Next Stop Love, #1

by Rachel Stockbridge

  Greyson gripped the steering wheel. “I don’t think you understand what this party is like. It’s vital you show up looking the right way. And while I appreciate your . . . eclectic fashion choices, there’s a time and a place. And my father’s Christmas party is not the place, nor the time, to show up looking like you’re an extra in a shitty, moth-bitten ’70s movie.”

  Beatrice flushed, stung. She had suspected Greyson didn’t love her thrift-store chic style, of course, but he usually left it alone.

  “Wow,” she said, angry at herself for feeling hurt. Angry at him for making her feel that way. She liked how she dressed. She knew it was a little eccentric, and it wasn’t to everyone’s taste, but she thought it suited her. “Okay. How about this: You don’t have to worry about me embarrassing you at your dad’s party anymore. I’m not going.”

  “Of course you’re going,” Greyson said. “You already said you’d come.”

  “I changed my mind.” She made herself look him in the eye. One advantage of only being able to access anger was that she didn’t feel the fear she probably should be. She was experiencing her usual physical reaction to conflict—rapid heartbeat, shaking hands—but it seemed disconnected from her feelings. She couldn’t call a lack of fear real courage, but it was as close as she was ever likely to get. “I’m not going. I’m done.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said, resting his hand on the back of her seat. “I didn’t mean—”

  “No.” She straightened her spine, gripping the door handle to assure herself that she had a quick escape if she needed it. She was supposed to do this with Sasha being intimidating on one side and Kinsey ready to call 911 on the other. She was supposed to have done this earlier today when they were all at lunch in the crowded food court. Or in the hallway after marketing class. Not while she was alone with Greyson in his car, with Nath and her mom three floors up, and Mike somewhere in Ohio, and no witnesses nearby. But she didn’t care. If she didn’t end this now, she was going to crawl out of her own skin. “I don’t want to see you anymore. Not at your dad’s party. Not dropping by whenever you feel like it. Not cornering me between classes. Not ever. I’m done. Okay? I’m done.”

  Greyson blinked. And then he smiled. Like it was a joke he didn’t quite get. “Okay, you win. I’ll take the dress back. You can wear whatever you want.”

  “It’s not the dress,” Beatrice said. He wasn’t listening. He never listened. “It’s . . . everything. You want me to be some . . . some . . . some docile, smiling girlfriend who will do whatever you say. And I’m sick of being that person. I’m sick of fighting with you all the time.”

  “Where is this coming from?” He was still smiling, like someone trying to humor a child they thought was particularly stupid. “When do we ever fight?”

  That, for some reason, was the last straw. The idea that her attempts at arguing with him—about food, or rides, or whether she wanted to go out with him in the first place—were so pathetic he hadn’t even registered them as fights was too much to deal with.

  “You know what?” she burst out. “You don’t get to do that anymore. You don’t get to talk me in circles until I get tired of trying to explain myself and give in to whatever you want. This isn’t a negotiation. I don’t need to make an ironclad case for why we should break up so you can try to pick it apart.”

  “But—”

  “No. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m through. Don’t call me again.”

  She shoved her door open. Cold air spilled into the car, slicing through her jeans. But before she could climb out, Greyson seized her arm—exactly where he’d left a ring of bruises on Thanksgiving—and yanked her close.

  Her heart jumped into her throat when she met his eyes. He wasn’t laughing at her anymore. He wore an expression of tightly controlled fury.

  Turned out she was capable of fear. Whatever spark of bravery Beatrice had found for that little speech was snuffed out in an instant.

  “What did he say to you?” Greyson snarled.

  “What?”

  He jerked hard on her arm, and she let out a frightened little yelp before she could stop herself. Greyson didn’t seem to care. “What did my little shit of a step-brother tell you? You know you can’t believe a word he says.”

  “Greyson, stop.” She tried to wrench her arm out of Greyson’s grip, but he held her fast.

