Page 57 of Faithless
He answered, not with words but with a feeling pushed into my mind. It took me a moment to recognize it as trust. It was the same way I felt around him and Devin, and it made me pull in a surprised breath. He was telling me we could trust Aurora, if even challenging me to try.
Well, if this wasn’t a day full of surprises.
Aurora glanced up at my sharp inhale, her hand pausing on Tezca’s back. “You okay?”
I nodded, swallowed, then took another breath. “My name is Santos.”
21
TORRANCE
“I’ll take another, Andie.”
The bartender paused, narrowing her eyes at my empty drink. “You’re getting started awfully early today. You sure you don’t want to slow down?”
I shot her a stony look right back, not having any of her fake concern. “You can give me a water to chug too, if that’ll make you feel better.”
She shrugged and took my empty glass, then placed a cup of water in front of me. I nursed it while she poured me a fresh whiskey and was grateful when she disappeared to the other end of the bar.
Andie and I had gotten to know each other pretty well over the last few days. When I wasn’t working out to the point of collapse in the gym, I spent nearly every waking moment at this bar.
Rori and I had barely seen each other, let alone spoken to each other, since the gladiator fight. She had been right to confront me in that VIP box. I was being a total ass and knew it would only get worse the closer she got to her private appointment with that fighter.
I avoided her because she deserved better than seeing me go apeshit. I didn’t trust myself around her, and even if she had sworn up and down she wouldn’t fuck the guy, it probably wouldn’t have reassured me at all.
Instead of manning up and being honest, I, of course, went to drink and chase tail. Because that was how I dealt with not having the woman I wanted. That was how I dealt with getting passed over for someone else. Again.
I had every intention of hooking up with Andie after the gladiator fight. She had even invited me to a vacant guest suite, which she had access to because her friend was a maid. But no matter how sloshed I was, no matter how badly it hurt to watch Rori eye-fuck that gladiator, I couldn’t bring myself to say yes.
So I made a lame excuse about having drank too much, and said I’d be back the next night. I got back to Rori and my suite late. Her bedroom door was closed, and the whole place was dark. When I got up the next morning, she was already gone.
I worked out, showered, ate. Checked out the gentleman’s club and golf course in the resort, got bored, then came to the bar. Andie invited me back again. And again, I couldn’t say yes.
She gave up trying after that, and I couldn’t blame her. I almost suggested it myself the day Rori went to see the gladiator, but I hadreallyobliterated myself, to the point of passing out at the bar. I woke up to a maid gently shaking me and informing me meekly that she needed to clean.
I went to my suite and crashed for a few hours. At some point, I was awake enough to hear Rori’s bedroom door open and close, then the soft voices of her and her maid.
So it was done then. Great.
Part of me wanted to storm over there, rip the door off its hinges, and demand to know what happened. Part of me wanted to know everything she’d done in explicit detail. Was he actually good in bed? How many times did he make her come and in what ways?
The other part of me wanted to throw the covers over my head and pretend none of this was real, and that was the side that won out.
That day had come and gone, and it still wasn’t sitting with me any easier. Not knowing what happened was the worst part, but the thought of swallowing my pride and asking Rori made me want to drink myself into oblivion again.
I had to just…figure out how to be okay with the possibility that she’d done him.
Might as well tell a fish to learn how to breathe air.
On top of all that, we were supposedly meant to be doing something important here, important enough to get gods involved. Rori may have found things out from the Butcher, or, considering she hadn’t yet told me anything, maybe not.
Sure, I wasn’t exactly making myself available to her, but there were only so many places I could go here. If she needed me, she was smart enough to find me.
“You’re a fucking bastard, Torr,” I mumbled into my drink before swallowing it down.
It was easy to ignore the shouts and the scuffling sounds. This bar was just outside the underbelly of the colosseum, and gladiators were training in the sand pit. But when someone shouted, “You lost me five thousand TCs, you piece of shit!”, that got my attention.
The bar staff, on the other hand, put their heads down and became particularly engrossed in their work. Andie turned her back to the corridor heading to the pit and began slicing lemons to add to her already-full stash in the refrigerator.
