Page 22 of Save Me
“Isn’t that up to Beth?” I reply in a low, menacing tone of voice.
His face contorts into a wicked laugh, a real villainous chuckle that instantly makes you want to smack him before he even speaks.
“You’re right, it is up to Beth. But then, Beth does what she’s told if you hadn’t noticed!” With one last glance, he straightens his suit jacket, then turns and walks away. “You’ve been warned, boy!”
I’m half tempted to chase after the fucker and let my beating-to-a-bloody-pulp image become a reality, but instead, the sound of Beth and Bodhi talking has me moving back toward her bedroom door. I knock gently before audibly clearing my throat.
“Come in,” Bodhi calls out, “she’s decent.”
Probably looking like a total idiot, I open the door and stand up straight and broad to try and make myself look as big as possible. I’m done with all the espionage; I want answers and I want them now!
“Is someone gonna tell me what the hell is going on? Who the fuck is that asshole, Beth? And why is stoner boy your legal guardian?” I gesture to Bodhi, who dramatically feigns offense, before flipping me the bird with a laid-back grin.
“Xander?” Beth frowns with a voice that sounds too soft after the confrontation I just received from the asshole out in the hallway. “I thought you had left.”
“Nuh-uh, baby,” I reply obnoxiously, “I want answers and I want them now!”
She stops what she’s doing, then deepens her frown in what looks like utter confusion before asking, “Why?”
“Yeah, bro, why?” Bodhi pipes in, drawing out that last word for effect while crossing his arms in front of him. His smirk is so smug, I automatically mouth ‘shut up’ to him before turning back to face Beth.
“Look, I just got threatened to not go near you. Not to mention the asshole clearly has some dangerous hold on you, and…” I stop mid-rant and run my fingers through my hair, feeling frustrated over not quite knowing how to verbalize the rest of that sentence. “And I find myself giving a shit about you…annoyingly.”
She instantly blushes and tries to bite back her smile which fucking slaughters me, as well as awakens my dick. I mentally order it to stand down because now is not the time. Not that I can blame it. Beth Taylor is the epitome of understated beauty with such an innocent quality to her, it’s hard not to try and jump to her rescue the minute there’s a hint of trouble. And I’m fast learning that when it comes to her, trouble isn’t far behind.
“Xander,” she finally responds, “thank you for saving me today, and for caring, but I can’t tell you anything. Neither can Bodhi. If we do, I risk everything being brought forward, and…just please, I can’t risk it.” She throws her sad little bag over her shoulder, the one Bodhi must have brought in for her, then walks over to where I’m standing with her big blues looking straight into mine. “I’m sorry about what I said after your sister’s party. I was embarrassed, but I know it must have looked bad, what with me rifling through your sister’s phone.”
I nod wordlessly before we look at each other for a minute or two, silently agreeing to a truce while conceding to the fact that she isn’t going to tell me Jack. A hint of a smile graces her lips, knowing she’s won.
“You coming?” Bodhi calls over to me while I watch Beth walk out the door like a drooling dog watching its owner cook the Sunday dinner. Bodhi snaps his fingers in front of my face to break me out of my daydream. Only then does it dawn on me that I left my ride at the beach so have no choice but to nod gormlessly and follow him down to his bombed-out car.
“Shit me,” I exclaim with a laugh, “is this heap of junk safe?”
“I nearly drowned today, so I’m going to take my chances with it.” Beth giggles and happily climbs into the back seat, probably just feeling relieved to not be going to Oliver Lawrence’s private hospital.
“Can you at least tell me why stoner boy, here, is your legal guardian and not one of your parents?” I ask as I precariously sit in the front passenger seat where I kick away some empty take-out packets just so I can get my feet inside.
“Let’s just say Dad doesn’t have my trust anymore, and not even my mum knows anything about Oliver Lawrence,” she mutters sadly, “and it needs to stay that way!”
“Jeez, your dad must have done something pretty shitty if you trust this guy more than him!” I laugh as Bodhi slaps me on the arm. He knows I don’t mean it really; the guy is strangely enough, one of the most trustworthy men I know.
“He sure did!” she sighs sadly, staring out of the window as the coast comes into view, looking lost in her troubled thoughts.
Chapter 8
Malcolm, June, that Summer
No, no, no, no!
Holy fuck, Mal! You’re screwed!
I sincerely hope that what I think happened last night was nothing more than an elaborate nightmare, hopefully one you realize was just a horrible warning of what not to do from your subconscious. The thumping headache, the stench of stale whiskey on my skin, together with a myriad of cuts and bruises across my knuckles (a reminder of punching the car door last night) sadly tells me my hopes are futile. That in fact, I had actually managed to gamble away my entire business in one epically fucked-up hand of poker. Holy motherfucking God, Malcolm, what the hell have you done?!
Think, for crying out loud, think! What exactly did you do? It’s all a haze of expensive liquor, laugher and me thinking I had much bigger cojones than I do. I vaguely remember being up, seemingly having the best games of my life, and had already won an obscene amount of money, a car, even a holiday trip to the Lawrence’s apartment in New York. I had lucky hand after lucky hand, all of them promising me more and more crap I didn’t even need. Yet I still turned into a greedy bastard who felt the compulsion to keep going.
A much more intelligent person would have stopped, walked away with what he had already won, but apparently, my so-called ‘big cojones’ had simultaneously caused my brain to shrink down to the size of a gnat. So when Oliver suggested we up the stakes, I accepted and knocked back another shot of amber liquid. In my final game, between just the two of us, I had thrown in the house, my entire business and all of its clients, while he had put in his shares to their multi-billion-dollar empire.
I have no idea what I was thinking or who I thought I was fooling because besides not even wanting anything to do with their business, I should have known someone like Oliver Lawrence would not have put his heritage on the line. Let alone risk losing it in a quiet game of poker with a suburban family man. But with booze filtering around my bloodstream, I felt ballsy and wanted to show the young hotshot that I was as much as a Mr Big Balls as his creepy father. A sober me would have seen through this set up, but a drunk me only got to witness the moment when my entire world came crashing down before me.