Living Out Loud (The Austen Series Book 3)

by Staci Hart

  My cheeks prickled with heat. “I cannot believe you. Are you so blinded by jealousy that you can’t see you’ve been acting like a child?”

  “A child?” he said, his eyes narrowed and voice on the rise. “You hadn’t even been kissed when I met you. You have no fucking clue what the world is about, not one.” He slapped the table, and I jolted at the sound. “God, even now you have that look on your face like a lost little girl.”

  Tears sprang in my eyes, and I felt just as inexperienced as he suggested. I should have listened to Greg—I never should have agreed to this.

  But my gaze was steady and hot as the sun. “Thank you for making this so easy for me. Have a nice life, Will. And I wouldn’t come back here if I were you.”

  I scooted to the edge of the booth to get the hell away from him, but before I could get all the way out, he sighed and dragged a hand through his hair, reaching for my hand.

  “Wait.”

  I met his eyes, pulling my hand away before he could touch me.

  Another sigh. His face was touched with resignation, but his eyes were dark and stormy. “Annie, I’m sorry. I’m…I’m just surprised, that’s all. I don’t like being caught off guard, and I thought I was coming here today to get you back. I know I can be a dick. Please, forgive me.”

  I softened. “Thank you. And I’m sorry to do this to you. I’m sorry for hurting you.”

  His lips twitched in a sad smile. “All is fair in love and war, right?”

  I offered an apologetic smile of my own. “I should go.”

  “You’re not working today?” he asked.

  “No, I’m off. I just came here to meet you.”

  “Well, let me give you a ride home.” His face was turned down as he pulled on his coat.

  “Oh no, that’s okay. I’ll catch a cab,” I said without hesitation.

  He straightened his collar. “I insist. My car’s right outside. It’s the least I can do after my little outburst.”

  I eyed him, looking for any sign of danger, but I found none. “All right. Thanks, Will.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Cam was sitting at the bar, pretending to work on her laptop, but I knew it was a charade. Her eyes met mine in question.

  “Let me go say bye to Cam real quick, okay?”

  He nodded once, reaching for the dress boxes I’d brought. “The car’s just out front.”

  I said my thanks, and we parted ways.

  “What happened?” Cam said quietly when I approached, as if someone might overhear.

  “It’s done. He’s going to give me a ride home.”

  Her brows knit together. “You sure that’s okay?”

  “It’s a ten-minute drive, and it’ll save me cab fare. It’ll be okay.”

  “Okay,” she said, not sounding at all convinced. “Text me when you get home, okay? I worry.”

  I laughed and made my promise.

  A minute later, I slid into the Mercedes with Will, who leaned toward his door, face propped on his hand, staring out the window.

  The driver pulled away from the curb.

  The car was silent, and with every tick of the clock, the quiet screwed tighter until it was thrumming between us.

  “I can’t believe you chose him over me,” he said, almost to himself, the words touched with disbelief and disapproval.

  I’d naively thought it was over. Stupid me. Discomfort slid over me. “Will, I thought—”

  “What could he possibly give you that I can’t? How could you possibly choose him over me? Didn’t I do everything you wanted?”

  He turned to look at me, and for the first time, I saw Will as he truly was. The angles of his face sharpened, his eyes glinting with superiority.

  “Didn’t I give you the things you wanted, like that day in Central Park? Didn’t I tell you we could take it slow even though it was the last thing I wanted? Didn’t I put up with your bullshit with Brandon? I cared about you. I thought…I thought you could be a fresh start, a second chance, one I didn’t even deserve. I would never hurt you, no matter what that asshole says about me.”

  I watched him rant with my lips parted, my eyes skimming his hard, angry body.

  “I can’t believe I lost to him.”

  I didn’t realize I’d been shifting to the door, the instinct to get out of the car hijacking my body, sending a cold chill up my back and to the hairs on my neck.

