Mess Me Up
Page 20

Speaking of grossing me out, my phone vibrated with a text, and I pulled it out to see that Rome had finally replied to the text I’d sent him.
Rome: that better not fuckin’ be pubes.
Grinning, I replied with a GIF and shoved the phone back into my pocket, getting back to work.
My phone vibrated almost immediately, and I stopped only having taken one more sweep to pull it out and look at it.
Rome: I’m having lunch with Bayou. He said to sweep it all up and put it in the air vent in his car. That way when he starts it up later, it blows in his face. What a fucker.
I grinned and typed out a message.
Me: Don’t get me started. That’s just a little taste of what I have to deal with here. I think he thinks I speak only Spanish. He talks to me like my IQ is low. Oh, and he points and gestures a lot.
Rome sent back a barfing emoticon, and I gave an inadvertent giggle before shoving my phone back into my bra and getting back to work.
The next text message that came I didn’t bother to answer.
Not when I had places to be, people to see, and things to do.
All of those things centered around a tall biker with a really great ass.
Luckily, we were both working today, or I’d probably be getting a whole lot less work done.
Rome and I had turned into quite the Chatty Cathys lately, not that I was complaining or anything.
I was actually quite relieved.
Having him actually going out of his way to talk to me was so much more than I ever expected. Especially since he’d spent six months doing everything he could to avoid me.
But, I wasn’t going to complain.
My grandmother had been one of my only support systems for too long.
I missed having companionship with people my own age.
Even more, I’d missed Rome.
I missed everything about him and didn’t realize how much until he’d literally come out of his cave these past few weeks.
But, as much as I wanted to pull my phone out and continue to have a conversation with him, I had work to do.
And once I was done with the floor, I moved back to the baseboards, and then began dusting.
It was when I was pulling the drawers out of the TV cabinet in the living room to get that line of dust on top of the drawer itself that my eyes lit on something inside the drawers.
What I saw made me slam the drawer shut, and my heart skip a beat.
My heart was slamming a hundred miles an hour in my chest, and my jaw was likely on the floor.
I moved hastily to the blinds in the living room and looked out at the pool, wincing when I saw Mr. Antilles swimming his laps—slowly.
I hurried back to the drawer, and then opened it up like what I’d seen would strike out and bite me.
The photos did none of those things—at least not physically. Emotionally, I was scarred for life.
I stared at the first photo, and then moved the photo over with the tip of my fingernail, staring with disgust at the next photo.
The third and fourth photo were more of the same, but it was the fifth that had my entire heart not just skipping a beat but stopping entirely.
It wasn’t because of the girl in the photo, but the man in the photo.
My ex.
Oh, holy shit.
I licked my lips hastily and swallowed hard at what I saw, wondering if there was a way to move the photos back to where they needed to be to act like I hadn’t seen what I saw.
My stomach was rolling, and I wanted nothing more than to run out of the house and take off down the street as fast as my feet could take me.
But with this client being one of my best paying clients, and him also having quite a bit of influence in the community, I was hesitant to go.
If I lost him, I’d lose about two hundred dollars of my weekly income, and that wasn’t including the other clients that he likely would convey my lack of professionalism to.
I bit my lip, and then looked at my phone.
I had to take a picture of the photos. Then, once I had them, I’d take the phone to Rome after I was done here and ask him what he would do.
Normally I would’ve called my brother, but I hadn’t been able to do that in a long time. And Rome? Well, Rome had become one of the best friends I could ever ask for.
After getting the pictures and trying to put them back into place without looking like I’d been in there, I finished my work at record speed.
And, since I normally didn’t announce when I left because he was in his office working, I hurried the fuck out of there, collecting what was likely my final check from the refrigerator as I hauled ass as fast as I could move it without looking like I was escaping.
My walk turned into a run, and the moment the bar Rome said he’d be at came into view, I felt something settle in my stomach.
It wasn’t completely better, but it was a hell of a lot better than it had been over the last couple of hours.
I pulled the heavy oak door of the bar, Bear Bottom Bar, open and glanced around.
I found him immediately.
He was at the bar, his back to the door, talking to Wade—who was in his Bear Bottom Police uniform.
I swallowed, suddenly feeling like I was walking into a viper’s den and trudged forward even though I wanted to turn around and walk back out and forget this day had ever happened.
But…I couldn’t.
Not with what was in those pictures.
I owed it to the victims.
“…Not sure that I want to be here that long, man,” I heard Rome say to Wade.
“We haven’t seen you in months, Rome. You’ve missed six meetings. I’m pretty sure that Izzy won’t mind if you hang out here and fulfill some obligations you have to the club while she cools her jets.”
Once I was close enough, I reached out and touched my fingertips to Rome’s back, words on his tongue to whatever he was about to reply to Wade was lost.
His muscles tightened, and he turned around, his face impassive.
The moment he saw it was me, his face broke out into a grin. That grin slowly fell when he saw the look on my face.
Wade, who was also turned, went on alert.
“Iz.” Rome reached for me, his large fingers curling around my upper arm almost completely. “What is it?”
I licked my dry lips, then decided to just go for it.
Pulling out my phone, I started explaining. “I was cleaning Senator Antilles’ house today and found something.”
I handed the phone to him with the pictures pulled up.
He saw them and stiffened.
I knew what he saw.
The first photo I took was of some man getting a blow job from a teenager.
The second one was of some other man I didn’t recognize, this man on his knees getting butt fucked by another teenager wearing a strap-on, but she didn’t look like she wanted to be doing what she was doing. The tears running down her cheeks attested to that.
Then the last photo was the one of my ex.
“The last one is my ex,” I whispered. “He’s a lawyer. His name is Rodrigo Bernaldez. The girl that he’s with? That girl is the same girl that I saw at the grocery store with him. The mom was the new woman that I assumed he got pregnant. Remember that letter?”
I remembered that day as if it’d happened just yesterday.
Rome had given me the confidence to be strong. That day, I’d gone into the fireworks store for sparklers. When I’d turned the corner to get them, the first thing I spotted was Rodrigo. The second was the pregnant woman, and a girl that had to be about sixteen or seventeen standing as far away as she could be but still be with the group.
My eyes had been so focused on Rodrigo that I hadn’t given the other two more than a passing glance.
And I hadn’t hung around long.
I’d gotten my sparklers and hurried out, not stopping to see if they’d noticed me or anything else.
It might seem like I’d run, but technically I’d gotten what I’d gone in there to get. Before Rome had instilled confidence in me, I would’ve straight up left never to return.
Somewhere that Rodrigo frequented was not a place that I wanted to be.
“Holy fuck,” Rome whispered, tilting the phone to Wade, who took it.
He went through the photos around ten times before he said anything more.
His eyes were lit with an inner fire that looked like he was about to start spewing venom any minute.