The Love He Craves (The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan Book 2) (24 page)

“Paid in full for what?” Emily asked, before the nurse could answer.

“I told Joseph I’d set him up on a date with a doctor if he took really good care of Cody.” Declan said, before the nurse could explain it was a bribe to keep Joseph from telling anyone that he had sedated Nyxie without permission the night Cody was hurt.

Joseph stifled an involuntary sound that came out of his mouth as if he wanted to contradict Declan, but wouldn’t.

“Cody is Nyxie’s brother. Pick-up versus bike,” he explained to Ari, knowing he would understand the emergency department lingo for an accident involving the two vehicles without further explanation.

“I didn’t know you were going to set me up with the doctor who lives in Florida.”

“He’s the only gay doctor I know.”

Joseph turned to Ari, “It’s not that I’m not glad to meet you. I’m just tired of bars and short-term relationships and I wasn’t really looking for a long-distance relationship.”

“I understand completely,” Ari said. “He didn’t really tell me much either, just that I’d be doing him a big favor and he’d pay for everything. So I thought, why not.”

“You’re quiet tonight, Nyxie,” Emily said across Declan.

“I don’t really have anything interesting to say.”

Emily laughed. “That doesn’t stop most people.”

Declan scooted his chair closer to Nyxie and put his arm around her back. “Don’t pick on Nyxie,” he said to Emily. “It’s the first time she’s gone to one of these things. She’s been trying to figure out how to get out of coming since I told her about it.”

“Well, I’ve never been to a fundraiser either,” Joseph said. “But I intend to get Dr. Stryker’s money’s worth. So, when the gambling begins, do we have to buy chips or are they included with the ticket?”

“I was planning on providing everyone with chips,” Declan said, knowing he was probably the only person there who could afford a decent stake. “I’m giving you an extra hundred for taking Nyxie to the boutique for those awesome shoes.”

Emily ducked her head to look at Nyxie’s shoes and mouthed the word, wow at her when she came back up.

Shaking his head, Joseph threw his hands up. “It was all Treshaun.”

“So buy him a gift at the auction if you don’t lose it all.”

Joseph picked up a card on the table and looked at the auction items. “Maybe I will—though honestly, he had the time of his life. He loved dressing Nyxie—his real-life doll. She’s so slender, the clothes hang beautifully on her body.”

“She’s too thin,” Declan said disapprovingly.

If Joseph heard him, he ignored the comment. “You should’ve heard Treshaun going on and on, telling Nyxie if she were taller, she could’ve been a model.”

“She’s too thin,” he said more forcefully. He turned to Ari. “Amenorrhea.”

Nyxie’s face grew warm as she realized he had told the other doctor she wasn’t having her period.

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Nyxie said suddenly. “The status of my period is no one’s business but my own. Jeez. Now everyone is going to think I’m anorexic or bulimic. They’re all going to watch every bite I eat, and if I go to the restroom afterwards, everyone will assume I’m going in there to barf. It’s not as if I wasn’t self-conscious enough.”

“Everyone here is a medical professional, Nyxie.”

“Really? Well, why don’t you tell them about your period,” she said defensively.

Declan eyed her for a few seconds before turning to everyone else at the table. “I’m not getting mine either,” he said, making everyone laugh.

As quickly as she had escalated the tension, he had defused it with his little joke. A begrudging smile emerged on Nyxie’s face. Her face turned redder as she realized she had made a huge fuss over a small comment. Declan’s arm tightened around her shoulders as he gave her a small side hug and she understood it was an apology for embarrassing her.

Before they could say more, the table was surrounded by servers filling their goblets with water and ice tea. As soon as they moved on to the next table, more servers came placing bowls of orangey yellow soup in front of them; each was adorned with two mint leaves and three small cantaloupe balls.

“What is it?” Nyxie whispered to Declan.

“Cold cantaloupe soup.”

The truck stop had both soup and chili during the winter, so Nyxie had no trouble picking out the soupspoon. As she took her first bite, Declan stopped one of the cocktail waitresses, handed her his empty glass and asked for another double. He offered to buy a round for anyone at the table who wanted a drink and Emily who had already visited the makeshift bar, asked for another glass of Llano Estacado Viognier, and Ari and Joseph opted for beer. Declan raised his eyebrows at Nyxie to silently ask if she wanted anything. She gave her head and almost imperceivable shake. She knew he had offered her a drink to be polite, but already knew she didn’t want one.

