I sucked in a breath as she stepped up to me and held it in . . . as she slid past me and leaned up to place a kiss on the cheek of an impossibly tall guy with short dark hair.
“Здраво!” The word she said sounded like zdrah-voh, and based on his reaction, I’d say it was a greeting.
I was positive when he returned, “Hello again, Kelsey.”
I stumbled back, trying to put a bit of distance between us, and tried to place the guy. I didn’t recognize him from the club the night before, so that meant she’d met him when I wasn’t around. Maybe at her hostel. Or earlier in the night when I’d lost her.
The two began talking, but I didn’t hear them over my own berating thoughts about my supreme idiocy.
She laughed, and the guy from VIP grabbed her elbow, tugging her away from the taller guy. I watched her introduce them, calm and cool as though VIP guy wasn’t squeezing her elbow so tightly that it looked painful.
The other guy stepped forward like he was going to do something, but she flashed him a look and then shook her head, laughing. She wrapped an arm around VIP, and it diffused some of his tension.
Now I really hated this guy.
She shot her friend an apologetic look, and then pulled VIP away onto the dance floor.
Before, in the VIP room, she’d danced alone, carefree and vibrant as she always seemed at night, but I could see the cracks in that facade now. She turned her back to him as she danced, and closed her eyes. Her full lips pulled down in a frown, and her jaw clenched like she was struggling to hold something in.
It took me a second to place the expression, but eventually I matched it with her face that first day in the gardens. When she’d said goodbye to the guy she’d been with in the woods, I’d been seated on the stairs watching. She’d passed me, heading off into the woods. But before she passed me on the stairs, I caught her expression as she climbed the stairs. She had a smooth, angular face, but somehow then it had looked almost caved in by exhaustion.
She looked the same now.
From song to song, even that expression disappeared until she was blank, like that first faceless sketch I’d made of her.
Eventually, she pulled away from the guy she was dancing with, only to have him pull her back in, his hands possessive claws at her waist.
She smiled, her blank face long gone. Gesturing off to the left, she peeled his arms from her waist. She held out one finger like she’d be right back, but there was an angry sag to his mouth. She reached up and kissed that gash of a mouth, and he let her go, watching as she wove across the floor to the hall where the bathrooms were located.
I didn’t think as I moved toward him.
I just remembered his ugly frown, and the way he’d gripped her elbow.
Standing in front of him, he paid me no mind, still watching her disappear down the bathroom hallway.
“Go back to your room upstairs.”
He turned toward me, and said, “What?”
“Leave her alone.”
He scoffed and rolled his eyes. He turned and started off in the direction that Kelsey had gone.
“Hey, I’m serious.” I grabbed his shoulder and spun him back around. “Leave her the f**k alone.”
“She have a golden pu**y or something? Is that why everyone wants her?”
“She doesn’t have anything where you’re concerned. You’re going to be gone when she comes back.”
“No, ass**le. You will.”
That was really all the provocation I needed. I’d been itching to break something since this morning, and this guy had irked me from the moment I saw him. Maybe I couldn’t hold a real one-year chip in my hand to distract me, but his face against my knuckles should do the trick.
He shoved my hand off his elbow, and I let him. Only then I brought it back in a fist and rammed it as hard as I could across his jaw.
Pain burst across my knuckles, followed by a shot of adrenaline that burned up my veins and set a fire in my chest. He swung back at me, and I ducked, ramming my shoulder up into his midsection. He coughed out a breath, and stumbled backward, his sagging mouth now an ugly, gaping hole.
He spit, and then came raging back at me. His punch was slow, and I leaned back, letting it pass in front of my face. I threw a left cross, letting my hips and shoulder push through until impact.
He went down hard, carving out a hole on the dance floor as he sprawled out beneath the flashing neon lights.
It felt fantastic. Until I turned around to find the bouncer who had been stationed out front when I came on board.
I WAS NURSING a bruised jaw and a busted lip of my own, courtesy of the bouncer, when my own phone rang. I was hanging out just down the riverbank from the club, keeping an eye out for Kelsey, and I hit answer.
“Hello?” I closed my eyes against the sting of my split lip and heard Kelsey’s father on the other end.
“Hunt?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I didn’t expect you to answer.”
“Why not, sir?”
“It’s four in the morning there, isn’t it?”
So it was. He was becoming accustomed to Kelsey’s altered schedule.
“I’m a light sleeper,” I answered.
“Good. Where are you now?”
“Belgrade, sir.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“Serbia, sir.”
“Why in the world is she in Serbia? What do you even do in Serbia?”
I really didn’t think he wanted to know. “Sightseeing. The usual.”