Rock Me (New Adult Rockstar Romance) (14 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The pain behind my eyes throbs, branching from temple to temple. Lines of ink squirm and wriggle on the pages in my hand. I shuffle back and forth between them, trying to make them make sense, desperately pleading for the figures to add up into a confirmation that I will be able to survive another week, but it looks bleak. I check once, twice, but nothing is working. No matter how many times I rehash the money or shuffle between bank accounts, I can’t find a way to stay afloat.

I drop my forehead onto the desk surface and close my eyes. For a few blissful seconds, I see nothing and hear nothing. Then the whine of the feeble heater sputters to life, letting a few weak tendrils of warmth seep out from the vent to caress the back of my neck before the aching cold steals them into the sparse corners of my apartment.

The stacks of paper on my desk flutter lazily in the air flow. Mountains of bills, notices of overdue rent, and threats of eviction are piled from edge to edge. Try as I might, I can’t make them disappear. They stare at me, loom over me, coldly impassionate in their blankness.

I sigh and grab my scarf. The assistant manager of the local department store had told me to come back in at five o’clock to ask her boss about a job opening. I glance at the clock and see 4:45 looking back at me. Suppressing a cough, I button my jacket up to the neck, stuff keys in my pocket, and rise.

Before I walk out the door, I look back at my desk. The papers don’t move. I shudder and leave.

***

“So you have nothing?” I plead. “I will literally take anything. I’m desperate. Please.” I wring my hands together in front of me. The pitiful pitch of my voice makes me sick. I picture mother laughing at me – her bracelets jingling as laughter spews from her mouth, her finger pointing at me, stabbing in my face, as if to say, “Look at this girl, this pathetic little girl.” A shiver courses down my spine. I blink rapidly to clear the images from my head.

The manager looks at me quizzically, interrupting her sentence to ask if I am okay. “You sure you’re doin’ alright, hon’?” he asks. It is the same tone of voice one would use to comfort a cat dying in the gutter.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I say. I don’t believe the words coming out of my mouth, but I say them anyways, mechanically and distant.

He goes on. “Well, sorry, but like I was saying, we’re not hiring right now. And frankly, even if we were, I’m not sure we’d be able to find room for you,” he says.

Mother's bracelets. Her finger. Ha. Ha.

“Thanks for your time,” I say automatically as I spin on my heel and slump out into the cold. The manager’s words should have hurt me, but the sensitive flesh of my psyche has already endured rejection after rejection this week.

“I’m sorry, we just don’t have room.”

“We can’t afford to take on another employee.”

“There isn’t a job here that suits you.”

“No.”

“No.”

“No.”

The chorus of denials is expected now. Every time I voice my plea for a job, it's like releasing a tiny balloon out into the ravages of an uncaring storm. I hate the way I sound when I beg. I hate the way my knees buckle and my armpits sweat and my lips tremble. I hate knowing in advance that there isn’t a chance. The face of every hiring manager, as they look me up and down, is exactly the same – icy.

The doorbell announces my exit with a muted jingle as I step out into the cold. I wrap my scarf tightly around my face. Night is howling around me, whistling against the sharp edges and blunt triangles of darkness that drift between buildings. Car horns wail.

I take off in the direction of my apartment, though I don’t know what I will do once I arrive. The only thing left there are the skyscrapers of debt and textbooks that no longer serve a purpose.

Shadows lurch across my path, extending from the alleyways. I look to my right as I pass a gap between two squat storefronts. Dumpsters and squalid trash cans line the path. The winter wind eats stray garbage and one light flickers with a noxious insect buzz. Behind the corner of a pile of cardboard boxes, I see a ratty tail whisk. The rodent emerges, sniffing for something. Something shines in the darkness behind it.

I peer closer. Two bright orbs appear and disappear in rapid succession. I see dark slits down the middle and realize I am looking into the eyes of an alley cat. It blinks again.

The rat crawls closer to the patch of shadows. Panic leaps into my throat. I want to reach out a hand, to stop what I can see happening. His pink nose snuffles along the ground in search of a tantalizing scent. The cat’s eyes shimmer with intention. For the briefest of moments, I could swear it is looking at me.

“Stop!” I start to cry, extending a hand towards the rat, but I am too far away to intervene. A few passers-by look at me strangely.

Boom.
Everything happens quickly and silently. The cat pounces, rips the rat in half with a scything claw, and drags the bloody pieces back into the darkness. Right before it vanishes completely, it looks back over its shoulder at me and hisses. Then he is gone.

It takes me a long moment to realize I have been crying. The tears are frozen between my eyelashes. I rub the back of one mitten-encased hand against my face to clear the moisture. As I do, I look up at the building in front of me and see a startlingly familiar logo splashed across the front.

CB. Cyrus Bellamy.

Of course I am here; of course it is now. I know – of course – that I have to go in and that I have to do it now. Like a sick omen, the cat had reminded me of the one place that would still give me a job. It had brought me here, back to that one place, that one person. 

I want to lash out against the world and scream how unfair this is, how wrong, how twisted. I shouldn’t have to go back there. I was free of it. I was free of him. I was free.

But I am not a bird.

I don’t have a choice at this point. That is the only thought that stops the tears or gives any relief to the turmoil in my stomach. Equal parts fear, revulsion, and pathetic, weak-willed submission to the path of least resistance. Almost automatically, I trudge forward.

