Page 55 of Nocturne

“Are you alright?” I whisper.

She nods, though she’s trembling slightly. “I’ve had worse. Nothing some makeup can’t handle.”

The casual way she says it stokes the embers of my anger. “How long has he been hitting you?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.” My voice comes out rough, raw, my chest a mix of potent feelings for her coming to a head.

She moves away from my touch, crossing to a small bar cart in the corner of the living room. “It’s not the first time. Probably won’t be the last.”

“It will be the last,” I say with quiet certainty. “I meant what I said.”

“Which was what?”

“You’re mine, not his.”

She hesitates and then pours two fingers of whiskey into a crystal tumbler and hands it to me. “You shouldn’t have done that. Marco’s not the type to forgive and forget.”

“I don’t care. I honestly fucking don’t.”

“Well, you should.” She pours a drink for herself, barely sipping it. “He wasn’t lying about Mickey Cohen. If Marco tells him what happened here…”

“Let him.” The whiskey burns a path down my throat, dulling the ache in my knuckles. “Cohen doesn’t scare me.”

“Then you’re a fool.” But there’s no heat in her words, just weary resignation.

I look around her apartment for the first time, taking in the details. It’s elegantly furnished but sparsely decorated—a few art prints on the walls, bookshelves filled with volumes of poetry and philosophy, a record player in the corner with a stack of jazz albums beside it. No photographs, no personal mementos. Like a space someone inhabits but doesn’t truly live in.

It gives me no further insight into who she really is.

And to think, last night, buried deep inside her pussy, I thought somehow I’d known her.

“You should go,” she says, setting down her barely touched drink. “It’s not safe for you to be here.”

“What about you? It’s not safe for you either.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Like you were doing when I walked in?” I wince at how sharp my words are.

Her eyes flash with anger. “You don’t know anything about me or my situation, Callahan. You don’t know what I’ve survived. What I’ll do to keep surviving.”

“Then tell me.” I step closer to her, drawn by some force I can’t resist. “Let me help you.”

For a moment, something vulnerable crosses her face, a yearning that mirrors my own. I saw that same yearning in her eyes last night, when she let herself give in to me.

Then it’s gone, replaced by careful neutrality. “I don’t need saving.”

“Everyone needs saving sometimes, kitten.” I reach for her hand, feel that same electric current when our skin connects. “Even you.”

She pulls away, wrapping her arms around herself. “What happened last night…between us…it was a mistake. I was vulnerable, you were there. That’s all.”

The rejection stings more than it should. “Is that what you tell yourself? That it didn’t mean anything?”

“Itcan’tmean anything. Not with everything that’s happening. You said it yourself, Callahan. You don’t know me. Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe I don’t want you to get any closer.”

That should hurt. The words are meant to. But I study her face, seeing the conflict in her eyes. “You’re lying. To me, to yourself.”

---