I look around. Speaking of eating, Sonya has been gone too damn long.

“I’ll be back. Gotta piss.” I stand.

“I’ll go—” River pauses when I give him the stink eye. “After you get back.”

Hopefully, no one else caught on, I think as I walk out of the restaurant again.

I walk around the corner and see her standing against the wall. Her back is to me. Her phone is in one hand, and her other hand covers her ear, I assume so she can hear.

I get two feet from her and hear, “Noah, I love you.”

I turn and walk. No fucking way am I gonna lie down with a chick who’s into someone else.

“I love you.” I hear her say again.

I walk fast into the restaurant where the wait staff is setting down the plates of food.

“You mind boxing mine up? I am gonna go back to the room,” I say, looking at everyone who is looking up at me. “If you want me there at nine, I need my beauty sleep.”

I look at River, who eyes me suspiciously. “I’ll go, too.”

“You two are both leaving?” Billy asks.

“If you want us both there in the morning, then yes,” I answer.

***

River and I are on the balcony, finishing the ‘after dinner mint,’ or joint, when I see her walk in the room with a box that has the restaurant’s name on it. She sets it in the fridge and looks around.

“Sonya,” River yells in. “Come partake?”

She cocks her head to the side as she walks toward the balcony.

“She’s hot,” River whispers. “Nice little titties, curvy ass.”

I don’t stop him. I let him continue. If I wasn’t high, I would probably want to break his nose.

“That hair, though. Fucking redheads are the devil.”

“Partake in …?” she asks as she steps out.

River holds out the joint. “Herbage, conversation, and testing.”

She shakes her head. “No, thank you.”

She looks at me, and I swear to God she looks hurt, maybe disappointed.

“What?”

She shakes her head again. “Nothing. Just wondering if you’re ‘partaking’ after this morning’s mess.”

I take the joint from River, take a hit, and blow it toward her. “That answer your question, None-ya?”

As River snickers, she looks pissed, and I don’t give a fuck.

Noah.

Fuck him.

Fuck her.

“Goodnight,” she says and walks back in.

“She should really smoke something. Kind of uptight.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I say, trying to keep myself in check.

“Gonna go try to corrupt Billy boy.” River grins. “You wanna come?”

“Nah.” I take another hit and give it back to him. “I’m gonna write.”

He holds up the joint. “Brilliance inducer?”

“When you gonna tell us a story?” I ask.

“Me? I got no story.”

“Bullshit,” I say as I walk into the suite. “We all have a story.”

***

When I sit on the couch, pad in hand, ready to lay down a foundation, she walks out of her room and gives me hell with her eyes.

I give it right back.

“You should really lay off the damn drugs,” she hisses as she grabs the box from the mini fridge.

“You should try not to ride the innocent, little tease wave when you’re nothing but a—” I stop when she gasps.

I look at her, really look at her, and she looks mortified.

“You’re a fucking actress, None-ya.”

“Excuse me?”

Unable to contain my anger, I slam down the book and storm toward her.

“Who the fuck is Noah?”

She looks terrified as tears spring to her eyes.

“Can he make you feel as good as I do?” I grab her and yank her against me.

“Leave me alone.” She tries to pull away.

“Does he eat your—”

Her hand slaps me hard across the face, stopping me from finishing the sentence.

“He’s my son! And don’t you ever”—she pushes against my chest hard with her little fists—“ever talk about him again!”

Instinct makes me clutch on to her when I should do as she asks. I hold her head against my chest, keeping her there.

She pushes in protest, but I am so fucking sure, after what I just said to her, if I let go, she won’t come back.

“Sorry,” I say, and her fight weakens.

“How did you …? Why did you …? I—”

“Came to find you at dinner, heard you say his name, and …” I can’t even say the words she said to him. I haven’t said them in six years to anyone. “Damn it, I’m sorry.”

“Let me go,” she says on a muffled sob. Her head is buried in my chest.

I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to, but I have to.

“If I knew, I would have never…”

“What? Never what?” She pushes harder, and I let go regretfully.

“I didn’t know.”

“There is a lot you don’t know. You stop me every time I try to tell you!”

“I don’t want to know about the past. He isn’t your past,” I defend.

She steps back and wipes her eyes. “Goodnight.”

“Talk to me,” I plead.

She shakes her head. “I don’t even know what I am allowed to talk about.”

“Any fucking thing you want. I’ll listen.”

“But you won’t talk,” she says as if she is done, completely done with me.

“You’re right, but I’ll listen.”

She looks confused, scared, still angry, but the emotion that sticks out is fear. She’s fucking afraid.

“How old is he?” I ask.

“Four.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“So you were sixteen when you had him?”

“Almost seventeen,” she answers, guarded, so fucking guarded.

“He live with his dad?”

She shakes her head. “Noah is very, very sacred to me. Don’t ask me to share him with you when I have protected him forever.”

“Protected him from whom?”

“You’re asking for my past, a subject you don’t want to talk about.”

“The scar on your stomach, was it from childbirth?”

Her body tenses, and she stands up straighter. “No.”

“Sonya—”

“Finn, I can’t. I won’t share that with someone who seems hell bent on breaking me. When I gave myself to you, it was because we weren’t going backward. You and I would have never happened if we were, trust me. You couldn’t—”

“Who does he live with?”

“My aunt when I’m not there.”

“Where is his father?” I ask, feeling like the answer is going to tip my world upside down.

“Not sure. Cuba maybe.”

“Where is home?” I ask cautiously, knowing something is off.

“Columbus, Ohio.”

I look at her, a sick reality coming over me. “Your hair is dark brown.”

She turns her head away.

“Sonya, look at me.”

She turns her head back toward me, pain in her eyes.

“I think I know your story. I don’t want to push you, ’cause I sure as hell don’t want to be pushed, but please tell me I’m wrong because I don’t want to think anyone ever hurt you that way.”

Her eyes flutter, tears spill, and I am literally shaking.

“Come here.”

She shakes her head.

“Then I’m coming for you.”

I take two steps, closing the distance between us, and then I have her in my arms so fucking tightly I’m sure she can’t breathe. Her body trembles as she cries against my chest.

I pick her up, carry her to the couch, and sit with her cradled in my arms.

I am holding the girl who, at sixteen years old, was attacked by an illegal immigrant, the son of a man hired by Roxy Charles as a gardener for her home. Roxy was arrested by the FBI in a sting operation that sent her to prison for running the biggest drug ring in the history of the state of Ohio, though the charge was later dropped to dealing.

Sonya was apparently living with her aunt in the family home when she went to meet the asshole who got her pregnant, and she was stabbed in the stomach just outside the gates of her home and left for dead. The entire attack was caught on video surveillance and broadcasted nationally in the hopes of finding her attacker.

As fucked up as I was back then, I remember. It was like something straight out of Hollywood, something you would never expect to happen in real life.