Page 60 of Hard Bargain

She swung at him again. Weaker now. More desperate than angry. Her nails scraped his jaw and a sting followed.

The TV kept shouting about discounts and miracle products, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe in there. “I’ll be back,” he said, already moving.

“Don’t you walk away from me—”

He was already out the door, down the stairs, and outside before he’d consciously decided to keep going. He pressed his fingers to his cheek and felt the swelling blooming beneath the skin. It throbbed in time with his pulse.

He walked without direction at first, just needing distance. His head buzzed with too many things stacked on top of each other.

God.

He stopped under a flickering streetlight and leaned against a brick wall. He should call someone. Tara, maybe. She’d listen; she’d tell him to come over; she’d say all the right things about mental illness being hard and none of this being his fault. Or he could call one of the guys. A beer, something easy, something that required nothing from him.

He pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over Tara’s name. He imagined explaining the last forty-eight hours. The Port. Six point six million pills. The way he’d gotten on his knees and stayed there. The way his body had betrayed him. The way he’d felt more alive in Dominic’s world. He couldn’t picture the words coming out of his mouth without sounding insane.

His thumb drifted. He didn’t mean to stop on Dominic’s name. He stared at it for a moment; the number stared back at him like a dare.

His cheek throbbed and his chest felt hollowed out. His life had been running on fumes for so long, he’d forgotten what full felt like. And suddenly these last few weeks had been full of color.

Completely wrong in every way that mattered. But real in a way almost nothing else had been in years.

His finger moved and the phone started to ring.

Once.

Twice.

By the third ring his heart was pounding hard enough to make him lightheaded, and he still had absolutely no idea what he was going to say. He didn’t even know why he’d called. He only knew he didn’t want to be alone with the silence anymore.

“Yeah.”

Knox’s throat went dry. What the hell am I doing? For a second he just listened to Dominic’s breathing on the other end.

“You usually call people and say nothing?” Dominic asked.

Knox swallowed. “I didn’t mean to call.”

“You don’t strike me as someone who does things by accident.”

His fingers pressed harder against his cheek, the pain anchoring him. He didn’t know how to explain the apartment. The slap. The way everything inside him felt stretched past the point it was designed to hold. “I just—” He stopped. “Am I disturbing you?”

A small pause. “No.”

He leaned back against the brick wall and closed his eyes.

“You sound different,” Dominic said.

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

One word. It landed heavier than it had any right to.

“My mom’s having a bad night,” Knox said finally, the words coming out thinner than he intended. “I needed air.”

“Are you okay?”

Knox hesitated a fraction too long.