Free Submit (Songs of Submission) by CD Reiss Page B

the rock around under the glass.
    She slid it back to me. “I can get in big trouble, young lady. I don’t think you understand I’m running a business here. I don’t take stolen merchandise.”
    I gasped. How could she? Was she insane? I was absolutely stunned wordless by the implication.
    A lone, male voice cut through my distress. “Whose Bentley’s in my spot?” A man with a crutch and a leg of his jeans rolled up over a missing calf wobbled in.
    I raised my hand, whispering, “Sorry.”
    He sat at a desk. “Well, have that driver move it.”
    I looked back down at Kaylee. She was already slipping my diamond navel bar into a baggie. “You come back with the rest soon, you hear? Or for the love of three hundred dollars, your new man’s gonna be pissed.”

CHAPTER 14
    I hadn’t realized how big the Bentley was until Darren sat on the other side of the backseat as if he wanted nothing to do with me. It had taken me hours to get him out. Money had to be wired, forms shot over the internet, phone calls made, signatures garnered, and he had to be driven from a holding area two blocks away.
    When they’d brought him, he looked tired but made a funny face when he saw me waiting, as if to let me know he was okay. When they took the cuffs off and released him into my custody, he hugged me so hard I thought he’d break something.
    “Thank you, thank you,” he said into my neck.
    “You’re welcome. Now we have to go, or we’re going to be missed.”
    He nodded, and I wondered if he’d gotten himself in trouble to avoid the funeral.
    “Why are you whispering?”
    “Laryngitis.”
    “What? You weren’t sick—”
    I pulled him into the hallway, wanting to be away from the bulletproof glass and linoleum flooring. Then I stopped and moved my wrist like Debbie so often did to let him know it was time to get moving on the story.
    “I went to Adam’s,” he said. “He stayed with me all night, but he had to go to work, and I just walked around Silver Lake. I sat at a table at Bourgeois for half the day. Fabio knew what happened, so he just kept bringing me new cups.”
    The elevator doors opened, and a carload of people got out. I pulled Darren to the side.
    “He should have called me,” I whispered.
    “He did.”
    Right. I’d rejected calls and ignored texts while I lay in my undercover cave.
    We got into the elevator with twenty other people.
    Darren spoke softly into my ear. “I realized while I was in there that I left you alone. I’m sorry about that.”
    I shrugged and waved his concern away. I was unhappy about it, but I didn’t have the heart to hold it against him. And it had brought Jonathan to me.
    Darren continued, “Theo came in for coffee, like he always does. I knew he went there all the time. I didn’t realize I was waiting for him. But anyway, some girl at the table next to me had one of those pomello sodas. I smacked the bottle against the floor and went for his throat.”
    “Holy shit, Darren!” I managed to whisper loudly and with emphasis. I glanced around at the people in the elevator. No one was staring, but they must have been listening.
    “He’s fine. I got his cheek. I aim like the fag I am.”
    I pinched his side, and he cried, “Ow!” We laughed. The rest of the elevator population seemed relieved to get away from us when the doors slid open on the parking lot level. Lil was parked in an Authorized Vehicle Only spot, reading the LA Times .
    When Darren saw the Bentley, he stopped in his tracks. “Where’d you get the money to bail me out? Five grand? That’s a lot of cash.”
    “I put up a bond.”
    “Did one penny of that come from him ?”
    “Stop.”
    “I’m not having any part of you being a whore.”
    I didn’t know what came over me, maybe the stress of the past few days, maybe the insult, or maybe the fact that I couldn’t speak properly to defend myself. But a ball of kinetic energy ran from my heart and down my right arm, and in order to release it, the