  His face shifted, flashing with anger, his hand darting out to grab my wrist. His fingers closed around the small circumference and yanked, pulling me across the leather bench and into him. I yelped in surprise.

  “You should be mine.”

  “Let me go, Will,” I said through my teeth, twisting my flaming wrist, but it was locked in his fist.

  “Sir?” The driver eyed us in the rearview mirror.

  “You’re hurting me,” I bit out, tears filling my eyes.

  “You’re supposed to be mine,” he said, holding me still as he pressed a rigid kiss to my lips.

  I fought against him, uselessly pushing his stony chest with my free hand and turning my head to escape his unyielding mouth, but he pulled me closer. My heart jackhammered, dimming my vision in pulses.

  “Sir!”

  Will’s face turned to the driver as the car came to a stop.

  I pulled my free hand back and slapped him hard enough to send the sting up to my elbow. And in his shock, he relaxed his grip enough for me to reclaim my wrist. I flew across the car and opened the door, scrambling out just before his fingers closed on the back of my jacket.

  And the moment my feet hit the pavement, I ran.

  He shouted a string of insults out the open door, but they didn’t reach me. I barely registered the honking cars or the Mercedes pulling away. All I could hear was the erratic thump of my pulse in my ears. All I could feel was the cold ground beneath my feet. All I knew was that I had to escape.

  When I came to a stop, I dropped to my knees, my vision vibrating with my heartbeat, my heart fluttering so fast, too fast, the muscle spasming frantically. I fumbled for my phone with shaking hands, unable to draw enough breath, my lungs empty and scraping against my ribs. —I couldn’t call I couldn’t speak.

  I pulled up my sister’s last message and fired off a text.

  Need help. I’m in the park, sending you my location.

  There wasn’t enough air, my limbs moving laboriously as a creeping blackness in my vision pulled me to the ground. And then I felt it—the jerk in my heart, like a string had been pulled. It was on fire, my heart in my chest beating so fast, so hard, so bruised, that I pressed my palms to my sternum in disbelief of the deep measure of pain, a hot slice of a knife through the very center of me.

  And with a final gasp of air from the very depths of my lungs, I slipped away, onto the cold, icy ground, into darkness.

  Greg

  I hopped off my board and ran to the door of the bookstore, whipping it open, rushing inside, scanning the bar for Annie. I found Cam instead.

  “Where is she?”

  Alarm commandeered her, arresting her face and planting her feet on the ground. “She left with Will, not five minutes ago. He was giving her a ride home.”

  I swore, pulling my phone out of my back pocket to text her again. She hadn’t answered my text from before, and my mind jumped from one conclusion to the next without taking a breath.

  My phone buzzed in my hand with a text from Elle.

  Have you seen Annie? Something happened. She’s in the park, but I don’t know where.

  My fingers flew as I sent back three words.

  I’ll find her.

  I turned and ran back out without a word, throwing my board onto the pavement in front of me and jumping on without thinking about what I was doing or the cold or what would happen.

  Every thought I had was focused on her.

  My mind raced with my wheels, tracking the path he would have used to take her home, not certain why it was urgent, but knowing it was all the same
. The temperature had dropped, my breath leaving me in bursts of burning cold, my eyes scanning the park around me, not knowing what exactly I was looking for.

  And then I saw it—the flash of yellow between trees, the same sunshiny color of her coat.

  I hopped the curb and jumped off my board, leaving it where it was, running full tilt for the heap in the frosted grass. And with every footfall, my hope slipped away, replaced by cold awareness.

  I fell to my knees at her side and rolled her into my lap, my heart stopping when I saw her lifeless face.

  Her skin was an unnatural shade of gray, her lips a deep shade of purple, the blue veins in her closed lids visible.

  “Annie,” I whispered, my throat locking.

  Her body was limp, dead weight in my arms, her head lolling. I held her cheek; it was cold as ice.