  “He wants to turn you against me,” Greyson growled. “He’s a liar. He’s always been a liar.”

  “Julian didn’t tell me anything,” Beatrice said, meeting his gaze, trying not to let him see the fear twisting her stomach. “This isn’t about Julian.”

  “You probably think you’re in love with him, don’t you? Because he’s so dangerous and brooding, and you think it’s more exciting to fuck the bad boy than be with a man who’s actually doing something with his life.”

  Beatrice was sure she had turned bright red, her face was so hot. But she wasn’t going to let him drag her into an argument about whether or not she’d cheated on him. Or over whether Julian—who had danced with her because she’d asked him to, and who cracked up when she told terrible jokes—was ‘dangerous and brooding.’

  “Greyson,” she said, in a voice that sounded like it belonged to someone else. “Let go. Right now, or I’ll scream.”

  Greyson looked down at his hand as though he hadn’t realized he was holding her. He let go. “I—”

  Beatrice seized her bag and jumped out of the car before he could grab her again.

  “Beatrice,” Greyson said, getting out and following her toward the stairs. “Wait. Can’t we talk about this?”

  “Just leave it,” she begged, wishing she didn’t live on the third floor of the building. Wishing Mike would get home early, or Nath or her mom would come down to take out the trash and intercede. Why hadn’t she listened to her friends’ warnings about doing this alone?

  Greyson caught her wrist and spun her around to face him. “Beatrice. Come on. You’re overreacting. It’s just a dress.”

  She jerked her hand back before he could feel how much she was shaking. “It’s not about the dress.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “It’s—I don’t—” She pressed her hands to her cheeks, trying to find the words that would make him understand. Make him stop arguing. Make him give up and let her leave. But all she could come up with was: “I don’t trust you.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Greyson said, his voice dripping with condescension. “I don’t care if you fucking trust me.”

  “Well, I do,” she said, ignoring the burn in her throat. “And I care that I act like someone I don’t like when I’m with you. And I care that I’m not happy. And that you make me feel like I’m not good enough for you. I’m sick of letting you walk all over me. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  Greyson’s lip twisted into a snarl. Her throat closed as he stalked toward her.

  “Greyson,” she rasped, hoping if she said his name, he’d snap out of it.

  “Don’t lie to me.” He didn’t touch her, but he was crowding her, forcing her back. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Beatrice.”

  Her shoulders hit the stair railing. She should scream, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to force one out. And she wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t make things worse.

  He gripped the rail on either side of her head, boxing her in. The flat look in his pale eyes made her want to cower on the ground with her arms over her head. “He put you up to this. He’s manipulating you.”

  “That’s not—”

  He slammed his palm against the bar beside Beatrice’s head. She flinched, a breathy sob escaping her throat.

  “Can’t you see what he’s doing?” Greyson demanded, his fingers digging into her coat collar, too close to her throat. His breath was hot on the side of her face, and she couldn’t move. She couldn’t see a way out. “Can’t you see that—”

  A neighbor’s door burst open, letting out an older woman and two rambunctiou
s dogs from two doors down. Greyson’s attention was momentarily diverted, and Beatrice seized her chance. She ducked under Greyson’s arm and fled up the stairs, ignoring his shout for her to come back.

  Her heart pounded in her ears as she ran. She barely felt the concrete under her boots or her bag slamming into her leg. She kept expecting Greyson to catch up to her and grab her by the ankle and drag her down.

  But when she finally checked over her shoulder, once she was at her door and fumbling her keys out of her bag, he wasn’t there. It was quiet except for the echoing barks of her neighbor’s dogs, and the muffled sound of a television inside her apartment. And the roar of Greyson’s engine down below. Gasping for breath, Beatrice staggered to the railing to watch his car tear off into the night.

  Another strange sob tore Beatrice’s throat.

  She held onto the banister with one hand, sinking to a crouch as she willed herself to calm down. Stop crying. Stop shaking.