As the meal progressed, the conversation turned to discussions about the food and other inane topics. Neither Nyxie nor Declan contributed much to the conversation, but Nyxie was acutely aware of Declan’s mood. She had never seen him so quiet, and knew he was upset over not getting the fellowship. If they had been alone, she would have tried to comfort him in any way she could think of—including but not limited to trying to distract him with sex.

Nyxie watched as he set his third glass on the table, the tiny bit of bourbon in the bottom catching the light. She leaned closer. “Do you know where the restroom is, sir?” She had said it quietly to insure no one else would hear her.

He looked at her for several seconds before answering. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you. I need to go too.”

Chapter 23

When they were out in the empty corridor, Nyxie led him by the hand away from the banquet hall and the bathrooms to a dark alcove that overlooked an outdoor courtyard. Nyxie turned and wrapped her arms around his torso. Declan started to put his arms around her, but raised his arms and locked his fingers behind his own neck.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry you didn’t get your fellowship. Is it my fault? Is that why you’re mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“You won’t put your arms around me.”

“You told me I couldn’t touch you when I’ve been drinking.”

A wide smile crossed her lips. “Don’t be so literal. I wasn’t talking about casual contact. I was talking about what we do in the bedroom.”

His arms lowered, went around her shoulders, and held her tightly. “Everything or just the kinky stuff?”

“I don’t know yet. Definitely anything that involves pain. The rest, I’m not sure. I need to see what you’re like when you’re drunk.”

“TBD,” he muttered. “I don’t get drunk very often, but I need to tonight.”

“No, you don’t.”

Declan pushed her away. “What do you know? You’ve never been drunk in your life.”

“Yes, I have.”

“You have? You’ve been drunk? You told me you don’t drink or do drugs.”

As Nyxie stared at Declan, she swallowed convulsively. Her mouth felt suddenly dry. “I don’t. I don’t drink and I’ve never done drugs.”

As she spoke, she became acutely aware of a spot on her scalp, wondering if there was a scar beneath her hair. Her tight lips drew in, refusing to say her thoughts out loud. She’d learned that lesson the hard way in the first grade when she thought she could make friends by pretending to stagger around as if inebriated and make them laugh. When her teacher asked her what she was doing, she had said she was pretending to be drunk. Suddenly recess was over, and the teacher marched Onyx to the principal’s office with the whole class in tow. The principal yelled at her, and called her mother at the truck stop. When her mother finally arrived two hours later, the lecturing began again, and continued as Mandy walked home with Onyx, her wrist held in a tight grip as if she expected her to run. Then when they made it home, and Mandy told Black Jack what had happened, he backhanded the six-year-old so hard her ears rang for several minutes afterwards. Eventually, she slinked away to the closet and cried herself to sleep.

The school had assumed she was modeling behavior she saw at home, but in truth, she was aping her own conduct. The little girl that Nyxie was back then was neither articulate enough to explain, nor introspective enough to understand, that she thought the children would like her when she acted drunk, because the only time her parents seemed to lavish attention on her was when they had fed her alcohol.

It started innocently enough before she was old enough to be in school—the thirsty toddler took a drink from her mother’s beer can while Mandy was distracted. At first, Mandy was mad, but then made her finish it because she didn’t want to drink Onyx’s backwash. When her next beer suddenly became warm, Mandy gave the beer to Onyx as well.

Momma and Daddy had laughed at her lack of coordination. It was the first time they seemed to like her. Most of the time after that, they would not share their beer with their toddler, but when they did, Onyx was the center of attention, and she needed that. But being drunk, even for a little kid, might start off fun, but if they kept feeding it to her, she would soon become too drunk to control her bodily functions.

Over the next couple of years, Onyx was given beer on about a dozen occasions. To wake up the next day feeling sick and covered in her own waste was typical. However, she refused to drink again after she woke up with her hair matted with blood. The night before she had hit her head on a cinder block when she lost her coordination and fell. It wasn’t the blood, or the residual pain from the laceration that made Onyx refuse the beer after that. It was the memory of her parents’ laughter that made her stop. That was the first time she realized, their laughter was cruel—that they weren’t laughing with her, but at her.

