mk robinson wants to be a star. (hitjackpot) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-04-02 01:22:00 |
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After her encounter with the Shadowman, the girl had spent the brief remainder of time in the hotel keeping to herself. The scars that healed, the shadow that had retreated, all came back once he had left her alone on the stairs just as she had been before she met him. Alone and damaged. And maybe that was the way it should be -- it was the way it had worked for years, after all. They had given it a name last night. Distractions. Little fixes that filled the holes only briefly until those haunted by shadows needed something or someone new. It was hard, finding someone similar to her and losing him after developing such a strong connection, even though they had spent such a short time together. Time passed slowly for her -- mere minutes felt like hours -- but soon the dawn rose through the night, and the shadow, which had restored itself fully, blew away like a wisp of smoke. The pink and red marks that littered her body recessed into her pale skin, which by then had darkened to a healthier, livelier shade. Dark tresses lightened to the normal eye-catching red, and sparkling heels replaced bare feet, the virginal dress with burns and tears changing to a skimpy dress not suitable for a Parisian opera house. Green eyes, the only thing that remained in common between the shadow girl and the redhead, were her own, though the curiosity and hurt that manifested there before changed to something much more jaded and exhausted. MK squeezed her fists together tightly and bit her lips to prevent a cry from coming out. Hopefully no one had seen her, seen how damaged she really was. She had to find the Shadowman, the one who would understand, and both hoped and didn’t that she knew the person past the hotel doors. Things, either way, were about to get really awkward. Looking down, she finally noticed the shadow was gone, and breathed a sigh of relief. She just needed to get out of there, and fast. The only thing she hated more than being so hurt and damaged and unfulfilled was being reminded of it with scars and burns and shadows that clung to her person like a virus. She moved towards the entrance, trying her best to blend into the corners and crowd, but her outfit was loud and her hair was even louder, and in the end she just walked with her head down in the hopes that no one would try to talk to her. With her head ducked down, she focused on jotting a message through MJ’s journal to people most important, trying to garner updates on statuses as best she could before she actually left the hellhole. Wandering through the hotel and towards the hotel aimlessly, she looked up finally and spied the back of a familiar head. Not many people looked like Simon in Las Vegas, much to her amusement and his chagrin, and so it had to be him. A message for him waited to be sent on her phone, which had been pulled out as well, but MK exed out of the screen as she broke from her path and walked up behind him with her heels clicking on the floor to warn him of her arrival. “Simon?” she asked anyway, just in case he had a clone or something walking around. Click, click went her heels until she reached him, until she stood just mere inches from his back. “You too, huh?” Simon turned when he heard his name. He’d been making his way to the front door, eager to get home and maybe sleep for a lifetime or two. MK’s face was a welcome sight after the chaos and insanity his night had been. She was unhurt, which had been his primary worry, and he’d been about to shoot her a text himself. “Hey, MK,” he said, relief audible in his voice. He looked tired, but none the worse for wear, although there was something dark and red at the corner of his mouth that he hadn’t noticed. “Yeah, me too. But you made it through okay,” he added, confirming what he could already see, hoping she wouldn’t contradict it. Not everyone had gotten through the night unscathed, that much was clear. If he hadn’t known it from his battle with the Wolf, he would have known it from the people still making their beaten, bruised, bloody way out of the building. The party definitely hadn’t been easy on the violence. “How’d it go for you?” He plied his tongue lightly against his newest piercing, a small silver ring that clung tight to his lower lip on the right. He’d gotten into the habit of doing it while he was thinking things through, trying to mentally catch up to speed. MK also looked relieved when he turned to face her, and she offered him the ghost of a smile. He seemed uninjured physically, though the toll of the night clearly weighed heavily on his shoulders, and that tugged at MK’s heart in a brutal way. She hated seeing people she cared for upset in any way, and she had grown extra protective over Simon since their reunion just a month ago. He didn’t deserve to be pulled into this bizarre shit, he really didn’t. “It was okay,” she said of the night. It was a weird night, definitely, and she wasn’t sure how she should feel about it just yet. “How about you? What happened?” She spied the stain at the corner of his mouth just then, and reached forward to wipe it