Page 60 of Hero & Villain
“I should say that I’m her mortal enemy. It’s complicated.”
“You’re a psychologist. You should be capable of explaining complicated.” I almost had an excuse to hang up and never have to deal with any of these issues that kept coming to the surface. Maybe they’d go away if I pretended they weren’t there, although it was hard to pretend when you froze up and couldn’t shoot someone who was trying to kill you, or worse, unable to play.
“Fine. Trix sees me as her ideal male. She’s terrified of that because she was burned by her ideal guy a long time ago.”
“Wow, Jezebel is right. Your ego is absolutely phenomenal.”
He chuckled. “If Jezebel’s talking about me, there must be something to say.”
“That you’re egotistical, also that somehow not letting Trix know that you’re her landlord is protecting her. Did you brainwash everyone?”
“I’d like to see someone brainwash Jezebel. I think she’s an alien. Tomorrow at four. Come to the Providence and bring the card. You’ll give it to the man at the front desk, and he’ll send you up the elevator. The doors will open, and you’ll walk to the end of the hall and ring the bell.”
“Will I?”
“You wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t realize you needed help. Whether you wake up in the morning and decide that it was a momentary lapse and you are, in fact, perfectly fine as you are, is up to you. Good night, Dani.” He hung up, leaving me standing outside the gas station holding a phone with something sticky on it.
I wrinkled my nose and put it back on the stand before I hesitated and then made another call. She wouldn’t answer, and it was risky to contact her, but I had to hear something real.
It took ten rings for a groggy Toni to answer. “Nevada area code, what’s up, Vil? Do you need backup? I can be there in… four hours.”
A knot inside my chest loosened. “Toni, you’re the best, really, the absolute best friend I could ever have.” My voice was husky, and I had to sniff a few times. Not again. At least I wasn’t breaking down in full sobs this time.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked, sounding more awake.
“That’s a good question. I think that I’m having a mental breakdown. I couldn’t pull the trigger, Toni. That’s not like me, is it?”
“You’re like whatever you want to be.”
I sighed and leaned against the glass even though you could see how filthy it was. “I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what anything means. I got sucked into a vigilante game, tricked into playing the hero instead of the villain. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t shoot, because I was playing the wrong side, but do I really want to be with Baldy and his friend, shooting women and girls if they try to escape from my sex ring? No.”
She inhaled sharply. “There are different kinds of villains. Some could be considered vigilantes in a different light. The main thing is that you’re true to who you want to be, not because the rules of society or others are imposed on you, but because of who you choose to be. I take it the seduction isn’t going as planned.”
I laughed, but it ended in a sigh. “I told him to kiss me, and he licked my face.”
She was quiet for a minute. “Like, you straight-up told him to kiss you? The direct approach. I like it. It’s good to try new methods, to test the waters. Not sure about the licking, but everyone’s got to have a kink.”
I snorted. “It’s a disaster. Everything is a disaster. I can’t play, and I spend more time fantasizing about kissing him than tearing him apart, by about ninety-nine percent. I get all shivery when his arm brushes against mine. I’m so infatuated, it’s ridiculous. I risked my whole paycheck on his fight because I couldn’t break into his warehouse without getting eaten by the mountain lion. And he tastes like chocolate.”
“So, he did kiss you. Before or after the mountain lion?”
“Before and after. Once after I broke his nose, but before I knocked him unconscious and dumped him in the desert, and once after the failed theft attempt. He has this ‘star destroyer’ but it’s actually a land walker with R2D2 sound effects. He’s sick and twisted.”
She inhaled sharply. “Dang, Vil, that sounds like love.”
My stomach lurched. “You think that he’s in love with me?”
“You. It sounds like you’re in love with him. The kind of love that messes up all the plans.” Her voice was soft, but it felt like a slug to my already nauseous stomach.
I squeezed my eyes shut and felt like crying again. Maybe that was just my new baseline. I’d just walk around crying constantly. It could be my new superpower. “Me dumping him in the desert sounds like love? How does that make sense?”
“Because the plan was to get him to trust you, and you didn’t follow the plan, because feelings. Look, maybe you should get out of there. Take a nice vacation. I know some people who won’t be using their Hawaii beach house for at least six months. I can hook you up with keys and everything, even call you a house sitter so you don’t need to stress about legalities. You aren’t a halfway kind of person. If you love him, you will love him forever. Maybe you can take him with you to Hawaii. I can help you kidnap him, and then…” She sighed heavily. “I don’t know, Vil. What do you want me to do?”
I shook my head, trying to get the image of Dirk’s soft eyes and mischievous smile out of my head. I couldn’t love him, not really, not the way that messed up plans, but if it had already happened, what could I do about it? “I thought that you were dating FBI. Kidnapping is probably not the best idea.”
She chuckled. “You make a good point. You’re just going to ride it out, see where the pieces fall? Come to think of it, actually falling for the guy Clint betrayed you with would be a fitting revenge, totally villainous.”
I sniffed. “Right? You’re an evil genius. I love you, Toni, do you know that?” Why did I say that? I didn’t go around expressing my feelings, but I’d almost died, and I wanted her to know how much she meant to me because the feelings were impossible to shove down once they’d escaped their box.