  “Annie, can you hear me?” I pressed my fingers to her neck and found her pulse easily; it was beating double the time it should have been.

  “Jesus Christ,” I breathed, pulling her into me, my face turning to the expanse of gray sky. “Please. God, please.”

  She stirred in my arms, the smallest moan escaping her lips, and I held her, looking into her face as her lids fluttered open.

  Her lips parted as if to speak, but only a soft Ah made it through before her eyes closed again.

  “No,” I whispered, fumbling for my phone. “Don’t leave me,” I begged as the line rang. “Hurry,” I demanded after I gave the dispatcher everything I could.

  And then it was just her and me, the birds in the park and my fingers on her careening pulse, the sirens in the distance and her life on a thread. And I prayed to every god I knew.

  23

  Waiting

  Greg

  The only sound in the waiting room was the soft, unintelligible conversation from the nurses’ station. A television was playing Planet of the Apes with the captions on, an empty gesture made commonplace by some psychologist somewhere who had determined that people waiting for bad news needed something to mark time in the room besides a clock.

  Not that anyone ever watched it beyond a cursory glance or an empty gaze; in that circumstance, it wasn’t possible to offer anything more.

  My eyes weren’t following Charlton Heston through his mysterious adventure—they were on my hands, clasped and hanging between my knees, the carpet beyond them blurred.

  The deep, staggered lines in my knuckles caught the attention of my subconscious. They were surrounded by skin covered in infinitesimal cracks, barely visible, rarely noticed. But I saw each tiny one, thousands of them connecting to make a web spread across every inch of me.

  I was reminded of a time that seemed to be a hundred years ago, most of that distance traveled in the last eight hours, when a thirteen-year-old version of my sister had become obsessed with reading palms. She’d sat with me on the rug in her room as I moaned and groaned and rolled my eyes, poring over the lines in the meat of my hand as she flipped through a book that would help her decipher them.

  I turned my hand over and opened it, trying to remember what she’d told me, which line was which. I only remembered two—the love line and the life line.

  The one meant for love was deep, running in a clear path from well off the side of my hand, curving up all the way to the point where my forefinger and middle finger met. It was supposed to mean that I would find true love, my soul mate, and that love would be as deep and true as that unassuming crease in my hand. Sarah had been starry-eyed and sighing at my luck. I’d thought it was nonsense.

  The line for my life was also deep and long, stretching in a gentle arch from an inch from my thumb and down to curve around the heel of my palm. I’d live until I was a hundred, as far as that line was concerned.

  I felt a longing so irrationally deep in that moment, a frantic regret that I hadn’t looked into Annie’s palm, that I hadn’t traced the lines with my fingers. I wanted to see that crease travel across her hand and never end. I wanted to know that she would live until she was a hundred too, and that line would be some proof to carry me through the waiting, the unending waiting in a warp of time marked by a lost space man and infomercials for Brett Favre’s copper brace.

  A shuffling caught my attention. Elle was transferring Meg’s sleeping torso to her aunt’s lap, who brushed the little girl’s hair from her face with reverence. Their mother sat in her wheelchair, staring at the television without seeing, with exhaustion on her face so deep, it seemed to reach all the way through to her bones. Her uncle’s elbow was propped on a hard plastic armrest, his face propped wearily in his hand and legs kicked out in front of him, his body sagging in the seat.

  No one had spoken in a long time, long enough that Elle only spoke in a whisper, which they each answered with a nod.

  She came to me last, taking the empty seat next to me, with her hazel eyes tired and kind and worried. “I’m going to get coffee. Can I get you a cup?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I answered with a dry, creaky voice.

  “I hope it’s not much longer. I don’t know if I can stand it.”

  “Me either.”

  She stared at a spot on the ground, her eyes unfocused. “I can’t stop wondering what happened, how she ended up alone. You said she left the bookstore with Will, but what possibly could have happened between there and where you found her? How did she end up running through Central Park alone?”

