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Once upstairs, I hang the dress in the bathroom, where I will hand wash it later since I can’t send my stuff out for dry cleaninganymore. I’m sure Scott would volunteer to pay for it, but no way I’m asking for anything else from him.
I pull on a T-shirt of Scott’s, another silly band shirt, just as I hear his feet on the stairs. Probably coming to apologize and fuck me again. I swear the two go hand-in-hand. Whenever we get into a little tiff, one of us always comes crawling back to apologize to the other. Then we somehow end up rolling around on the nearest surface. That probably isn’t healthy. Not that I would know. I’ve never been in a relationship with actual feelings before. If this even is a relationship.
This is the very definition of theit’s complicatedrelationship status on Facebook. They certainly don’t have a box to check forI’m fucking the guy who rescued me and took me in like a lost kitten, and all I want to do is rub against him and have him pet me.
“Beauty.” The regret is unmistakable in his voice. Also, in the way he can’t quite meet my eyes.
I’ve tried to scratch below the surface with Scott the past few weeks. He knows so much about me already, and I know next to nothing about him. Not how he can afford this place. Not where he grew up. Not how he got into music.
My only solace that he continues to shut the door between us is the occasional personal concert I get while he plays on the balcony and forgets to close the sliding door the whole way. Well, that and pulling on the cloak of bitchiness that doesn’t quite fit anymore.
“Look, I think we should talk—”
Before he can finish whatever lame attempt at groveling he is working on, my cell phone rings on the nightstand. I’d almost forgotten I had the thing, to be honest. I lost my real phone the night of the attack in the alley. This was a cheap prepaid one Scott got me. It is, in fact, the only thing I specifically asked him to buy me, since I didn’t want to be using his to try and sort outthe mess that is my life. But I gave up on getting a hold of Agent Rose almost a week ago. And no one else in the world besides Scott cares about me.
We both stare at it, and it dumps into voicemail as a result. The following silence jars me from the shocked stare down I’d been holding with the stupid thing. Striding over to the nightstand, I take a deep breath before picking it up. For some reason, a dark foreboding takes up residence in my chest. As if even without seeing who called, I know it won’t be good.
I don’t get the chance to check the call history, because as soon as it settles into my palm, the phone starts ringing again. It’s a number I had memorized nearly a month ago.
Agent Rose.
With wide, shocked eyes staring at Scott, I accept the call. “Hello?”
“Lacy Falluci?”
“Yes.”
“This is Agent Ted Rose. I understand you’ve been trying to reach me.” Nothing about the phone call is what I expect. Agent Rose has a nasal voice, not the deep, rough one I had expected of an FBI agent. Also, he sounds bored. As if this phone call means nothing to him or his investigation.
“Actually, I had been under the impression you wanted to speak with me.” I adopt my most hoity-toity, boss bitch tone. “That is why you put my apartment and finances on lockdown despite no wrongdoing on my part, correct?”
“It is standard procedure to freeze the financial assets of a suspect at risk of fleeing the country.” The words are flat. Agent Rose gives no inflection, no importance to any bit of what he says.
“So, I’m a suspect? Should I be getting a lawyer? Because you are going to have to unfreeze my accounts for that to happen.” Numbness starts at the tips of my fingers and filters up myveins and into my limbs. I’m a suspect. How the fuck has this happened? I just post pretty pictures on Instagram and make appearances in clubs I hate.
“I don’t think a lawyer will be necessary.” I might be imagining it, but the agent’s voice seems to grow slightly more tense at my request for a lawyer. “I believe we can bring this matter to a conclusion and return you to the lifestyle to which you are accustomed. That is if you agree to answer our questions.”
I should be frantic with happiness at the idea of getting my life back. But the prospect sits like a boulder in my stomach. Life before the alley, before the investigation, before Scott isn’t something I want to return to.
The fake friends. The constant worry over my image. The endless time spent alone when Marci was working and no one else felt like going out. It had been a lonely existence. How one man could make my supposedly former life of glamour seem pale and dry in comparison to his quiet one dumbfounded me.
Across the room, he stands still as a statue, his arms crossed, glaring at me with a mixture of concern and annoyance.
A riot of bees swarm in my belly. People always say love feels like butterflies, but they are wrong. I know without a doubt, looking at Scott, that this is love. But it isn’t the gentle brush of delicate wings. It is stinging and buzzing, and I can’t control it.
It is terrifying.
“Okay, where should I meet you?”
Chapter Eight
Scott
Ishouldn’t have let her go alone.
The churning in my gut confirms the thought. Damn Lacy, the most stubborn woman on the planet. Stubborn, beautiful, smart, and generous in her own twisted way.
For some reason, the idea of her alone with this FBI agent puts me on the edge of punching a wall. Which I can’t do since my hands are insured for several million dollars, and my agent would shit a brick. Or at least, more than he already has considering the band and I decided to not renew our contract with the label we’d been with from the beginning.