off, thumb brushing gently against his lips and cheek until the red disappeared for the most part. She knew what it was, it was all but confirmed when she glanced down at her blood-stained thumb, but she didn’t jerk away. He would never hurt her. She couldn’t imagine him doing it. Simon watched her reach and touch his face with a little surprise, only connecting what she was doing when she pulled her hand back and there was dark copper on the tip of her thumb. His eyes widened a little. "Um," he said. "I - that's not what it looks like," he said, which probably didn't actually help matters as much as he was hoping it would. "I mean, I didn't hurt anyone, or anything. Except this guy who was a Wolf, he was like a fucking werewolf or something, he was an asshole. He tore me half apart, and then there was this girl...but she's fine." Fucking hell. He rushed through the confessional like he was running a gauntlet, despite the fact that the more he said, the worse he knew it sounded. He slowed after that, since admitting everything as fast as possible was like ripping off a bandaid, yes, but it sure as hell wasn't making him sound any less psychotic. "I was like a half-vampire thing, it was weird. Did anything weird happen to you? Did you turn into anything?" MK blinked a few times as Simon burned through a ton of different situations at once, and she drifted into silence for a moment to let it all process. She hadn’t had any violent encounters, but her Shadowman recounted the attack on the other girl earlier in the party. Things like these never turned out well for everyone, and injuries were par the course. But still she didn’t frown or judge because who was she to? Instead, she stepped forward and pulled him into a hug, squeezing him as tightly as she could muster. Completely unaware of any injuries or bruises he might have. She just wanted him to know she was there for him. Always, no matter what he did. “That wasn’t you, Simon,” she mumbled into his ear before pressing a kiss to his cheek and pulling back enough so that she could look at him, and she brought her clean hand up to brush her fingers against his cheek in a comforting way. “That wasn’t your fault. We all changed, I did. Wren did and Luke, too. I think it was people connected to all this bullshit. But you couldn’t control it, whatever it was.” She pursed her lips, and her eyes fell down, focusing on the litter of tattoos on his arm. “I turned into like, this shadow thing. It was all the...bad things. That happened to me. Like, manifesting or whatever. But keeping me hidden to -- the girl, whatever. It was weird.” Simon was way too hardcore to straight up admit that a hug felt nice, but, if he was tortured, he would admit that it was really, really nice to get a hug from MK after the night he'd just had. The kiss to the cheek wasn't too bad either. By the time she pulled back, his shoulders had dropped, and some of the keyed up tension seemed to have gone out of him. "Thanks," he said. High speed comedy confession or not, the night had left him a shaken and unsure about everything, and the further it got in his rearview mirror, the happier he was going to be. "No, I really couldn't," he admitted, which was the whole problem. What if it just went to show that, one day, he was going to snap, and there would be nothing he could do about it? He pushed that away in favor of focusing on MK. "That really sucks," he said, in the understatement of the year. Why was he so bad at this? Maybe the problem was that all his other girlfriends hadn't been nearly as smart as MK, and therefore hadn't made him feel nearly as much like an idiot when he said stupid things like 'that really sucks.' "Do you buy what they said on the journal? That it's a representation of who we really are, or anything? I know it definitely wasn't what I would have wanted to be, and it sounds like it was the same for you." The redhead scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, to say the least.” It did suck, having a mirror pulled up to your face against your will and letting you know just how goddamn fucked up you really are. MK was aware of the damage the years had done to her psyche, of course, but actually seeing a manifestation of all that? It was disconcerting. Disturbing. Though the scars and marks had melted away with the twilight, she still looked down at her pale arms, wrapped around Simon’s neck, and expected to see her skin littered with them. She let her arms fall and then shrugged. She didn’t have the answers to anything that happened that night. “I dunno,” she said anyway, knowing a shrug didn’t really suffice as an answer. “I mean, I know how screwed up I am, but I didn’t think I was that fucked up. But it doesn’t define you. You’re not gonna turn into some vampire-thing outside these doors, Simon, I promise.” She sighed. “That’s not who you are. No matter what happened. Just...remember that, okay?” Falling silent for a moment, she wondered whether or not she should mention what happened to her. It wasn’t awful, more eyeopening, and maybe he could help her. “What do you think it means if I found someone...well, someone like me?” Now it was her turn to sound crazy. Simon was a bit disappointed when her arms fell away and