Say it Louder Read Online Free PDF Page B

“That’s what I need today. Tonight. I have nowhere I can go right now. No one I can trust. Except you.”
    She clicks the lock into place and straightens, her pale blue eyes challenging me. This time, the staring contest isn’t about power—it’s about raw assessment. I’m willing her to understand how much it takes to simply admit that I need some help.
    I need her.
    “Follow me.”

    ***

    Compared to my house, most people’s homes are pretty basic. Kristina bought four-thousand-dollar leather couches, thick rugs and fancy decorator stuff that I can’t even name. She went apeshit in Williams-Sonoma decking out our kitchen, and then I went kind of crazy with the electronics.
    Even compared to my childhood addresses, a series of run-down rental houses and marginally better apartments, Willa’s apartment is a slum.
    We climb four flights of creaking stairs, pass several discarded pizza boxes piled up by a garbage chute, and scuttle beneath a lone bare bulb in the hallway. Willa unlocks the door—just one lock, and that worries me.
    “It’s safe, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she says. “Some of my neighbors are working girls and dealers, but some of them are just regular folks scraping by.” The challenge in her voice tells me she knows I’m judging her.
    I can’t help it. Even when our band first moved to New York, we lived in a better place than this.
    She drops her messenger bag on a table that’s splashed with several colors of paint, and that’s the first thing I notice—paint is everywhere, splatters and drips across the floor and color swatches painted on the walls. A rusted metal shelf bears mismatched quarts, brushes, turpentine, and dozens of cans of spray paint.
    The apartment is one big room, with windows along two walls. One window is covered with cardboard and another has a star-shaped crack that looks like a bullet hit it.
    Maybe it did.
    I’m drawn to the stacks of canvases propped along the floor and I walk toward them, but Willa reels me back to her. “Don’t look, and don’t touch.”
    “Why not?”
    She blows out an exasperated breath. “Look, I took you home with me against my better judgment. Don’t make me regret it.”
    So I back off—I sit on the couch and mess with my phone while she putters around her place and the sounds of the city at night take over. She makes ramen and my stomach growls in anticipation.
    We slurp from our bowls in silence.
    When her eyes flick up to meet mine, I’m tongue-tied by the heavy lashes that fringe her stormy, pale blue eyes. They’re the color of a Caribbean shore, but they carry the feeling of being lost at sea.
    I open and close my mouth like a fish, squirming under her direct gaze. I have a million questions but I don’t feel like I have permission to ask any of them.
    She stares me down, like she’s deciding something. Whatever’s happening behind those clear, intelligent eyes, she doesn’t share it with me.
    I break her gaze and rest my bowl on the makeshift coffee table, turning to anchor my elbows on my knees and run my hands through my hair. I’ve been humbled every way a man could be humbled—Kristina’s deception, the threat of arrest, and watching my options slip through my fingers like sand.
    Yet Willa seems to see me so clearly that it takes me down another peg.
    She doesn’t see a rock star or a rich guy. She doesn’t see a kickass manager or a half-ass drummer. She just sees … me. And it cuts too close.
    It’s my last layer of skin, my final defense, and feeling it penetrated is more than I can take tonight. I lurch up from the couch. “Where do you want me to sleep?”
    She pats the couch. “You’re looking at it.”
    I nod in thanks and haul myself to the bathroom, feeling the weight of the day drag down my limbs. Just before I reach the bathroom, I hear her soft, strong voice.
    “I put a blanket out for you.”
    I swallow hard, tightness in my throat almost smothering my reply.