Page 200 of Wicked Angel
“I love your music. ‘Up in Smoke’ is my favorite. You should sing more.”
“Thank you. I’d love to,” Johnny said graciously. I studied his face as the girls hovered. That practiced mask he’d slipped on, so quickly. His body language even shifted, his angles sharpening. Heated and closed all at once.Look but don’t touch.
Lamar stepped in when the girls didn’t promptly clear out, thrusting his massive arm between them and Johnny. “He’s on a date,” Lamar said blandly, an impassive wall of take-no-shit. “This isn’t the time.” He swept the girls out of our sight, post haste. One of them met my eyes briefly, looking confused, probably about the “date” part.
Yup, to some people I was utterly invisible. Making peace with that fact was rather freeing. I was getting there. I could accept that I was of zero value to some.
So long as I was of extreme value to my man.
His eyes met mine, the mask slipping. “Sorry about that.”
“Not your fault. I’ve been with Elle in public a time or two. I know some people have no clue.”
“Where were we?” he said.
Then our waitress came by to drop off our drinks. We gave her our dinner orders and Johnny told her, “We’ll take it to go, as soon as possible,” then handed her a credit card.
When she’d gone, he told me, “I need to get out of here.”
I understood. He didn’t want to have an emotional conversation in a restaurant. If I’d known it was going to be one, I wouldn’t have agreed to meet him here.
Maybe he didn’t know it was going to be one, either.
“You were about to tell me,” I reminded him, “how you treated Amber when you were married to her. But we don’t have to talk about that here.”
“I treated her not well,” he said bluntly, but he seemed to have trouble holding my gaze. “I hurt her pretty badly. I cheated on her. I was a different person then than I am now. At least, I behaved differently.”
“Not that differently,” I said, holding his gaze.
This time, he held my gaze right back. “I didn’t cheat on you, Angie.”
“There were other women touching you, and you weren’t stopping them. They were leaning on you, touching your hair… there has to be a line, Johnny.”
We hadn’t talked about that part, not really. But I definitely couldn’t stop seeing it in my mind and wondering,What if? What if I didn’t show up when I did?
“I know that,” he said.
“What if some guy, or guys, were pressing their bodies up against me and putting their fingers in my hair, whispering in my ears? How would you feel about walking in on that?”
“That’s not happening,” he said darkly.
“Then why did it happen with you and those girls?”
“Because that’s an old pattern of mine. It’s default behavior. But I went home with you.”
“Because I showed up.”
“You have to know how important you are to me.”
“Then treat me that way.”
His eyes softened as he gazed at me with a kind of hope. “I do. I told you…” He faded off.
“About the shooting.”
“Yes.” He looked down at his drink.
“That was hard for you. I know.”