those clear eyes dropped from his. He ran a hand through his hair. “I sure fucking hope not,” he said, with a tinge of wistful resign. He was starting to think anything could happen in this crazy place. He had only been supposed to turn into one of the good guys, into Spider-Man, who was a total dork, but who at least had his priorities sort of straight, But now he’d changed into something weird and in the middle, and it had him worried. “Yeah, I’ll try,” he said. But even if he didn’t turn into a vampire thing again, that wasn’t really the point. The potential it signified, that hadn’t gone away. “Someone...like you?” he asked, not following. It worried him right away, and he had no idea why. “Like...in what way?” She knew all about trying to find the balance. She had never thought of herself as wholly good, completely moral, but she didn’t think of herself as bad or as damaged. She only felt really good when she had her vigilante to remind her what being good for the sake of it was like. Now, she was just trying to just herself from being completely consumed by the darkness. So, she understood, she did, and wished she could help Simon figure it out. But she sighed and ran a hand through her hair too before continuing. “Like, consumed by the shadow. But he let it eat him, so he was dark. Not in...a scary way though. He was nice. Mine hasn’t eaten me, not yet. But we still had a lot in common. Like our darkness came from similar places. And...well, we helped each other. Fix the shadows, I mean, just a little, and we had a connection. Physical and...something more.” She laughed and ran another shaky hand through her hair. “This place makes me sound fucking nuts.” The more MK talked about darkness and shadow, the more SImon worried, felt like he was running after something he’d never catch. He wanted to know her, to have back the ten years they’d been apart, but he was starting to think that there was so much to her that he didn’t know that he would never really catch up, always trying to fill in the blanks and do the best he could. He only knew a little of the darkness she’d talked about, just what she’d told him. The rest was, as she said, darkness - yet to be illuminated, perhaps never to be clear to him. He knew what he knew - that MK, in his mind, was good. She was a good person, who’d had a rough life, and he’d be damned if he ever let her fall through the cracks. “There isn’t gonna be a ‘yet’,” he said. He had, for the moment, left his own worries behind, and the statement was stronger than anything else he’d said as a result. There was an iron hard determination behind that statement, something forged through a lot of years of taking punches, flame and blood and groping around in the night without a guide. “There won’t be. You’re a good person, MK. This guy...” and here, he hesitated. This shadow guy, she’d had a ‘physical connection’ with him. What did that even mean? He wasn’t jealous or anything, of course not. And even if he was, it didn’t matter how he felt if this guy she’d met did MK some good, helped her feel better, could say the right things Simon didn’t know how to. “If he helped you out, that’s good. Just, if you see him again, be careful, alright? I don’t like the sound of that. Consumed by darkness, you know, that sounds like trouble.” He paused, and added, almost thoughtfully, “He hurts you, I’ll kick his ass six ways to Sunday.” She flashed him a sad smile and reached over to brush her fingers against his cheek. His skin was soft, with small stubble prickling against her touch, and he was tangible in a way that that Shadowman wasn’t. MK didn’t have much of an idea of Simon’s own demons -- they hadn’t broached that subject, not yet -- but she suspected that his darkness was a different kind. Different from hers and the Shadowman. But she knew, more than anything, that Simon was a good person, too. Naive to how close she came to the brink sometimes, but so good. She laughed at his last comment, fingers falling from his face and onto his shoulder where they began to play with the fabric of his shirt. “He could totally be from the other side, y’know. From one of the doors. I might never see him again. Might not want to.” She sighed. “And it wasn’t like he was bad, just like my shadow wasn’t because I go out like, murdering people. Just bad things that happened.” Shrugging, she pursed her lips, completely unaware that she had an answer waiting for her in the journals. That she actually did know the person behind the shadows. The whole night was like a weird dream, and it made her think about all the other weird things that happened in Seattle. Happened before she reunited with Simon. “Things like this make me think we aren’t meant to be happy.” It was a slip of the tongue, and she fell quiet for a moment after saying that, her eyes falling to the ground. It was an idea that had chewed at her since before Vegas, for years now, but it wasn’t anything she shared with someone before. Except maybe Wren. Her head shook a little, making her red curls bounce to and fro, and she looked back up to meet his eyes. “Are you okay though?” she asked, hoping he would actually talk to her, as her hand drifted up to rest on his cheek again. “Alright,” Simon said, still