Page 2 of Silver Edge
My lungs tightened and my stomach clenched. My adrenaline revved, heating my skin to habanero hot. “Are you insane? I can’t room with anyone. I don’t want to smell her. I don’t want to hear her. I don’t want to know her. I want a job. I want a place of my own. I want out of here.” Guilt threatened to shove me back into submission, but I needed this. I needed to know if I could survive beyond the great white walls of protection.
“How do you think you’ll do at a job when you can’t even share a room? It’s time for you to take the next step in the process. I know you’re…sensitive. You admitted to me from day one that you needed drugs to handle sounds, lights, touch. I’ve talked to a professional, and he offered—”
“No. No shrinks. I’m ready. I know you want to protect me. You want to protect everyone, but I’m ready to stand on my own.”
He lowered his head as if to find the answers on his work boots. “I tell you what. You make it a month sharing this room with her and I’ll find a job for you.” He stuck his face inches from mine.
I chewed the inside of my cheek and curled my toes but resisted the urge to shrink away from him. He was playing dirty now. I’d be damned if I’d let him win. “Prove it.”
“Prove what?”
“That there’s really a job. I told you I wanted out of New York and you agreed. There’re too many bad memories for me here. I’m ready to start over.”
He flinched but recovered quickly. His entire six-foot-four-inch frame of solid muscle froze. All his tattoos?the dragons, vipers, and scorpions?froze.
I froze.
All I heard in the silence of the building was my pounding heart.
“I have a friend in Atlanta,” Ton said finally. “He’ll hire you.”
“Call him. Call him now.” I rose onto my tiptoes and forced my gaze to meet his. The second hand on the wall clock behind me ticked twice, the longest I’d managed to hold eye contact.
His authoritative stare ordered me into submission and my gaze dropped to his forearm. That damn clock ticked ten more times. Ton’s hand fisted, the scorpion’s tail arching to strike me. Dizziness took hold, as if its poison had already entered my system, but I stood my ground.
“If I call the guy, will you chill? No more outbursts, no more attacks that would send you back under the bridge I pulled you from?”
I cringed. Ton would do anything for anyone, but he’d never soften the truth. Every word hit like a punch to the gut. What gave me the right to disrespect him? Yankee was right about one thing. Ton had saved me. He’d picked me up out of the gutter, sat by my side while I detoxed, held my head when I was married to the toilet for days, clothed me, fed me, talked to me, but did that mean I had to remain a slave to the Community for the rest of my life?
I swallowed the dryness of regrets and nodded.
Ton slid his cell from his pocket and dialed a number before turning his back to me and holding up one finger to the girl still trembling in the doorway. It was time to stand on my own and stop mooching off Ton and the Community he’d created. This girl, and others, needed food and shelter.
“Hey, man. It’s Ton.” He rubbed the back of his neck, as if to rub away his fears of letting me go. The largeXon the back of his neck rippled.
I nudged closer.
“I’ve got a girl here, Scarlet. She needs a job. You think you can find something for her at your place, the Midtown Diner?”
I held my breath, listening, hoping, willing the man on the other end of the line to say yes, but I could only make out muffles.
“No worries about stealing. She’s more the artistic type than criminal.”
Mumbling.
“Yep, I’d consider it a favor.”
More mumbling.
“Great. I’ll drive her down when I can. I’ll see you then.” Ton lowered the phone and faced me. “You’ve got a job. Give back to the Community and help this girl detox, be her clean buddy for a month, and I’ll drive you to Atlanta myself. Show me you can handle dealing with another person before I send you out into the world on your own.”
“Ton, I’m not ready to help anyone, especially a girl on the brink of destruction. You’re asking too much from me.”
“You can and you will,” Ton commanded, using his addiction-police voice. “If you want me to call in favors and get you set up in the outside world, you show me you can handle life.”
“It’s different. I’ll serve food, wipe tables, not rehab my former self.”
Ton pushed from the desk, but instead of calling his inner warrior that made people obey, he leaned close, without touching me. “You can do this. I believe in you.”
