Filed to story: Bound by Honor (Aria & Luca) Drama Story
Growl turned to me. “Perhaps. But that woman is still with the asshole. Some people know nothing but misery. It’s something reliable. Change scares them more than their shitty life.”
I traced the inked thorns over his forearm. “Like you.”
Growl narrowed his eyes. “I’m changing my life for you by going against Falcone.”
“I know, and I’m grateful for that. But you’re doing it for me. It’s like you still don’t think you deserve anything good.” I said. “You live in this place though you don’t have to. I can’t imagine Falcone is paying you that badly. You are like that woman in that regard.”
He sat up. “This house isn’t like being beaten up by someone.” He hesitated. “Is it that bad for you?”
I sighed. “This place makes me miserable.”
“You mean I make you miserable.”
“No,” I said, and I wasn’t sure if it was the truth or still part of her plan to make him trust me. “This place. The people are hopeless and ignorant, and there’s no beauty in this place, only desolation.”
Growl looked around the room. “Beauty is fleeting.”
“And desolation and despair isn’t?” I sat up as well, and leaned my chin on his shoulder, breathing in his musky scent. I didn’t want him to leave but I could tell that he was already growing restless.
“It’s familiar. It’s reliable,” Growl murmured. “I always liked that.” And I had messed things up for him, I supposed. A creature of habit, indeed. And yet, he was giving it up for me.
For a while there was silence, then he slowly withdrew, and I had no choice but to let go of him. He perched on the edge of the bed, but then he got up. “Sleep tight.”
“I would sleep better if you stayed,” I said.
Growl hesitated, but then he left again. Every time I thought we were getting somewhere, an action like this reminded me that we couldn’t. Perhaps at some point my heart would grasp that too.
We drove toward the Las Vegas strip with its skyscrapers. Everything was bright and the people were enjoying themselves. This was a far cry from where Growl lived. We stopped in front of tall sleek skyscrapers with bellboys in front of the sliding doors. Growl got out before the man could open his door, so he helped me out of the car instead. It felt strange to be surrounded by this luxury again. I almost felt like I didn’t belong, as if the last couple of weeks had changed me so much already that I couldn’t possibly fit into the world I’d been part of all her life. It was a scary thought.
Growl led me inside the building with a hand on my back. It was a possessive gesture and at the same time I thought he was trying to show me something else. Or was I trying to see things Growl wasn’t capable of? The receptionist gave us a too bright smile as we headed for the elevators.
We got out at the very top of the skyscraper and stepped into a massive penthouse. Everything was white and glass and gold. “What is this?” I asked. It was furnished with black and grey design furniture. Everything was sleek and perfect.
“My apartment,” Growl said simply.
I froze on my way toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. “This is yours?” This apartment looked completely unused. And in six the weeks that I’d been with him, he’d never mentioned it to me. I startled. Had it really been six weeks? God. And at the same time six weeks seemed way too short a time span for everything that had happened.
Six weeks. Without my sister. She was fine, Growl had assured me. And my mother, I hadn’t seen her in so long.
“I got it a few years back,” Growl said, tearing me from my thoughts. He fetched a coke from the fridge and drank it. “Falcone gave it to me as payment for a job well done, but I don’t use it.” He handed me another coke but I only used it to let the cold help me focus.
“If you have this,” I motioned around myself. “Then why are you living in that awful house? This place doesn’t look like you’ve ever set foot in it. There’s nothing that belongs to you.”
Growl gave me a strange look. “Because this isn’t who I am. The furniture was there when I got it and I never changed anything,” he said in his usual low rumble. “This is too…” His eyes searched the room. “Too noble for someone like me. It’s just not me.”
I stopped at the window and let my gaze wander over the Las Vegas strip spreading out below us. In the distance I could see the endless red desert. I preferred to live in a house, had always loved my old home and the garden, but everything was better than the shack Growl called home. “For someone like you?” I repeated his words.
Growl approached me slowly and followed my gaze. “And Coco and Bandit wouldn’t feel comfortable so high up. They’d miss their garden. Around here there’s no where I could walk them.”
I gave him a look but he avoided my eyes. There was something strangely vulnerable and out of place in Growl. Why did he feel so uncomfortable in a luxurious apartment? “It’s not like the area where we live is great for dog walks.”
Growl gave me a strange smile. “Bandit and Coco are used to places like that. They know how to handle drunkards and junkies, whores and the homeless. The people around here with their fake smiles, that’s something they can’t handle. People like that sent them into dog fights.”
“You know, there are places where normal decent people live. You compare one extreme with the other.”
“Normal,” Growl said quietly, testing the word. “I’ve never had normal.” He turned to me. “Can you imagine me among normal decent people?”
I didn’t say anything. Growl with his scary tattoos and scarred throat always drew attention to himself, and that was only his scary appearance.
He must have read my thoughts from my face. He nodded. “Normal people wouldn’t want me in their neighborhood, they’d be scared of me. And the people around here, they don’t want me either because they, too, fear me.”
“Everyone fears you,” I said matter-of-factly. “Even the criminals and junkies in your area. If you want to live where no one fears you, you’ll have to move into wilderness.” It was meant as a joke, to lighten up the mood, but Growl nodded thoughtfully.
“Animals don’t fear me, only humans do. I’m a man-made monster, perhaps that’s why.” He took in our surroundings again. “Monsters aren’t meant for a palace like this.”
He thought he didn’t deserve to live in a nice place. Maybe along the way he’d started to believe what everyone said, that he was below everyone else, that he wasn’t worth anything. For some reason I felt for him, even though he didn’t deserve my compassion.
“You belong here,” Growl said quietly. “A princess in her tower.”
My lips parted in surprise. It wasn’t the first time he’d said something like that but it caught me by surprise every time.
“So why are we here?” I asked him.