Her Forbidden Hero (16 page)

Behind her, he groaned. “Fuck, Aly. Wait…”

Her battered heart squeezed at the thought. She didn’t understand why he’d reacted
so
badly, especially after what had happened between them yesterday, but to the depths of her very bones she didn’t believe that the man who lashed out at her was the real Marco.

Almost didn’t matter, though, did it? It was the one he’d wanted her to see, to believe.

Alyssa wiped her face with the hem of her T-shirt and stuffed the rest of her belongings wherever they fit in her overnight bag and suitcase, purposely burying the stupid teddy bear Marco had given her years before. She made the bed, intent on leaving things just as she’d found them, then carried her bags to the front door.

From her purse, she retrieved Marco’s house key and tossed it on the futon. She carried all her belongings one by one onto the porch, locked the door behind her, then repeated the carry-and-drop routine at the curb. Once she had everything back in the car, she could almost imagine the past week hadn’t happened.

Okay, not really, but it couldn’t hurt
more
to pretend. Right?

The inside of the car was warm and Alyssa rolled the windows down to let in the cooler morning air. She groaned, imagining having to face Marco in two hours at Whiskey’s—they were both on the earlier shift again.

She couldn’t do it. Not yet. She needed at least the day to compose herself. It only took two phone calls to find someone willing to trade shifts, and that felt like a huge victory in the midst of the morning’s devastation.

She could use the free day to start her apartment search. The thought didn’t hold the joy it once would’ve.

Mechanically, she drove back to the little hotel that had been her first home here. No sooner had she pulled into the lot than she realized returning was a bad idea. If Marco had some crisis of conscience later, she really didn’t want him showing up and trying to convince her to come back to his house. If he did, it would be purely out of a sense of obligation to Brady. And after everything, she really wouldn’t be able to hide how much that hurt this time.

Pulling a u-ey, Alyssa waited at the light and debated, then turned left on the green toward the place she recalled having the next cheapest rates. Money wasn’t the concern it had been almost two weeks ago, but she also didn’t have it to burn, either.

Check-in was easy, and they even let her into her room right away. She dumped her things at the foot of the bed and fell heavily against the mattress. On her back, arms sprawled to her sides, Alyssa stared up at the popcorn ceiling, her chest painfully empty and her mind a whirling mess of confused thoughts.

Snap out of it, Aly. You have things to do.

She forced herself off the bed and down to the lobby, where she bought the local paper. The rental section was only two pages long, but she wasn’t picky and she didn’t need a palace, just something clean, safe, and affordable. After she circled everything that sounded promising, she started making calls. By eleven, she had two appointments set up for the afternoon, and the prospect of possibly solving her housing problem so soon dulled the sharpest edges of her grief.

The first place fit the affordable bill but not the cleanliness one. The toilet rocked in place, its bowl discolored with ancient stains. The kitchen was the same, with an oven that had never been cleaned, if Alyssa had to guess, and a tiny refrigerator that smelled of something old and sour. Ghostly brown squares and rectangles on the walls revealed the place hadn’t been painted, and suspicious stains dotted the carpet. No way.

Her cell rang as she crossed town toward the next apartment and brought the bad news that her second appointment was canceled because the place had just rented.

By the time she arrived at work, she was barely holding it together. Her gaze flashed across the lot and landed on Betty. But Marco would be leaving soon, and if she had any luck remaining in the universe, she’d be able to avoid him until he left. Afterward, she could only hope dinner would be the busiest ever and keep her hands and mind occupied for the rest of the night.

She was successful. By the time the doors opened at six and customers flooded in, Jameson was behind the bar and Marco was long gone. Any time Alyssa had a spare moment, she threw herself into helping the other waitstaff or found some busywork to keep herself distracted. By the time the band played its last set, Alyssa’s head pounded and her back ached, but she’d made it through. Tonight, that was all that mattered.

After she helped close out the floor, she made her way to the kitchen and leaned against a high metal table. “I’ll take the green room tonight, if that’s okay.” Given her new hotel bills, the extra money would be useful.

Eric glanced up from where he was wrapping the tops of some pans. “By yourself?”

“I don’t mind.”

Frowning, he dropped what he was doing. He settled onto his elbows next to her, his shoulder just touching hers. “You don’t look so good.”

Alyssa’s head sagged on her neck. “Gee, thanks.”

“No, I didn’t mean it that way.”

She bumped into him. Guilt immediately flooded her. She wasn’t blind. She knew Eric had a thing for her, but she wasn’t leading him on, was she? “I know. Just a very bad day.” She put a little space between them.

He looked at her for a long moment. “Want to talk about it?”

Desperately, actually
. But she didn’t have a soul she could spill this to. “Not at all.” She threw him a small smile. “But thanks for asking.”

He frowned and tilted his head. “Whatever you want. How ’bout you get started and I’ll come help with whatever’s left when I’m done here.”

“Sounds good.”

Eric rolled the cart over and she swore the thing held her up as she made her way to the green room.

When she arrived, the band’s crew was removing the last of their belongings. Alyssa waited outside the room as they gave the place a once-over. The last roadie filed out toward the stage door, a black case in his hand. “Good night,” he said.

“Night,” she called after him. Then she pushed into the room and went through the motions of cleaning up. Food on the cart. Kitchen cleaned. Fridge emptied. Trash collected. Toilets scrubbed.

Eric arrived some time later. Part of her stupidly wished it were Marco.

