Page 58 of Havoc

Shore pulled up to the old Motel Six and didn’t unlock the doors right away.

“Miss Kenna, I really don’t feel comfortable dropping you off here alone.”

“Sadly, this is nothing compared to the last few days, Shore. I’ll be fine. Morgan’s here.”

“Yes, Mr. Gates said he was, Miss, but…” He sighed. “It’s room six upstairs.” He still looked unsure as he unlocked the doors. “Chocolate,” he suddenly said.

“Huh?” I ducked to look back in the car.

“I like these seashell chocolates. They’ve got creamy centers.” I smiled at his attempt to stall and shook my head.

“Consider a big box of them waiting for you in the locker room tomorrow.” I gave him a reassuring smile and closed the door. I made my way up the rusty stairs to room six.

Morgan opened the door and looked around for Grim.

“Long story.” I moved inside, and he shut the door. I immediately went to Hanna and gave her a hug. Then as she settled on the bed, I pulled up a chair next to her. I looked around and hated that the place looked like it was set to be used as a sting for prostitution. “I’m so sorry this night’s been crazy. It seems my whole life is crazy right now, but Hanna, you’ve got my undivided attention. You really need to tell me what’s going on.”

“Okay,” she tucked her hair behind her ear, “just hear me out before you judge. I’m not proud of what I did with Sasha, but?—”

“Hanna, I don’t care about Sasha or any of those guys. I care about you and about what you need to tell me. Please skip to the important parts.”

“Well,” she hesitated for a second, “after you stopped seeing Sasha, he started paying attention to me.” She tugged at the sleeve of her hoodie. “I’m sorry, but I liked him.”

“I could not care less. Really.” I wanted to scream and get her to move her story along.

“We’d hook up whenever you and I were back from our internship in Morocco. You’d go to visit your family, and…” She obviously wasn’t going to pay attention to my plea to leave out her relationship with Sasha. I had no feelings left for him, but there was still a part of me that didn’t want to hear it. “He always insisted on seeing me the moment we were back, asked questions, wanted to see pictures. I thought he was the real deal when he moved to Morocco and said he wanted us to be more to each other.”

“Wait, he was living with you there?” I tried to push the hurt aside. Hanna knew me, so she knew how much Sasha had screwed with my heart. He’d been the one who took many of my firsts from me, so to hear this news stung. I may feel nothing for him now, but there was a girl code, and she knew she’d failed me.

“Yes.” She swallowed hard, and her eyes pleaded for forgiveness. “He arrived a week before you suddenly turned down that big offer in Burj Al Arub and decided to work at Indulge.”

“Holy shit, how did I not know this?”

“You had a lot on your plate, and people always pulled you in different directions. Including your father.”

“That’s true.” I remembered how intense that decision had been. My father was insistent I take the job at Indulge, but ultimately, it was Jim Gates who won me over. But still…

“Sasha was so excited to be with me. He seemed happy. We both were. Then when I told him about you leaving for the States, something changed. Like he was upset or something. At the time, I didn’t put it together. He started having late night phone calls.” She wiped away a tear. “Long story short, he said he couldn’t be there full time anymore, and he’d have to split his time with me there and the rest back in LA.”

“Okay.” I tried to absorb everything she was telling me. I’d known none of this, and it was hard to curb my impatience with her story.

“When he did visit me, he always pumped me for information on you. I didn’t think anything of it because I was in love with him.” She laughed like she was stupid. “I know. Pathetic, right?”

“I disagree.” I smiled warmly at her. After all, I reminded myself, Sasha wasn’t worth the pain he caused, and now she had experienced it, too. “You thought he was the real thing. There’s no fault there, Han.”

“Well, it took some time, but I saw it. I played dirty. I pretended you were coming back to visit me for a while. I wanted to see if he stayed so he could see you.”

“And?”

“He did.” Her mouth twisted. “I was jealous. I kicked him out, said a lot of things I didn’t mean, but I wanted to hurt him. He told me he loved me and tried to say he only asked about you because your father and you weren’t talking, and he was worried about you. I made him leave anyway.” Her eyes grew teary.

“Well, that was a lie. My father knows my next move before I do.” I gave her a look. “You know that firsthand.”

“I know.” She nodded, but I could see she was still bothered by the whole thing. “But you’re gorgeous, Kenna, and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve lost a guy’s attention when you walked into the room.” She held up a hand to stop me as I opened my mouth to comment. “But I realized I really was in love with him, so I went to the hotel the next night to apologize. He was staying at the Gordoff.” She attempted a smile at me.

“So, William gave you a key?”

“Yeah,” she chuckled, “perks of our job, right?”