by Anna Paige
I nodded and tipped my head toward the other side of the parking lot. “We parked over here. I’ll meet you at the apartment.”
He didn’t let go of my arm and motioned for Charli to walk on his other side. “I’d rather walk you to your car. I haven’t forgotten that Tommy is out there somewhere or will be soon enough. I want you both to be extra careful until the trial.”
I snorted at his protectiveness, though I was certainly grateful for it. I still refused to think about how a trial meant I’d be forced to testify. In open court. In front of half the damn town. My stomach lurched again, and I swallowed back thoughts of it to dwell on later. “So, does that mean you’re moving in for the next three months?”
“If it’ll keep you safe, hell yes I am.”
I fumbled for my keys as we approached my shiny burgundy Fusion. “This might sound naive, but I don’t think he’s necessarily a threat. He tried to apologize in there before his lawyer pulled him away.”
Beck jerked me to a halt. “He tried to talk to you? Where the fuck was Ash?”
“Snarling over my shoulder.” I pulled my arm from my brother’s grip. He winced as he watched me rub my wrist where he’d just inadvertently crushed it in his angry grip. “Tommy wasn’t threatening me. He actually looked too ashamed to meet my eye. He whispered that he was sorry and then darted out before Ash could get ahold of him.”
“Don’t let him play you, Blair. He’s fucked in the head and that’s an incredibly dangerous thing. He tried to appear remorseful? I’d bet my left nut he was toying with you, testing the waters to see how resolved you are about what happened, seeing if you’d be easy to play or intimidate on the stand. There’s zero chance of him being genuine with that apology shit, so don’t let your guard down an inch, you hear me?” He flicked his gaze to Charli and then back to me. “Don’t either of you let your guards down for a second. Because if he hurts either of you, if he so much as blows his rancid breath in your faces as he walks past, I will end him. No need for a jail cell. I’ll put him down.”
The look on my brother’s face was almost frightening. I’d never seen him that deadly serious about anything in my life. He just wasn’t a violent person; it wasn’t in his nature. Or I hadn’t thought it was until what happened on the beach. He’d nearly beaten Tommy to death behind those dunes, and there was no doubt in my mind that he meant what he said. If given the chance, he would absolutely make good on his promise.
I only prayed he’d have no reason to prove me right.
Ashton
I sat in the driveway with the car running, getting the radio presets straight for my mom. She always got frustrated trying to do things like that, so I memorized her list of stations and any time she got a new ride I put them in for her.
It was a small thing I could do to make her life easier, and I tried to do that as much as possible.
My phone chirped in my pocket for the third time, a text reminder, and I continued to ignore it. I wasn’t ready to read it. I needed a while to think, to get my head out of my ass and stop being angry long enough to remember what Marin said.
I couldn’t quite do that yet, but I was working on it.
I thumbed through the preset buttons and double-checked that they were right, which they were, before switching the radio off and just sitting there, letting the silence stretch out for a while.
Mom was out with one of her friends, who had apparently picked her up since my truck was still in the same spot where I’d left it. I knew the house would be just as quiet inside, but I didn’t want to go in.
I didn’t want to do much of anything but sit right where I was, the sun that streamed through the windows warming my chest and my mind racing in a dozen directions, trying to sort this shit out before my head exploded.
My phone chirped again, and I drew in a deep breath, leaning forward to rest my forehead on the steering wheel.
Don’t be a dick.
Read the stupid message.
You know you want to fix this, so do it.
I exhaled long and loud, then took the phone from my pocket.
Despite the little glimmer of hope inside me, it wasn’t from Blair.
Beck’s name popped up in the notification screen but not the text itself. That meant a photo message.
I opened it and instantly felt like I’d been kicked in the chest by a damn horse.
It was a photo of Blair, crying her eyes out and clutching her stomach as if she’d just been—or was about to be—sick. I knew from her clothes and the background that it had been taken right after I left her there in the parking lot. There was a text to go along with the photo, and it wrecked me almost as much as seeing her hurting that way.
Beck: If you really do love her, the sight of her like this guts you as much as it does me. Hate me if you want, I deserve it for doubting you, but don’t leave her like this. Talk to her, please. We’ll be at their apartment, ready to make this right any way we can. With Tommy out of jail, I’m sticking close to the girls, but I’ll leave when you get here, if that’s what you want. For what it’s worth, I’ll never forgive myself for this and I don’t expect you to either. I’m so damn sorry, brother.
Brother.
He’s called me that so often over the years, he probably typed it without even thinking.
I wasn’t sure if that made me angry or sad, but either way, I had to find a way to get over it.
They wanted to talk. But I didn’t know how to even begin to have a conversation with them about this. I could already feel the petty, spiteful, retaliative comments piling up inside, just waiting for their moment to pop out. I wanted to lash out at them, and because of that, I knew I couldn’t go over there tonight.
For everyone’s sake, I needed time.
I typed and retyped my response a dozen times before I hit send, my eyes stinging with gathering tears because I kept scrolling up to see the picture again.
