Lust Is the Thorn Read Free

each other, not speaking. I frowned at the fading bruise showing on her good arm, right below her shoulder, and thought about the dragon tattoo she’d gotten in memory of Mikey. I couldn’t see the tattoo under her gown, but I knew it was there. The bruise had the distinct shape of fingers, as if someone had grabbed her too tightly and refused to let go. Those marks angered me more than the time she’d stolen my phone back in high school, when Mikey was still alive, and texted Mary St. James that I had herpes. To this day, Mary was still standoffish when we crossed paths every Sunday.
    She glanced down, saw where I was staring, and tugged the gown’s sleeve down. Too late. I’d never forget what I’d seen. “How did you find out about the attack?”
    “Your job gave the police your emergency contact information.”
    Her cheeks flushed. “Oh. Right. I didn’t know Daisy’s Diner—”
    “We both know it wasn’t Daisy’s Diner the cop got my information from, since you apparently don’t work there anymore. Maybe you never did,” I said, clenching my teeth tightly. “How long have you been at Kitty Kat’s?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking…” As she blinked at me, resignation crossed her face and her voice trailed off. Her cover was blown, her secret was out, and she didn’t look too happy about it. “Just for a few nights.”
    A muscle in my jaw twitched. “Why?”
    She remained silent, staring at her lap.
    I clenched my jaw.
“Rose. Why?”
    “Keith wasn’t quite the Prince Charming I made him out to be, okay?”
    I took a deep breath, and then slowly released it. “Meaning?”
    “Meaning…lately, he was getting drunk and hitting me. I grew up with that for way too many years, and refused to fall back into that life for a man. Any man.” She played with the white blanket on her lap. Her pack of Marlboro Menthols sat beside her on the hospital nightstand, and I gritted my teeth at the sight. I hated that she smoked, and she knew it. “So I left. But to lose him, I had to lose everything I had, because he wasn’t exactly happy I walked. Assholes like him never are. So I left my job. My home. What little money I had, before he snorted it all up his nose. I lost it all to him. I had to start over again.”
    At a strip club
. “Why didn’t you tell me you needed help?” I shoved my hands in my pockets and stepped closer, rage pumping through my veins. “You should have
told
me.”
    “Why? What were you going to do for me?”
    “I would have politely reminded him it’s not okay to pick on people smaller than himself,” I growled. “And then I would have showed him why.”
    I used to be good at that.
    At teaching punks lessons.
    “The old Thorn McKinney comes out to play, huh?” She let out a small laugh. “Yeah. In no world would
I
let that happen. You’re seconds from starting your new life, but you’re going to take on an abusive asshole who’s hitting women because his dick’s too small, and ruin it all? Get thrown in jail for me? Hell no. Not on my watch.”
    Again I stepped closer, my attention locked on the bruise under her eye. “I don’t know what I would have done, exactly, but I would have done
something,
damn it. If I’d known you lost your home and job—”
    “You would have…what?” she asked, her tone rising like it always did when she was upset. “Hidden me in your dorm room at school? Gotten yourself kicked out?”
    Flexing my jaw, I glanced away, because I didn’t have an answer. I hadn’t been given the opportunity to come up with a plan, after all. But now I had been, and I was going to take her out of here, find her somewhere to stay that wasn’t a strip club, and get her a job. One that didn’t involve taking her clothes off like her mother—or mine.
    “You still should have told me. I could have taken care of you.”
    “I don’t need help. I was working at a strip club for a little while—not deathly ill. I can take care of myself, and