“Damn, you work fast, girl.” He ran a hand through his brown hair and surveyed the space. “Anything left?”

Alyssa followed his gaze. “Wasn’t too bad tonight. The trash needs to go out. Cart needs to go back to the kitchen. And vacuuming.”

Warm fingers gripped her chin. “I’ll do it. You go home. You look like you’re two minutes from falling over.”

She tugged out of his touch but gave him a smile she hoped would take the sting out of her rejection. “Okay,” she whispered, stepping around him to the door.

“Alyssa?”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “Yeah?”

He crossed his arms and faced her. An array of emotions played out on his face. “No one…uh, hurt you. Right?”

Heat filled her cheeks and she squirmed inside. She knew what Eric thought of Marco, and of course everyone had seen them happy together yesterday. “No. I’m fine.”

His gaze narrowed. “Okay.”

Time clock. Purse. Out into the humid night air. Alyssa collapsed into the driver’s seat of the Corolla and tore out of the lot.

She had no idea where to go. No way was she going back to Marco’s. But returning to her hotel room felt like such a huge defeat. So she drove. Just to be moving. Just to give her brain something to think about besides the pain sitting so heavily on her chest it was hard to breathe.

She batted away the tears when they fell and held her breath when sobs threatened. Finally, she couldn’t suppress her grief for another second.

As a strangled cry burst from her throat, Alyssa pulled the car haphazardly to the curb and let some of the suffocating pain pour out of her. Minutes passed, or maybe it was hours, before the tears stopped falling, leaving her eyes sticky and puffy, her throat raw, and her chest aching with emptiness.

Loneliness pressed in on her as if gravity itself were made of the desolate emotion.

Alyssa wiped her face. Breaking down like this did no good. She sat up in the car seat and looked around, sucking in a breath when she realized where she was—just two blocks from her father’s house.

Without thinking, she drove through her old neighborhood and parked in front of the run-down rancher.

She stared at the dark silhouette of her house. Well, the house she grew up in. Even that description wasn’t right, though, was it? It was the house in which she’d lived happily until three weeks after her twelfth birthday, when her mother had died.

If she’d thought things couldn’t have gotten any worse, she’d been so, so wrong. Because that was when her dad became a complete stranger. Brady had done everything he could to protect her from backhands and thrown bottles, to shield her from shouted obscenities and kitchen-sink vomit. He’d had it so much worse than her. Five years older and close to graduating high school, Brady took over the job of raising her.

And he’d been the one to get her out, too. Brady never left the house without taking her with him, and that meant she’d spent a lot of time at Marco’s. When the guys graduated high school, they refused to go off and pursue their dreams while she was too young to move out or be on her own. So they’d gotten jobs, rented an apartment for the three of them, and taken some courses at the community college until she graduated.

Brady and Marco were her heroes in every sense of the word.

She glanced at the house and a shiver ran down her spine.

Was her father still the same?

His pickup truck sat askew on the short driveway in front of the house, one tire well over the edge on the grass.

I’m telling you, not everybody comes back from war…right.

Van’s words slammed into her brain. Her mom’s death had been her father’s war, and it had ruined him for life. Could the same be true for Marco?

A lump formed in Alyssa’s throat. She
had
been naïve, hadn’t she? At least where Marco Vieri was concerned. He wasn’t the same man she’d known before. While she hadn’t realized that right away and could admit to herself she didn’t know just how much he’d changed, she loved him the same. No. She thought she’d loved him before, but what she felt now was so much deeper, truer, more real.

He was the one who couldn’t accept those changes. His reaction this morning proved that.

And as long as that was true, there was nothing she could do. Nothing he would
let
her do.

Hot tears burned down her cheeks. Nothing she’d ever done or said had helped her dad. Pain squeezed her heart. Maybe it was time to face that the same was true of Marco.

…

If Marco thought he’d felt bad before, it was nothing compared to how he felt now.

Almost an entire week had passed since he’d been maybe the biggest asshole of his life. And down into his soul, he was torn between wanting to fall to his knees and beg Alyssa’s forgiveness and thinking maybe things had worked out for the best. Because clearly he’d been a complete idiot to think he could protect her from himself. She’d known what a disaster he was all along. The knowledge felt like someone had ripped his heart right from his chest.

For the best, my ass
.

Her departure had made it clear he hadn’t known what emptiness was. At Whiskey’s, she only talked to him as much as her work required. She never made eye contact, and, when it happened accidentally, her gaze went blank, like she was looking through him. The house was like a tomb, still and lifeless. And his nights passed fitfully, the insomnia and nightmares back with a vengeance.

He’d just been so fucking humiliated to learn she not only knew about the nightmares, but had been sacrificing her own well-being for his. Day by day, the circles under her eyes had gotten darker while he’d celebrated the new miracle of peaceful sleep, never once considering she had something to do with it. And she had
everything
to do with it. He’d figured that much out Sunday morning as he spat some of the most hateful things he’d ever said—and to her of all people—and had lived the reality of it ever since.

He spent days struggling to remember precisely what he’d said during that conversation. He knew the gist of it, of course, but he’d been so angry and mournful that there hadn’t exactly been a strong brain-to-mouth connection at that moment. He’d just spewed whatever had the best chance of exorcising the pain and tightness in his chest with no real regard for where that shit landed.

Consequences
. He’d told her she never thought about consequences. Hell, he’d accused her of deliberately leading Eric on. Marco knew damn right well that wasn’t true. What else? He’d thrown her help back in her face, taunting her for being so helpless.