Me: I hate it SO fucking much that she’s hurting. But I am too, and I don’t think I’m ready to talk tonight. I’m not being spiteful. I just have to be sure I won’t say something that would cause her more pain. Give me until tomorrow. And one of you please, please hold her if she cries again.
I didn’t get a response right away, so I decided it was time to go inside and take a long, hot shower to try and loosen up my stress-tightened muscles. My shoulders and neck felt like they were being held together with steel cables. Everything was tense and achy and all I wanted was a shower, a drink, and my bed.
The fact it was barely 4:00 p.m. was irrelevant. I’d slept like shit all weekend—especially last night when I tossed and turned until dawn with less than an hour of sleep in fits and spurts to show for it—and it was wearing on me.
I’d just walked into my room to grab clothes when my phone chirped with an incoming text.
I grabbed it out of my pocket and continued into the closet to gather what I needed.
Beck: She’d probably rather you held her, but you know I’ll take good care of her. See you tomorrow.
I’d rather it were me holding her, too, but the part of me that wanted to comfort her was being overshadowed by the part that was screaming that no one cared enough to comfort me when I’d needed someone, after standing in their parents’ empty driveway, staring at my bag on the porch and feeling like a complete loser.
A friendless loser, at that.
My anger reared its head again as I snatched a T-shirt from one of the hangers and dug through the dresser for some basketball shorts.
I wanted to hold onto this feeling so I wouldn’t cave and drive over there right fucking then and hold her myself. I hadn’t turned down Beck’s invitation to talk tonight lightly, and I hadn’t done it to be petty. I really did need some time. Time to work past how they’d treated me and time to find the words “I forgive you” somewhere inside when all I wanted to do was tell them to go to hell.
Marin was right, I was being ridiculous, but I didn’t know how to make it stop.
Becaus
e of that, I couldn’t face them yet. I didn’t want to be spiteful or say something to hurt anyone. That wouldn’t fix anything.
For all my anger and hurt and disappointment, I really did want to fix this shit.
I wanted my best friend back.
I wanted my girl back, even if she’d never actually agreed to be my girl in the first place.
In my mind, she’d been mine for a long time now.
I just hoped she would be again, once this was all sorted out.
And we would sort it out soon.
Because I was fucking sick of loving that girl from afar.
One more day and we’d be where we needed to be.
One more night to get my shit together, stow my anger, and be the man she deserved.
Then . . . forever.
This has officially been the longest day of my life.
I checked the clock for the umpteenth time and shook my head.
Seriously, it was like I was being punished for making everyone wait a day to talk. After my text exchange with Beck the day before, I’d showered, drunk at least half a dozen beers while working through my shit for the next couple of hours, and promptly fallen asleep at like seven o’clock.
It had been the sleep of the dead. I didn’t dream, didn’t even move apparently since I woke up in the exact position I’d dozed off in—right down to the nearly-empty beer bottle in my hand.
How I managed not to spill it was beyond me.
But there I was, at five in the morning, wide awake, holding a stale beer, and suddenly so anxious to see Blair and Beck that I paced and fidgeted all freaking morning.
Blair and Charli had classes all day and Beck, if memory served, had another interview sometime in the early afternoon, so I would just have to wait.
One of my biggest problems was that once I set my mind to something, once I knew what needed to happen, I wanted it to happen right-dammit-now. And this situation was no different. I’d anguished for hours, gotten angry then angrier then ashamed before realizing that the best thing to do was let it all go. None of us had handled it well. They’d fucked up first, and we all knew that, but I allowed it to continue. I let them go on thinking it because I didn’t feel like I should have to defend myself. Because I was angry and wanted to let them fuel that with their continued mistrust.
I could have stopped it right there on the courthouse steps, but I didn’t. So, I had to share the blame for everything that came after.
They would want to apologize, and I would let them without rubbing it in their faces because I loved them enough to do that. Well, I loved Blair and Beck. Charli was more of a peripheral part of this, but I would forgive her, as well. And I would silently forgive her for setting Blair up with a psycho because I had no right to hold that against her. She’d been trying to help, and it got all fucked up.
The same way me trying to help my mom landed us all in this mess.
Shit happened.
No one was perfect and no one was immune to random fuckery.
I checked the clock again as I headed to the kitchen to make a sandwich. I hadn’t eaten very much the last couple of days and my stomach was starting to rebel. I’d been vaguely nauseated all morning but chalked it up to nerves.
As I pulled the deli ham and turkey from the fridge, there was a loud growl in my belly that confirmed food to be at least a partial answer.
Mom kept the house stocked with quick foods, since she hadn’t been cooking much with Phil gone. She worked at a local bank as a loan officer, so she’d already headed out this morning in her new-to-her car and I’d watched from the kitchen window as she flipped through her presets with a huge smile on her face.
Misunderstandings and accusations between my friends and me aside, I was so damn glad I could do that for my mom. And I was so glad she finally stopped giving me hell for spending money on her.
