Page 18 of All In
“Look, I don’t need you coming here and…humiliatingme.”
That seemed to throw him a little. His shoulders hitched. “Humiliate you? How?”
“Bybeinghere. By seeing me like this. Why do you think I left? To hurt Beverly or Henry? Or you? No, I left Vegas because he waseverywhere, Teddy. Jonah was everywhere and I couldn’t take it.”
“What, you think he’s invisible to me?”
“I’m telling you whyIleft.”
“You mean bailed.” His handsome face was stoic, but his voice was filled with pain.
“Fine. Bailed. Snuck off in the night and left a note. I could’ve stayed but for what? So you all could watch me fall apart?” I shook my head, raised my vodka to my lips and took a long swallow. “It’s better this way. It’s fucking awful but it’s also better. In the long run. For everyone.”
“It’s killing you.”
I snorted into my glass. “I can handle it.”
“Bullshit.”
“Is that why you’re here? An intervention? Get me into rehab?”
“No.”
I looked up, studied this man in my living room, his arms still crossed and his feet planted apart. Like a bouncer. Or even Hugo, Rapid Confession’s bodyguard, who’d scooped me drunk off a stage and put me in the back of Jonah’s limo, changing my life. Too many memories. Too many coincidences circling back to memories.
“So.” I drummed my fingers on the counter to hide how they were twitching. “You’re going to throw my booze away? Force me to quit?”
“No.” His tone stayed even and hard, while mine edged toward panic. I slapped my hand on the counter. “So what, then? You wanted to talk. Talk.”
“I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
One of his shoulders rose and fell, that was all. He looked so strong and solid and heavy; a boulder of muscle that had planted itself in my living room with no intention of moving.
“You’re waiting.” I ran my hands through my hair, and clasped them behind my neck, trying to stop the room’s spinning. “Well, you can’twaithere. Get out.”
Theo didn’t move.
“Did you hear me?” I said. “You can’t stay.”
Not a blink. Not a breath. He looked paused. Like a robot with the switch flipped to off.
My arms dropped and I planted my hands on my hips. “Are you deaf, Teddy? I said get out.”
He drew a deep inhale then. With the exhale, his booted feet seemed to imbed deeper into the floor.
I lanced my finger at the door. “Get. Out.”
Silence.
Frustration mounted in me, tinged with something else. A bone-deep certainty this was it. My one chance at salvation.
Help me…
“Goddammit, get out of my house,” I cried. “Leave mealone.”
When he didn’t budge, I seized my cell phone. It was a burner phone, the kind you buy at a convenience store. It had nothing in it except contact numbers for the clubs I sang in. I’d thrown my other one away into the Nevada desert months ago.