dubious about the trustworthiness of the mysterious shadowy figure she’d met. “I mean, I trust you. You never know, I guess, maybe he’s a nice guy.” He really couldn’t talk, considering that he’d come really close to draining a girl dry, only called back from that brink by her willingness to be a sacrifice. Thinking about that memory, still fresh and vivid, freaked him out. He pushed it aside, just in time for MK’s assertion. “I don’t think that’s true,” he said, slipping his hand into his pocket, watching the turn of her mouth, her downcast eye. He’d had a dream recently where he grabbed her hand and ran somewhere with her, but he couldn’t remember where, or why they’d run. He kicked the toe of his boot against the ground. That might be good someday, though. Running off with MK, getting away from everything. “I don’t want to fucking believe it’s true,” he corrected. “Maybe we’re not. Maybe the world keeps on kicking us until we drop dead. But, I don’t know. The world’s got a lot of shitty people in it, but I’ve read a lot of old philosophers and stuff, and a lot of them think that if you do the right things, the world works out. Some of them are nihilists, yeah, but some of the smartest people who ever lived also thought you could do things to make people’s lives better if you just...thought the right way. Lived the right way. And when bad shit came along, you just kicked it in the head and kept on going.” Simon realized, belatedly, as usual, that he wasn’t making a lot of sense. “All I’m saying is, I want to think things get better, or don’t always suck. Hey, I don’t have to work a shitty job to pay my rent anymore.” Despite the fact that everything else that had come with that gift had been more a curse than a blessing. Simon shrugged, and found MK’s hand on his cheek again, grounding him. He didn’t want to think about how he was. He was kind of a mess when it came down to it, always had been. But in the face of MK and her life, what right did he have to complain about anything? “I’ve had better nights,” he admitted, glancing up at her. He didn’t look a hard 23. He looked younger, in that moment, and a lot more out of place. “I dunno. I’m thinking about buying an island somewhere and never leaving it, I guess. I can’t figure out what I’m good for, so...I don’t know.” Simon bit at the ring in his lip again, and glanced up at her. He slipped his hand out of his pocket, reached up, and slid his hand over hers, as casually as he could manage, but no longer really caring if he looked stupid. He just wanted to touch her, that was all.. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, or who I’m supposed to be, or whether I’m going to go nuts any day now, but you’re here,” he said. “I keep waking up and thinking, maybe I’ll leave Vegas, go hide out until life cools down. Then I remember you’re around.” He tilted his head against her hand, and struggled for words. “You make life better. Being around you, you know, makes it better.” He smiled faintly, the expression like a shrug of the mouth. “I know that’s kind of creepy,” he said. MK thought Simon sounded smart talking about philosophers and theories on life, and she closed her eyes for a second with an amused expression to listen to him speak. “Silver lining,” she muttered as her eyes fluttered open again. “When’d you get so smart, huh? You’re making me look bad, Simon.” She paused for a moment and then, shrugging, continued. “I used to be like that, hoping that everything gets good in the end. Until...well, y’know. Now, it’s just like, going through the motions. Trying to fill the holes with something, anything. Like with that guy.” In the back of her mind, MJ reminded her about a thing called oversharing, and MK bit on her lip. Yeah, she doubted Simon wanted to hear about how she had sex with some random guy on some random staircase. Definitely not. Whoops. “That doesn’t sound bad,” she said of the island and escaping. It would be nice to escape from it all, but would the bad stuff still just follow along? When he brought his hand to cover hers, she wasn’t startled and didn’t balk at the touch. His hand felt warm and comforting and nice on top of hers, and if she was honest with herself, her heartbeat might have skipped a beat. Maybe. She smiled, and her other hand, the one not cupping his cheek, reached to grab his own hand. “It’s not creepy,” she said with the ghost of a laugh hanging in her voice. As she looked at him, there were a thousand different reasons shouting at her why she shouldn’t be doing this. Why she shouldn’t be standing there in a dark and twisted hotel holding him like they were more than friends. This was a mistake, but she couldn’t force herself to pull away. “It’s not creepy at all. Simon, you’re...well, you’re one of the only reminders I have of something good left.” It was true, really. Simon wasn’t tangled up in the past of Seattle, and that was what she needed the biggest reprieve from, the biggest escape. And Simon just exuded some sort of comfort that she hungered for in her life. The kind of comfort that she was finding at the bottom of a bottle. The kind of comfort being with the Shadowman had brought her, even if ever so briefly. Her thumb began to brush against his skin