I wasn’t particularly well-off in the finance department, but I liked to think I was smart with my money. I’d designed a couple of programs while in grad school that had brought in a decent nest egg and allowed me to graduate with my student debt cleared, which was worlds ahead of where I thought I’d be at twenty-four.
The five grand I dropped on mom’s car wasn’t going to break me, but Mom worried about everything, so I’d had to wear her down over the last couple of days. Even if it had been my entire savings, which was far from the case, I would have done it. I would pay anything, do anything to keep my mom safe and that car she was driving before was nowhere near meeting my standards.
If I didn’t think she’d bust a blood vessel in her forehead, I would have bought her something brand-new, but to keep the peace I went with something used but in excellent condition. Marin had barely put fifty thousand miles on the Civic, and when I commented on that, she shrugged and said the whole town was like twenty miles from end to end and she had no life outside of work anyway, so where did I think she was supposed to have racked up miles?
I chuckled under my breath at the memory of the look on her face. She was rooted in this town and I was betting that you’d have to be chasing her with a stick of dynamite if you expected her to venture much farther than the county line.
I wasn’t so rooted here, and Beck had no particular attachment or aversion to the place. He was indifferent to it, mostly, because he knew he’d come back here to see his family whenever he could, and that moving away didn’t mean leaving everyone behind.
Me, I was comfortable here, somewhere between the deep roots Marin held and the follow your arrow philosophy Beck seemed to embrace.
I’d been sort of in limbo the last couple of years, keeping my options open and waiting to see what Blair was planning for after college. I didn’t want to hold her back and I’d kept quiet about my feelings all this time for that very reason.
Maybe in wanting to support her plans for the future, I’d foregone making concrete decisions of my own, but my degree would travel with me anywhere and I could design software freelance if I so chose. I didn’t need to punch a clock, though I did like the idea of putting in some time at a large tech firm for a while, just for the experience if nothing else.
Which was why I planned to accept the job offer I’d gotten on Friday. I didn’t get a chance to tell Beck about it, with everything that went down on the beach, but I was probably starting at Bachman Systems Inc. in two weeks and it was only a half-hour drive.
I was putting down my roots, for now, sticking close to my mom, racking up career experience at a highly reputable company, and hopefully building something even more important with Blair, whom I was absolutely dying to see in a couple of hours.
The rest I would deal with as it came.
Blair
Longest. Day. Ever.
I managed to stay focused through all three of my classes, but just barely. My stomach was in knots, so I hadn’t eaten a thing, and I swear, they’d given me double shot espresso instead of my usual French roast at the coffee shop this morning.
The coffee shop Tommy used to work at.
I’d never been to it before, Charli usually darted over there between classes for a mid-morning latte while I was headed in the other direction, but today I told myself I needed to see for myself that he wasn’t there anymore.
After word of the thefts and the incident on the beach made their rounds, the shop owners had let him go. I couldn’t say I had any sympathy for him, none, and I was glad I could get across campus or a caffeine fix without feeling like I was putting myself at risk.
The barista who made my latte mentioned a hottie in a black truck coming by to talk to the owners the other day, right around the time they’d come out and removed his time card from its slot, and I knew without a doubt it had been Ash. From the sound of it, he’d stopped in sometime between when we dropped him at Janet’s and when he found his stuff on our parents’ front porch.
Stop it or you’ll cry again.
God, why couldn’t I make the minutes go faster. I needed to see him. To apologize, to grove
l . . . whatever I had to do to make it right.
“You know,” the bubbly blond barista cut off my train of thought. “I kept getting these random flowers. It was like clockwork, every Saturday for the last few months. No card, no note, nothing.”
“Yeah?” I wasn’t sure I followed.
“I didn’t get them this past weekend.”
I frowned for a second before it sank in. “You think Tommy?”
She shrugged, sporting a frown of her own. “I don’t know. Maybe. He’s always been friendly, not scarily so, but more attentive than most of my coworkers here.”
“Any way you can ask the florist? Maybe they have his name on file or something. If he was sending you flowers, that means you were on his radar and believe me it’s not a good thing.”
“There wasn’t a florist that I know of. The flowers just randomly showed up on my porch.”
“You don’t have any cameras or anything? Maybe a nosy neighbor who could at least describe the person who dropped them off?”
She shook her head. “My place is kind of off by itself. You know how it is out here, properties on the back roads are pretty spaced out.”
“Time to get a security system. You got a dog?”
“No, but I’ve been thinking of checking out the shelters.”
“That sounds like a great idea.”
She nodded to herself, picking at her apron strings. “Now that I think about it, he could have gotten my address from my file. It kind of creeps me out, especially after what he tried to do to—” Her eyes widened and she jerked her head up to look at me, an apology on her face. “I didn’t mean . . .”
“It’s okay. I feel the same way. He stole my roommate’s wallet while he worked here, which means he has my address too.”
“Security system or guard dog?” she asked, one brow raised.
“My brother, which basically means both.” I chuckled and dropped a five in the tip jar. “See ya around. Stay safe.”
She smiled and gave a little wave. “Thanks, you too.”