“A year? You’ve only been gone for six months, Key.”
I blew out a frustrated breath and looked up at the ceiling. “Yeah, but Nassir took over the club a year ago. You think anyone was going to go home with me with him looking over their shoulder? Ugh . . . I hate him.”
She laughed again. “We were all surprised he came back alone. He’s not familiar with the word ‘no.’”
“Tell me about it. Before he left, he paid some hobo to beat me up in the parking lot.”
“Are you kidding me!?” She swore. “Why would he do that?”
“Because I hurt him.” The words whispered out and I hated that I could always ache for a man I was pretty sure didn’t have a soul.
“He is such a dick.” She sounded furious on my behalf, and that was why she was my only almost-friend.
“He is, but it was his face I was picturing while the guy from tonight touched me, it was his voice I kept hearing in my ear. I know he’s mostly terrible and has no remorse for doing shady, illegal things, but I can’t seem to forget him.”
She clicked her tongue in a tsk. “I told you before you left that there is no accounting for what the heart wants. In your case, it sounds like you can’t fool your body either. There is no substitute for a guy like Nassir.”
I put a hand over my eyes and roughly rubbed my temples. “He’ll destroy me, Reeve. He’ll take over my life. All the choices I’ve made, the way I’ve struggled to build my life on my own terms . . . it’ll all just be wasted time and effort because he’ll control everything. I’ll hate myself and then eventually I’ll for real start to hate him.” And that I couldn’t bear. My heart had been twisted up over Nassir for so long that the idea of it actually turning on him for good made me sick to my stomach.
She made a sympathetic sound low in her throat and I could hear her tapping her fingers on something. “Sometimes you have to burn it all, level it all to the ground, for something new to sprout up out of the ashes.”
My heart skipped a little beat at the idea of someone as formidable and impenetrable as Nassir being breakable. “Man, the cop has turned you into a big ol’ pile of mushy goo, bitch.”
Reeve had hooked up with a detective and was head over heels for him. Last I heard from her, she was trying to get knocked up and live the kind of life the Point usually smashed. Reeve was a fighter and a survivor, so if anyone could hold on to a dream and not let the city steal it, it was her.
She giggled, actually giggled, and I felt an answering smile twist my lips.
“Shut up. I’m just saying you never know what can happen. Even Hades loved Persephone.”
I snorted. “He kept her trapped in hell and only let her loose a few times a year.”
“Stop crapping all over my awesome analogies. You get my point and . . .” She paused and I could almost hear her turning over what she wanted to say next in her head. “He’s been really off ever since you left. Like even scarier than normal.”
A chill raced across my skin and I sat up in the bed. I wasn’t aware that my fingers clutched the phone in a death grip until my knuckles cracked. “What do you mean?”
“He’s been fighting.”
I heard words floating around inside my head but couldn’t seem to grasp on to them. “What do you mean, fighting? With you and Chuck?” Nassir didn’t fight. He said his piece, made declarations of how things were going to be, stated his standards and expectations, and then waited for things to be done his way and his way only. He didn’t waste his words or his time on an argument he was bound to win.
“No, Key, like fighting the way Bax used to, and it’s terrifying. No one has ever seen anything like it. He goes in the circle and doesn’t come out until the other guy is almost dead. He took on this ringer, a professional fighter Race brought in from Vegas during the last one.” She paused then made a noise that had me wanting to climb through the phone and shake her until she kept talking. “The guy was huge. Bigger than Titus, so way bigger than Nassir. And he was a pro. Bax said it was obvious he didn’t care about the money he just wanted to fight. Apparently Nassir walked into the circle still wearing his slacks and his fancy shoes and the guy laughed at him.”
“Oh, that was a mistake.” The words whispered out.
“A big mistake. Race told me Nassir let him get in exactly two punches, one to either side of his face, before he took the other guy to his knees with some kind of crazy martial arts move and then proceeded to pummel him into pulp. The fight lasted maybe three minutes when Chuck waded in and pulled Nassir off the guy before he killed him. Race said if Chuck hadn’t stepped in, Nassir wouldn’t have stopped.”
I wasn’t surprised by the violence or power that she was describing. What shocked me was that he had purposely let the other man hurt him, had withstood injuries to that perfect face of his without defending himself. Nassir wasn’t a man that would express his remorse and guilt at his misdeeds outwardly, but I had no doubt that he was regretting his decision to set the homeless man on me without being there to make sure his plans didn’t take a violent turn. I hurt him, he hurt me, and then because we hurt each other, he let a stranger hurt him physically to leach the poison out. He sought punishment for the injuries he inflicted and doled it out for the ones I had left on him.
I told her what I had known was going to be the inevitable truth since he moved the menu away and I saw that unforgettable face after six months of missing it. “I think I’m coming back.”