Page 40 of Dancing With Lies

She was afraid of stepping into that world with Lincoln. That little nugget bloomed into life with a fierce swell in her chest just as she drove up to her normal parking spot in the back of Lemon Fresh. Her history with him was complicated, angst-ridden, and weird, but it was also…sweet.

Did she want to replace those memories with him, taint them, with what she was now? That one moment in time was the last time she could remember being clean, sweet, innocent. Everything with him had been pure, couched in trauma, sure, but it had been pure comfort.

She looked up as she got out of the car and saw lights on in her apartment. That complicated things even more. If it wasn’t Wendy then it was Nathan, since they were the only two people that had keys to her place. Wendy waited at the stairs that led up to her apartment, her face riddled with anxiety.

“Roxie.” Wendy hissed, her eyes large and full of worry. “Nathan’s up there and something’s going on. I don’t think you should go up there.”

“What? Why not?” Roxie scoffed, her gaze on her door. “It’s only Nathan, it’s not like he’s any kind of threat to me.”

“You haven’t seen him yet. He looks so dirty and…wild.” Wendy’s face creased in distaste, her full lips pursed in disapproval. “I think he’s looking for something up there. It sounds like he’s torn all your furniture apart.”

“I see.” Roxie gnawed at her bottom lip for a moment before she realized Wendy shouldn’t be there with her. “Why did you leave the party?”

“Oh, um.” Wendy looked towards the edge of the building, to where the back door to the shop was. Roxie thought she saw a man jerk back into the darkness but couldn’t see who it was. “I decided to come back here, and, uh, that most of that wasn’t for me.”

“Is there somebody back there, Wendy?” Roxie teased and knew she’d hit the nail on the head when Wendy’s pink-dappled cheeks turned bright red. Roxie knew Wendy brought guys back to the shop sometimes because she couldn’t take them home to her parents’ house. She’d said more than once that she needed to move out of her childhood home and find her own apartment, but she hadn’t done it yet. Roxie looked at her friend, daring her to fess up.

“No!” But the fact that she wouldn’t meet Roxie’s eyes made the word a lie.

“Mmhmm. Well, you have fun, babe, I’m going to find out what’s going on upstairs. I’ll call you if I need you.”

“I’ll wait here for a little while, shall I?”

“If you want.” Roxie nodded, her eyes on her door again. “If he’s destroyed my apartment, he can fuck right off, so don’t be surprised if you see him running down the stairs.”

“I’ll stay out of the way, but I’ll be here.” Wendy leaned over to peck Roxie’s cheek before she watched her walk up the stairs.

“Nathan?” Roxie called out as she opened the door but stopped as soon as it opened to stare at the utter devastation inside.

It looked as if some maniac had broken in, bent on destroying everything she owned. Her couch had been slit to pieces with the cushion stuffings discarded on the floor. The carpets were torn to shreds, her cabinet doors hung on their hinges, and the walls were pocked with holes. Through the devastation, she could see into her bedroom where her clothes were strewn all over and her mattress had been treated to the same torture as her couch. “Nathan, what the fuck? And where the fuck have you been?”

Anger surged in to replace the shock and she stomped inside to find him taking a knife to her pillows.

“Where is it, Roxie? Where the fuck is it?” He came at her with a brutal-looking knife in hand. Her eyes zeroed in on a black blade that was obviously made to inflict a lot of damage and pain. He pointed the knife right at her.

She looked up at Nathan, her eyes narrowed in sadness. Did he really think he was the first man to threaten her with a knife? “What are you talking about, Nathan?”

He stood there, a wild light of madness in his eyes, with a full beard, wearing the same clothes he had on the day she picked him up from jail. They were crusty with dirt, mud, and what she thought might be blood, but she didn’t want to look too closely. This lunatic with filthy hair and a dirt-streaked face was not the man she’d almost loved. She knew that in an instant.

“That fucking watch, Roxie, the one crusted in diamonds you selfish bitch. Where is it?”

Roxie went still, feeling the betrayal wash over her in waves. It wasn’t that he wanted to take the watch from her that hurt the most, it was that he’d searched her home for valuables, going so far as to look under the carpets and floorboards at some point in the past. He’d done that when she wasn’t home, probably one night when she was working trying to provide dinner for them both. The motherfucker.

Her eyes narrowed into angry slits as she stared at him, wondering if actual fire was shooting out of them or only felt it was?

“I know about you, Roxie, about who you really are.” He smirked, his teeth furry from weeks without a toothbrush. But he’d managed to find a knife somewhere, and she made sure she knew where he held it, even if she didn’t look directly at it.

“You might think you know about me, Nathan, but you don’t. You don’t know a damned thing about me.” She shook her head in disappointment. This man hadn’t deserved even an ounce of her love.

“I need that watch, Roxie. I need to get out of this place before they kill me. Now give me that watch or I’ll cut your eyes out.” He spit the words out, but she could tell from the way that his eyes darted around that he wasn’t as steady as he thought he was. The sweat on his face could be exertion or withdrawal, and Roxie had to wonder how long it had been since he’d had a fix of whatever it was he’d been on lately.

“I don’t have the watch, you idiot. I pawned it. How the fuck do you think I paid your bail?”

“What? No! I need that watch, Roxie, I have to pay those men in that van back or I’m dead. Get it back.”

“I can’t.” She answered, wondering why he couldn’t get it through his thick skull that the watch was gone.

He rushed at her, pushing her up against the wall, and slammed the knife into the wall just over her head. “Get me that fucking watch right now, Roxie.”