“I can’t stay away from you, Becky,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
I stared at him. “I don’t want you to,” I admitted, sick of lying to myself. “But I don’t know how to be around you now. I barely know how to be around myself. It hurts to see you. What you are. What I turned you into. But it hurts so much more not to see you.”
He stepped forward, careful not to touch me. “You didn’t turn me into anything,” he growled. “They did. And they’ll die a thousand fuckin’ deaths once I get my hands on them, you can trust that. You’re sayin’ you’re selfish? I gotta be too. I can’t not be around you, babe. Just can’t. I’ll wait for however long it takes for you to get to know yourself. I’ll wait a fuckin’ year just to get you to hold my fuckin’ hand. But I’ll be waiting here.” He pointed to the ground between us. “Not close enough to touch, but close enough to fuckin’ feel. Feel the way the bitterness on my tongue goes away knowin’ you’re here, breathin’, existin’ survivin’. And I won’t go ’cause I know, underneath it all, you don’t want me to either.”
My shaking hands went to my hair and he followed their journey. “Okay,” I whispered.
He jolted.
“But I don’t know how long I’ll take. You could be old and fat and gray by the time I’m ready.”
A shadow of his old grin tickled his face as he rubbed his flat stomach. “Can’t fatten a thoroughbred.” He winked. “You look wiped. Can I walk the lady to her car?”
I nodded, slightly thrown by the change in persona. It was something I was coming to expect, but the effect was that much more jarring when I could see through the transparency of his actions.
We started walking together in silence until we got to my beat-up car.
He faced me. “Any chance you’ve changed your mind about getting up on stage?”
I raised a brow. “In the thirty seconds it took us to reach my car?”
He nodded seriously.
“No. I’m stubborn. You know that. And it’s what I’m going to do, like it or not.”
His eyes flickered. “I’m gonna go with not. But I’ll deal.”
“‘Deal’ does not mean you shoot anyone in the audience.”
He scowled at me. “When was that agreed upon?”
“I think that’s just something universally known. You don’t shoot people for patroning a strip club,” I said, rifling through my bag for my keys. I was driving now, all by myself, with only one panic attack that had me parked on the side of the road for half an hour. But I dealt. I found them and glanced back up at Gabriel. “One you seem to own, so I think shootings might hurt your bottom line.”
He clenched his jaw. “I don’t give a fuck about my bottom line. I give a fuck about you.”
I sucked in a breath, trying to find a way to navigate this situation. Gabriel beat me to it when his eyes zeroed in on my arm.
“Becky,” he said quietly, almost a whisper. “You get a tattoo?”
I couldn’t quite understand his tone, so I turned my arm up for him to inspect, careful to keep from touching distance. It was healing now, flaking at the edges, but still looking pretty kick-ass.
Tattoos were definitely something I could get addicted to.
Though that wasn’t saying much. I could get addicted to anything—Pop-Tarts, serial killer documentaries, people. More accurately, the man in front of me tracing my new ink with his hazel eyes.
“The Walking Dead, I dig it,” he said finally.
I frowned at him. “I’m kind of used to following your train of thought, but even I’m lost now.”
His eyes met mine. Something twinkled from underneath their new hard shell. “The quote. It’s from The Walking Dead. Great show. Glenn is, like, my spirit animal. You’re definitely Maggie.”
I blinked at him. “Okay, I have no clue what you’re talking about, but this quote isn’t from a zombie show. It’s from a book. Ever heard of them?”
He pretended to ponder. “They’re just like really long magazines, right? Without the pictures?”
I wanted to smile. I almost did. That stupid little line gave me hope that Gabriel was still there. That this stranger was temporary and I hadn’t damned him for eternity.
My hope was quashed when he stepped forward. When the stranger stepped forward and Gabriel disappeared. He made sure not to touch me.
“Why, babe?” He nodded down to the ink.
I swallowed. “I’m covered in scars that I didn’t get a choice in.” I glanced down at the one on my arm from where the handcuffs had scraped my wrist almost to the bone. “Most of them you can’t see. Which is good ’cause if you could, that’s all you’d ever see. The ribbons of scarred skin, the ruins of me. I wanted to put something permanent there that I designed, that I controlled. I’ve got a mostly blank canvas on the outside, so maybe if I cover it with beauty I can disguise the ugly, even from myself.”