The path in the building is familiar. I submit without thinking, through the double doors, across the marbled atrium, into the belly of the bronze elevators. The ride upwards is as silent and quick as the cat had been. When it spews me out onto the well-remembered floor, I am surprised at how normal everything feels.

I scan around. The office space is empty. Every computer screen is black and the only motion is a streamer fluttering at the mouth of the air vent. Everything else is morbidly still – except for the infrequent flashes of light seeping beneath the thick oaken door of one office in the far corner. I should feel shock when I recognize whose office it is, but nothing fazes me anymore. Nothing penetrates the fog. Everything is as it should be, and I have been put in my place.

I blink and am half-startled to see that I have already crossed the office. I am standing in front of the door, which is slightly cracked. From inside, I can hear the sounds of a pen scratching against paper. The occasional clacking of a calculator pierces the monotony. 

Placing one gloved fingertip against the door handle, I push gently. It swings open on silent hinges. I am a puppet, powerless to choose my own actions.

Across from me, Bellamy looks up. Time freezes. We stand like that for a long time – he in a gray suit, framed by mahogany bookcases and thick blood-colored tomes, I bundled against the cold with a weary expression of resignation painted in the corners of my eyes.

Clock gears grimace. The rest of the building is still.

The wrinkles around his mouth crease and break into his shark’s grin. The blood on the water is obvious now.
How did I not see it before?
I am more vulnerable than I have ever been. The difference is that, this time, both of us know it.

Eventually, he speaks. “Take a seat, Jodie.” Numbly, I obey. I take one slow step after another, begging silently for something to happen that will change this, something that will make all this go away. I just want to be warm again.

I look down at the seat and wonder for a moment what I am supposed to do with it. Then my body takes over, and I lower myself slowly down.

His expression is neutral now. He knows he doesn’t have to hunt anymore, that the stalking is over and he has won. He can take his time.

“It is awfully late, Jodie. Is something wrong?” he asks carefully.

I look at him with dead eyes. “I need my job back, Mr. Bellamy,” I say. The words sap all of the strength I have left. They wheeze out of me, like a balloon surrendering the last of its ability to float.

He blinks slowly. “I see,” he says. “I wondered if you would be back. I thought you might. I told you as much, did I not?”

I nod. “Yes, you told me.”

He pauses before continuing. “Right. Well, I’m afraid we’ve filled your former position already. I don’t know how much I can do for you.”

When the inevitable plea rises to escape my lips, it is so rote and unfeeling that I hardly believe I am the one speaking. It feels like someone else is working my lips for me.

“Please, Mr. Bellamy,” I say. “I’ll do anything.”

His hand briefly seizes into a triumphant fist before he catches the uncharacteristic outward display of emotion and consciously relaxes it, putting it flat on his desk. His eyes flash.

“Jodie, I really believe that you will.”

***

The roar of blood rushing through my ears overpowers anything coming out of Bellamy’s mouth. His lips open and shut, but I can’t comprehend a single word he is saying. My eyes dart around the office frantically, from the firmly locked and bolted door to the windows with their blinds cinched shut.

I want to scream, but I can’t – the ball gag in my mouth presses insistently against my tongue. At my waist, my wrists chafe against the metal handcuffs. I am naked and shivering in the blast of the air conditioning.

The room is frigid. Across from me, Bellamy slowly unwinds his tie from around his neck. With painstaking care, he slides off his jacket, folds it neatly to avoid creases, and lays it on the back of a chair. Each button of his shirt takes eons. I can see my heart beating against my rib cage.

When he has removed all but his suit pants, Bellamy pauses to recline in one of the leather-backed seats in front of his desk. He tents his fingers on his lap and surveys my body from the ground up – thick ankles rolling softly, broad thighs that sweep wide and meet in a clipped triangle of brown hair between my legs, a sea of skin between my hips and the bottom of my breasts, which rise to my jauntily-angled nipples, pointing up with impunity.

My panicked gaze must be apparent, because he clucks his teeth and says, “Oh, Jodie. Don’t be scared! Nothing untoward will happen. I give you my word.” He grins.

Rising from the chair, he walks around me to the other side of his desk, opens a drawer, and withdraws two objects. I hear one of them jingle as he comes back to stand in front of me. He tosses one on the desktop behind me – it lands with a soft thumb. The other he fastens around my neck. I can feel the cold leather and metal studs of the collar cinched against my throat. I gulp, and the strap rises and falls with the motion. My blood pounds harder.

Bellamy retreats back to the chair. He fastidiously undoes his belt, unzips his pants, and pulls them carefully off of each leg before folding the garment and laying it on top of his jacket. He runs a spindly hand over it to smooth out the wrinkles.

“Jodie,” he says, turning slowly to face me, “I am so happy that we were able to work out a compromise.”

He strides towards me now, tall, impossibly tall, his head nearly brushing the ceiling, it seems. I am beyond terrified – my pupils are dilated wide and the light flooding into them from the harsh fluorescents is riddled with shadows that flit just beyond the corner of my eyes. My hands clench and unclench, but the cuffs hold steadily. The gag locks down my tongue. The collar pinches my airway. I scream, but no sound emerges.