Page 15 of House of Scarlett
“I don’t know, baby girl, but ... he looked awful. Like he hasn’t slept in days.”
“What?” My head jerks in her direction.
Kelsey nods slowly. “He looked like shit. If it’s any comfort, I’m pretty sure he knows he made a hell of a mistake.”
“Then why wouldn’t he tell me? Text? Call? Smoke signals? Anything? Why let us both suffer?”
“Men are stupid. That’s pretty much the only thing I know for sure. Now, let me finish your makeup so you can slay this photo op, and then you can sweat it all off in your self-defense class. Maybe you could pretend he’s the pad you’re hitting?”
* * *
I try Kelsey’s advice, envisioning Gabriel’s face on the pad Bodhi is holding out for me, and it’s not working.
“You’re pulling all your punches. You’re supposed to try to punchthroughthe target, but you’re barely hitting the pad. You need a break?” Bodhi lowers the pads and scans my face with concern.
“I’m sorry. My head’s not in the game today.”
He opens his mouth to start preaching, and I guess what he’s going to say next, so I wave him off before he even gets started.
“I know that I always need to be ready to defend myself, trust me.” I think of the nasty comments that came in last night. I saw them before they could be deleted. My troll has a new profile and his threats are escalating. I screenshotted them and sent them to the detective on the case this morning. “But sometimes, life is a bitch, and you have to work shit out before you can concentrate.”
Thankfully, Bodhi doesn’t try to lecture me. He unhooks the pads from his hands and tosses them in the footlocker near the wall. When he reaches down to unstrap the ones from his legs, I ask, “Are you firing me as a client?”
He glances up and shakes his head. “No. But you’re not going to do yourself any favors trying to work out right now. It’s a great way to get hurt, and I’m not going to be responsible for that happening.”
“So you’re kicking me out?” I hate that I care, but I do, and I feel like a total loser.
“Yeah, but I’m going with you. We’re going to work out this shit of yours so you don’t waste another session. Come on.”
Twenty minutes later, Bodhi and I sit at a rough-hewn wooden table in the café on street level, protein shakes between us.
“Whatever you tell me isn’t going anywhere. I signed that NDA your finance chick sent me.”
I dip my head and swirl the straw around in the thick liquid. “It’s complicated.”
“So it’s about a dude.”
My gaze lifts to stare at his face. “How did you know?”
“Lucky guess. So, what the fuck are we dealing with?”
I don’t know why I’m going to tell him anything. I shouldn’t. But sometimes you need to unload on someone who’s pretty close to a perfect stranger—and yet bound by the restrictions of a confidentiality agreement.
“I fell for a guy. We’re from different worlds, though.”
Bodhi’s shoulders lift. “And here I thought we were all from Earth.”
I shake my head. “No, I mean socially. He’s not from the trust-fund or family-money set.”
“Is that a problem for you? Because you didn’t seem like a snob before.”
I shrug, but I’m glad I didn’t come off snotty and stuck-up. That’s something.
When I don’t reply, he keeps pushing. “So you’re worried that because the guy doesn’t have money like you, you can’t make it work?”
“No, that’s the problem. I think we can, but he doesn’t think so.”
Bodhi leans back in his chair, his chin rising. “So you went for it, but he shut you down.”