  “I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was his fault. There’s no other explanation.”

  She shook her head and looked down at her hands, just as I had. “I wish I hadn’t texted him. I only saw her for a second when she came home. She was so tired, and we agreed to talk later. I didn’t see her again. I didn’t…I didn’t know they’d broken up.”

  “I don’t fault you for texting him, nor am I surprised that he hasn’t answered you.”

  Elle sat silently for a moment. “What did he do, Greg? What did he do to hurt you?”

  I ran a hand over my lips, looking to her family. We were speaking quietly, and they were distracted enough that they didn’t seem to be paying us much mind.

  “He used to date my sister. I wish it were as simple as him breaking her heart, but he took it so much further than that, so beyond what I could have even imagined. She told me he’d started rumors about her, which effectively ruined her reputation, and that was true. But she didn’t tell me the truth of the matter until today, before…before…”

  I swallowed hard, clamping my jaw before speaking again.

  “He drugged her and left her at a party, and she was assaulted by a stranger.”

  Her hand moved to her mouth.

  “I didn’t know. If I had, I never…I’d never have…” The words piled up in my throat. I swallowed them down again and started over. “I don’t know what he did to Annie, but the second I know she’s all right, the moment I see it with my own eyes, I intend to find out.”

  Another stretch of silence passed, mine laden with determination, hers busy processing what I’d confessed.

  She reached for my hand, which my eyes had found once more without my realizing.

  “You didn’t know, Greg. You couldn’t have known.”

  “Then why does this feel like it’s my fault?”

  “If it wasn’t for you, she might not still be with us. If you hadn’t found her, she might have been lost to us forever. We owe you a great debt.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t owe me anything. All I want is Annie whole and well.”

  “I believe we will have our wish, and you have to believe too.”

  “I do. Because if I lose my faith, I’m afraid of what will happen to me.”

  Elle squeezed my hand and let it go, and I turned my attention back to my empty hands.

  A little while later, those hands held a cup of bitter coffee that I drank without tasting. And I didn’t look up.

  Not until I heard a gasp from Elle.

  Will stood across the room, his hair disheveled and eyes glassy and blo
odshot. At the unexpected sight of him, the whistling emotion I’d so carefully tamped down came unsnapped, letting loose in a hot wind of fury that propelled me out of my seat and to him.

  My hands didn’t care about the liquor on his breath or the repentance in his eyes as they reached for the lapels of his coat where the cold still hung.

  I pulled him into me like a rag doll and arched over him. “What did you do to her, you son of a bitch? What did you do?”

  His eyes, momentarily alert and wide with fear, bounced between mine. “I…I…”

  I shook him once, hard. “What the fuck did you do?”

  Commotion erupted around us, and hands pulled me away. I let him go and stepped back, my composure a breath away from shattering completely.

  “Is she all right?” he asked.

  “She will be, no thanks to you.” Elle stepped forward, her face drawn. “Are you…drunk?”

  “I…” he started, his eyes on the ground and shoulders sagging. “I didn’t know what else to do. When I knew…when I heard…” He ran a hand through his dark hair. “It’s my fault.”

  I took a step, but Elle stayed me with a hand on my arm. “Tell us what happened.”

  With one hand, he clamped his forehead, his thumb and fingers pressing his temples. He swayed when his eyes closed. “We fought. I…I said things I shouldn’t have. She left me for you.”

  I spoke the question again, for the last time, “What did you do?”

  “I…I told her she should be mine, kissed her to prove it, but I wouldn’t let her go, not until the driver stopped, and she ran—”

  I heard nothing more; I was flying toward him, cocking my fist, letting it go. I didn’t register the smack, didn’t feel the crunch of bones in my hand or the jolt it sent up my arm when it connected with his jaw, didn’t stop as he fell, and I descended with him.

  But I was lifted away, struggling against unseen hands, thrashing and gnashing and desperate to hit him again.