again, and the fingers holding his other hand entwined themselves with his. “We’re all lost, but maybe this place has the answers? Maybe we can all help each other? Maybe we can’t be happy or can’t fix things because they can’t be fix, but at least we can help get rid of some of the holes. Help each other catch our breath before we get knocked out by another wave.” Her green eyes flickered around for a moment before they met his again, and there was a mixture of sadness and concern and just a smidge of hope. “You came back into my life at the right moment, Simon. Just so you know.” "I'm not that smart," he said, maybe flushing a little, maybe. "I barely graduated. I have to read books about how life works because I don't get it, that should say a lot." He frowned a little when she began discussing how her outlook had changed, and he struggled to maintain a straight face when she mentioned the guy. "There's other stuff, though," he said, trying not to sound worried. "Shitty stuff happens, trust me, I know that, but that doesn't mean the whole world is a shitpile. You just have to find something in it you actually want, that's not just about...you know, patching things up." Simon liked the idea that he might be something good in MK's life, the same way she was something good in his. It was something that Peter, in the back of his mind, approved of as well, though Simon didn't care about his opinion, of course. His smile returned when she took his hand. "That's all I really feel like I can ask anybody for," he said. "Just a little time between things to cool off, and to just keep hoping it all dies down eventually." He did hope that, silly as that hope might seem. It was only MK's assertion that he'd made it in the nick of time that finally pulled a real smile from him. "Yeah? Well, good. I wasn't too late for once in my stupid fucking life." Rolling her eyes with overexaggerated exasperation, she shook her head. “Shut up, you were always smart. You’re better than me, at any rate. I’ve got no idea about life, and I just kinda wing it.” She wanted to say that she knew there were good things in the world, but whenever they found her, they were unceremoniously ripped away from her grip. She knew more about loss than she did about gain, that much was true, but she didn’t want to contradict his hope. That wouldn’t be fair of her. She kept her hands where they were. Stragglers from the party continued to drift past, but MK paid no heed. They must have really looked like one hell of a couple, she mused, as she listened to him speak about hoping it would all die down. Yeah, right. “Let’s be real, I don’t think this weirdness is going away anytime soon. We have teenagers stuck in our brain, after all.” She laughed. “Congrats! Maybe we can turn it into a winning streak or something.” His smile, so bright and genuine, pulled out one from her too. Before she could stop herself, she stretched up a bit and planted a light kiss on his temple. It was a small gesture, but to MK it meant something more. Little bits of affection always meant more when it was someone you actually cared about. “I don’t know about that,” Simon said, ducking his head quickly. He’d never been stupid enough to see himself as smart. Wanting to read stuff didn’t make you smart. Passing tests made you smart. Going to college and becoming a scientist made you smart. “I could definitely do without the fucking teenager thing,” he said, injecting it with a little playful venom. He knew that he'd hardly gotten the short end of the stick as far as alters went. Some people had ended up with bad guys, it sounded like, so at least Peter wasn’t that, even if he was annoying as fuck some of the time. MK’s kiss to Simon’s temple widened his smile even more. What was he doing? He fought the temptation to look sideways and pretend he wasn’t pleased, because what was the point of that? He was being an idiot. He still had her hand clasped in his, and before he could worry himself too much about it, he kissed the back of it, a brush of chapped lips and the cold-warm metal of his lip ring. His grin, when he dropped their clasped hands between them, was all cheek with a hint of embarrassment. “Nobody better ever say I’m not a fucking gentleman,” he said, with a little laugh. MK knew that, deep down, Mary Jane wasn’t too bad of an alter either. She was a good kid who seemed to have her head on straight. Besides the whole ‘being in love with Spider-Man’ thing, of course, but that wasn’t really the kid’s fault either. Love struck mercilessly and kept the tightest stranglehold around your life if you weren’t careful. MK knew that too, and she had spent the past few years preventing just that. But Simon brought her guard down, and she found herself affectionate for him in a way different than people who were just best friends as kids. She wondered how much of it was MJ and how much of it was herself. Either way, she wouldn’t acknowledge that, wasn’t ready to because it might ruin things. His friendship was a necessity in her life at this point. The kiss to the back of her hand definitely made her heart hitch for a moment in the stupidest way (ugh), and she found herself grinning just as brightly as he was. “Biggest goddamn gentleman I’ve