  She shouldn’t be this scared. It could have been a lot worse. He hadn’t followed her upstairs. He hadn’t hit her. She was fine. She was safe.

  She should feel safe.

  She curled into herself, her hand pressed over her mouth to muffle the uncontrollable sobs shaking her body. She wanted to go inside and lock herself in her room, but she couldn’t face her mom and Nath while she was having some kind of breakdown. She was supposed to be the rational Bauer. The one who never had any problems that she couldn’t handle herself.

  And now she was buried so deep that she couldn’t even imagine reaching out for help. She didn’t understand how she had let things get so bad. She’d been wary of Greyson from the start. She should have seen this coming. She should have shut it down right away, instead of waiting so long.

  Somehow, she got her breathing under control, and the worst of the sobbing passed. She kept shivering, but it was as much from cold as fear, now. She thought she could make it to her room without an interrogation about why she was in hysterics.

  It took her a couple tries to get the key in the lock, but finally she fumbled her way into the apartment. Sunny sauntered up to her at the door.

  Beatrice scooped him up in her arms, burying her face in his fur. “Hi, friend,” she breathed.

  Her mom was at the kitchen table, arguing with Nath, who was standing by the kitchen sink with a soapy dish in one hand. Neither of them even seemed to notice Beatrice come in at first, but Joyce stopped mid-scold when Beatrice passed the table on the way to her room.

  “Are you all right?” Joyce asked.

  Beatrice nodded tightly, still walking, unable to answer. Sunny purred and rubbed his head on her shoulder.

  “Bee?” Joyce called after her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Beatrice said, wrenching her bedroom door open. But something made her pause and turn back, her fingers still on the doorknob. “I broke up with Greyson.”

  “Bravo!” Nath called, his head appearing around the kitchen archway.

  “That nice rich boy?” Joyce asked, frowning. Piles of bills were spread out on the table in front of her. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was coming loose from where she’d clipped it back. “Why?”

  Beatrice instantly regretted the confession. Her mom had enough things to deal with without Beatrice dumping another burden on her shoulders.

  “He wasn’t nice, Mom,” Nath said before Beatrice could start backtracking. “He was a dick.”

  “Language,” Joyce said, waving a hand at him without taking her eyes off Beatrice. “What happened, Bee?”

  “Nothing,” Beatrice said, blinking back a fresh wave of tears. “It’s fine. I can handle it.”

  She shut herself in her room before either of them could say anything else, and sank onto the bed, trying to take comfort from Sunny’s persistent affection.

  Nineteen

  Julian got all the way home before he remembered he didn’t have any food in the apartment. He’d been meaning to get groceries all week, but it never happened. He’d been too tired, or too tense, or too apathetic. All that was left in the fridge after dinner yesterday was about half a glass worth of orange juice and a stick of butter. The pantry was even worse. There was nothing inside but an empty box of noodles, half a sleeve of stale crackers, and a cereal box containing a handful of sugary crumbs. He didn’t even have any goddamn peanut butter.

  Cursing under his breath, he wrestled the pantry door shut. He didn’t want to have to go back out again and deal with more people. Fabiana was closing at work and wouldn’t be home for a few hours yet. She would have figured out her own dinner, which meant he was only responsible for feeding himself. Technically, Julian could get away with not eating at all.

  But he’d forgotten to eat breakfast. And all he’d had for lunch was a cold Pop-Tart.

  Julian pulled his coat back on and headed out. He wasn’t up for a whole grocery excursion today. Especially if he was going to have to cook once he got back. But there was a cheap Chinese place a couple blocks away, and the leftovers should hold him until tomorrow.

  He might not be up for getting groceries tomorrow, either, but that was future-Julian’s problem.

  He’d been a cranky, miserable mess ever since that last god-awful conversation with Beatrice a few days ago. He was trying Fabiana’s limited patience with him at home—he couldn’t stop snipping at her and picking fights. Fabiana was doing a weirdly good job of not rising to the bait, but she was going to pull a muscle if she rolled her eyes at him any harder. And he suspected she’d only picked up the closing shift today so she wouldn’t have to deal with him when he got home.