“Are you telling me you experimented with alcohol when you were a teenager?” Declan asked.

“Something like that,” she said evasively.

“Is that how you dealt with your mother’s disappearance?”

“My mother was the one who gave me the beer.”

Declan’s eyes widened because he knew Nyxie was in the eighth grade when her mother disappeared. “How old were you?”

Nyxie worried the inside of her lip, and her eyes would not rise above the center of his chest.

“Answer me.”

“Younger than Reina.”

“Christ, I wonder what that does to brain development.”

A quick smile flashed across her face. “How doctorly of you to wonder that.”

Declan gave her a look of frustration. “I hardly think it’s something to joke about.”

“I knew I shouldn’t tell you.”

“Are you keeping things from me?”

Nyxie shifted away from him at his tone. She couldn’t tell how inebriated he was. Six ounces of the hard stuff would have had her father sloppily drunk, but Declan seemed rather unaffected.

“It’s not like that. You always do this
poor Nyxie
thing. What happened in my childhood, bothers you more than it bothers me.”

“That’s because you don’t know what normal is. Your view of your life is skewed so far to one side, that you think if you came out alive, everything is fine.”

“And your view is so skewed to the other side, that you think I should have PTSD over a mosquito bite. I don’t dwell on my childhood—I’ve been too busy putting food on the table and figuring out how to clothe three kids, that I don’t have time to throw myself this big pity party you think I should wallow in.”

“Ignoring what happened to you is not going to make it go away.”

“It works for me—always has. I am perfectly normal.”

A mirthless chuckle escaped his lips. “No, Nyxie, you’re not. You are scared of everything except the one thing you should be. Unless you think being a masochist is normal.”

Nyxie tried to fight back the gasp that came unbidden from her throat. The word sounded ugly and harsh. She couldn’t say why pretending that the term
masochistic tendencies
was not the same thing, but somehow it felt more polite and less blunt.

“If I am, it’s because you made me one.”

“I didn’t make you a masochist, any more than I gave you brown eyes. I just made you open those big brown eyes and see it sooner than if you had to figure it out.”

Nyxie’s face lost all expression for a moment. They stared at each other for several seconds. “I didn’t want you to come out in the hallway so we could have an argument about how fucked up you think I am. I want your car keys.”

“My car keys? Are you going somewhere?”

It was the first time Nyxie could tell he was drinking. Declan was never slow to grasp the obvious. His eyes narrowed as it began to dawn on him.

“We’re in the BMW. I’m not sure you’re ready to drive it, baby,” he said.

“Well, you should’ve thought about that before you started drinking. If you don’t give me your keys, I’ll walk home.”

“The house isn’t far, Nyxie, I’m sure I can drive.”

“Sir, what would my punishment be for getting in the car with someone who has consumed six shots of hard liquor in less than an hour?”

He thought about it for a moment and reached in his pocket. Reluctantly, Declan handed her his keys.

With a flourish of her hand, she dropped the fob in her tiny purse, snapped it closed, and then tucked the purse under one arm. A wide smile crossed her lips as she realized asking for his keys hadn’t caused the big fight she had expected.

Reaching out awkwardly, so she wouldn’t drop the purse, she grabbed his lapels of his Christian Dior tuxedo and kissed him briefly. “Do I need to tell you not to confront anyone from the Garrison Center about the fellowship? You don’t want them to see you drunk if you hope to get one of the next fellowships they offer.”

“No, you’re right.”

“Are you ready to go back in?”

~*~

Everyone else at the table had finished dessert before they returned to the table.

“You two were gone a long time. What were you newlyweds doing?” Ari asked suggestively.

“They weren’t having sex, I know that,” Emily said. “Nyxie has a rule about drunk sex.”

Nyxie turned bright red and she elbowed Declan in the ribs. A vague memory stirred in Declan’s head of telling Emily when he drunk-called her, that he was not allowed to touch Nyxie when he’d been drinking.

“I was holding her hair while she barfed up her meal. Then she held mine while I barfed up my drinks.”