ever known,” she teased with a wink, her tongue just peaking out between her teeth. She was so glad she found him here because she couldn’t think of anyone else really making her feel okay. And she couldn’t think of anything better happening to her lately than running into him in Seattle. He was a good thing in her life, one of the best, and she didn’t want to lose him ever again. No way. She squeezed his hands tightly. “We’ll figure all this out one day, I think. You’re right, it’s gotta happen.” She wasn’t so sure about that, but being with Simon made her want to try at least. He deserved happiness. That tongue between her teeth was a brief but serious distraction point for Simon, and he didn’t quite come back to earth until she squeezed his hand. “See? The stupid optimism is catching,” he said, smiling still. “Better be careful, that shit can be dangerous.” If Simon was sure of anything, he was sure that he wanted MK to stay in his life from here on out, and he was willing to do just about anything it took to make that happen. Even if he was kind of an idiot, and often had a hard time figuring out how to just be a person in the world, he’d figure out a way to try to make her happier. “Did you take a cab here, or walk, or...?” She laughed despite herself because it was true. Being around someone who believe that the world would turn out okay kind of made you believe it, too. MK was too much of a cynic to let him change her outlook so readily, but maybe Simon was the only one with a real fighting chance at all. Who knew? It didn’t matter, not then. All she knew was that being around Simon made her happy, helped patch up those holes like the Shadowman did. “Cabbed it,” she responded with a shrug. “Against my own will, of course. Look at me, who would show up in this place looking like this?” She smiled and let go of one hand, tugging on the other just a little. “Let’s get out of here, huh? If I have to spend another goddamn second in here, I might end up burning the place down.” “I think you look good,” Simon said, offhand and practically unconscious as he followed her tugging, walking up alongside her. “Couldn’t be more with you on that one. This place officially gives me the fucking creeps.” He began walking with her toward the exit. It seemed like they held hands a lot, for people who were supposed to be just friends. Best not to jump to conclusions, though, the last time he’d assumed something like that he’d gotten slapped pretty hard by a girl. Nor did he want to fuck things up with MK, not by a long shot. No, he had to be sure. “I don’t think that would be so bad, man, seeing this place go up in flames. That’d be kind of awesome, actually. You’d be a total badass.” His compliment earned him a grin, and she tried to duck her head before he could catch it. Usually she was so good at keeping it cool. What the hell was wrong her? She did her best to turn the bashful little smile into one of her signature smirks. “It didn’t give you the creeps before? You’re way braver than I am,” she teased even if she thought it was true. Walking in step with him, she kind of realized that it might be weird that she was so affectionate with Simon or that it might make him uncomfortable. But there didn’t need to be any discussions about it, right? Not now. They were just getting to know each other again. There didn’t need to be any complications at the moment. “Oh, yeah, definitely. I’d be the sexiest arsonist this side of the Mississippi, at least. You’ll be my alibi? I think people’ll appreciate me getting rid of this place.” “I’ll vouch for you,” he promised. “Hell, I’ll buy the gas and the matches, man, all you’ll have to do is light her up.” Simon laughed a little. He had a hard time picturing MK actually participating in property destruction, but it was a funny image, her decked out in leather and spikes, all her soft edges filed to points, throwing a match at the hotel. It made enough nonsense to be comical. Nah, he liked her the way she was. “I’ll buy you a cab ride home?” he offered. “Okay,” MK said with a smile, even if she had enough money to get her own cab, more than enough. They reached the exit finally, and she used her free hand to open the door to the outside world where people, for a short while, would seem normal compared to what kind of crazy things happened in that hotel just hours before. The sun was just creeping over the horizon, and MK was kind of thankful that there weren’t many people left hanging around. “Let’s do something soon, okay? Something fun and without the teenagers involved and normal.” She still held his hand entwined with hers, and she squeezed it again. She liked holding his hand. It felt just about right. “I think I like that plan,” he said. He was only now realizing just how tired he was, still smeared with blood under his clothes from his injuries. It was time to go home and sleep for a week, it seemed like. He still didn’t feel good about how the night had gone, but MK had done a hell of a job at making him feel less hopeless. He felt a lot more himself than he had when the sun had come up. He released her hand with a hint of reluctance. “Call me,” he demanded, as he slipped enough money to the driver to get her home and then some. |