  Thankfully, a lot of his duties at work didn’t require him to interact much with other people. He’d gotten a few funny looks from some of the other staff, and a companionably sarcastic don’t look so excited when he was caught glowering at his half-eaten lunch in the break room yesterday, but at least he wasn’t driving all his co-workers up the walls. He could usually fake some good humor for his kids, but the effort drained him, and he was pretty sure the kids were starting to pick up on his mood. They kept squabbling over crayons, and three different kids in the past two days had burst into tears at the smallest provocations.

  Julian didn’t know why he hadn’t cut Beatrice off when she was still just some random girl he kept running into. He’d known from the start their friendship wouldn’t last. He’d known he was going to get hurt. He’d known he was going to disappoint her eventually. And it was so much worse now than it would have been if he’d just told her he didn’t want to ride the goddamn train with her that first time.

  Christ, but he missed her. Even more so, now that he couldn’t pretend she’d taken Greyson’s side. He’d left work right after his shift today, telling himself it was because he wanted to avoid an inevitable conversation with Mr. Fisk about his stalled-out portfolio. But in reality, it was because of a masochistic need to see her again.

  Not to take back anything he’d told her. He still believed staying away was the right thing to do. He just wanted to be near her for a few minutes. He wouldn’t have even cared if she’d told him to fuck off.

  But she hadn’t been there at all.

  Which made sense. It was Thursday. Before the Thanksgiving fiasco last week, she used to sometimes text Julian on a Tuesday or Thursday to let him know her boyfriend was driving her home. So if she wasn’t on the train, it meant Greyson must have taken her home.

  The realization hadn’t helped Julian’s already stormy mood.

  He tried to think about something else while he waited for his food at the restaurant. Like how the hell he was going to finish his portfolio before the deadline in two weeks. He’d been on track up until last week, but he was falling further and further behind. It was hard enough keeping himself from throwing out the pile of shit he already had. He’d started half a dozen new illustrations in the past week only to toss them the second he hit a complication.

  On some level, he knew he was being too hard on himself. Bu
t he couldn’t find a way to push through the self-hatred that stuffed up his mind like a bad cold.

  Sometimes he just wanted to give up. He’d make himself finish out the rest of the semester for the sake of his kids, but he didn’t see how he could go back next year. He didn’t think he could handle the pain of avoiding Beatrice every day.

  But God, he was so sick of running. It wasn’t like he had a backup plan. Hop on a bus and go until you run out of money didn’t work so well when it wasn’t only himself he had to worry about.

  At least finishing his portfolio was something to focus on that wasn’t Beatrice. He was probably going to end up losing the teaching gig, but if he was going to fail, he could at least make sure it wasn’t for lack of effort.

  Julian collected his food and pushed out the restaurant door into the bitter cold.

  Beatrice would have told him—

  No. He wasn’t going to think about her anymore.

  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t channel her weird obsession with study schedules. The same principles should work for completing portfolios. It was just a matter of breaking everything down into manageable steps.

  He’d have to do the math on how much studio time he had left to finish the last few illustrations. Not enough, probably. But if he could just stop giving a shit whether they were any good, he could probably knock out a sketch or two tonight. He’d bought some Bristol board with his last paycheck so he could start illustrations at home. And he could beg Mr. Fisk for a few hours of studio space on Saturday, which would help make up for some of his wasted time this week—

  The sound of a car engine tearing up the road from behind distracted him. This was a quiet street, in a quiet town, and it wasn’t late enough for the speed demons. Julian had just enough time to register it was a shiny, dark sports car before it careened over the curb, brakes squealing, right up on the sidewalk.

  Julian swore and jumped back, avoiding the fender by mere inches. “Watch it, asshole,” he shouted as the driver’s door swung open. “You could have—”