Nyxie joined their dinner companions laughing at Declan’s joke. Maybe Emily's insight about Declan being funny when he had been drinking might be true.

“So catch me up to speed on this whirlwind romance,” Ari said. “I didn’t even know you were dating anyone.”

“We knew each other in high school,” Nyxie said quickly, knowing what
not
to say.

“Yeah, I think we spoke five times,” Declan clarified.

Nyxie’s head twisted around to look at him. She knew this was not the narrative that he wanted getting back to the hospital.

“The first time could hardly be called a conversation,” he said. “As are matter-of-fact, most of them couldn’t be called conversations. The principal had just given her a paddling and as she left, I asked her if it hurt. She just gave me a dirty look and kept walking.”

Joseph, taking a drink, nearly choked and began coughing, drawing a few pats on the back from his date.

“I find it hard to believe that Nyxie ever got in trouble at school.”

“I had five tardies. I opted for licks instead of afterschool detention because I couldn’t stay after school. I had to pick up Cody at the bus stop as soon as school let out.” It was barely a month into the school year, and in the mornings, Nyxie had to get Cody to his bus on time, otherwise she had to walk him across town before she went to school, which made her tardy.

“The second time was in the cafeteria line,” Declan continued. “I turned around and there she was. I felt like a jerk for what I’d said the first time, so I offered to let her go in front of me. She said she was fine. I asked her name even though I already knew it. She didn’t answer me, so I threatened to hold up the line if she didn’t tell me. Eventually, she said Onyx. I stuck out my hand to shake hers, but she just looked at it.”

“She was probably afraid you had cooties,” Emily said with a laugh.

“She never would take my hand.” Declan said, looking at her questioningly.

“I don’t remember that, but I was probably afraid you wanted to squeeze my hand really hard. That’s usually what happened in school if anyone wanted to shake. You were a lot bigger than me then.”

“I started to tell her my name and before I could get it out, she interrupted me and said she knew who I was. Then she spoke words I will never forget, ‘The line has moved up.’ I turned around and sure enough, there was a big gap, so I moved up, but when I turned back around she was gone. All I saw was her back as she left the cafeteria. She never came back. I felt so bad that I had scared her away and she didn’t eat lunch, that I never talked to her in the cafeteria again.”

Nyxie didn’t have any memory of the exchange, but she did remember skipping lunch once. It was a big mistake because she didn’t have any food to take home that night to Cody, and he cried himself to sleep because he was hungry. By the time she made it to school for breakfast the next day, she was hungrier than she’d ever been in her whole life and she promised herself she would never skip lunch at school again.

She wondered if that was when Declan started putting food in her locker. He didn’t know that oftentimes the cheese-crackers and Pop Tarts sustained them over the weekend. But it was also at a time when her landlady’s daughter was also trying to evict them. Onyx had agreed to help the elderly woman by cleaning her house, mowing her yard and promising to payback back rent as soon as she was old enough to get a job. Every Saturday, Onyx took Cody into the big house next to their garage apartment, and put him in the shower while she cleaned the bathroom. Because their electricity and water had been shut off, it was her only way to get him bathed. Nyxie had been able to shower after P.E. class at school, but Cody couldn’t do that. They ate Mrs. Jones’s leftovers as they cleaned out her refrigerator. Nyxie always suspected the woman knew, but she never said anything. She was probably also the one who kept her daughter from evicting them.

“The third time I spoke to Nyxie was after a pep rally,” he continued. “My dad made me get up in front of everyone and give a little talk about how the team was motivated by our supporters and all the BS you say at those things. Everyone was cheering and shit. And there sat my little Onyx on the front row, reading her library book with all this yelling, drumming and chaos going on around her. Of course, afterwards, there was this big cluster fuck for the doors, and she just sat there reading, so I sat down beside her and asked her if she liked my speech. She said she wasn’t listening. I asked her if she was going to go to the game, and she closed up her book and started heading for the door. I followed and asked her again. When she realized she couldn’t get away from me because of the crowd, she told me she wasn’t going to the game, and she didn’t like football. I asked her if she’d ever gone to a game, and she said once in middle school. I told her we really needed everyone to fill the stands for the playoffs, and she just stood there staring at my feet. I kind of knew she would rather have the earth open up and swallow her, than talk to me.”