That man sleeping with you was wrong.”
“It was consensual.” I was muffled by his shirt. I hesitated and then mumbled, “Mostly.”
“Your age makes it not.” He paused too as he dropped his shirt back down and met my gaze again. “Entirely and completely.”
I rolled my lips between my teeth, my anger rising. He had no right to judge me or who I was with. “My sex life isn’t up for discussion. What other questions do you have? I don’t have much information on your fiancée.”
“Ex-fiancée,” he corrected and sighed before he leaned against the wall. “She was only in my life because she’d told me she was having my baby. I . . .” He looked down at his scuffed black boots. “We were never compatible, but I’d have taken care of my baby. She didn’t deserve—”
I cut him off. I didn’t know much, but I knew enough to understand his guilt, the weight of a death on your hands. No one needed to bear that. “She was sleeping with Jimmy. I know that. She had been for a long time, Rome.” I took a breath and stepped toward him. “Jimmy whispered in the middle of the night, but I listened. He argued about that baby, Rome. And I know you probably don’t want to hear this now, but she told him he was the father too.”
He nodded slowly, keeping his face angled toward the ground. His feet moved back and forth, and when my hand acted on its own accord to touch his shoulder, he flinched.
I kept it there.
Whatever burden he felt could have been mine too. I wanted to carry the weight along with him.
Then he shrugged me off. When he looked up, those chocolate eyes had turned off whatever emotion he’d felt. The connection we had was gone.
“So, you know something more about it all, then. Did you know she was with me?”
I stepped back, but the room felt smaller, more dangerous and suddenly congested with this darkened soul of a man. “I didn’t know anything.”
“But you just said you did. You knew she was sleeping with him. What else?”
“I only shared that with you so that you didn’t—”
“Do you think you belong here with us?” He stalked forward as I cowered back. “Do you think any of us care about you here?”
“Mario does,” I stuttered. The door thunked when my back hit it, leaving me nowhere to go as his chest met mine. “Mario is going to take care of me. He said I’m in. Blood oath and all.”