by Mariah Dietz
My response is delayed, caught between honesty and remorse for having hurt her. I want to tell her it wasn’t intentional—that I would never have consciously kissed another girl’s date, that we’d tried fighting our feelings for each other, and unfortunately allowed others to get hurt in the crossfire that came with the battle of our wills and desires. “I’m sorry,” I tell her finally.
Nikki shakes her head, smiling grimly. “Don’t. I hurt him, and now he’s just trying to…” she shrugs, a tight smile on her lips, once again reminding me how much I hate trailed off sentences.
“Trying to what?”
She giggles. It’s a sweet, tinkering sound—a giggle I hear a million times each night I go to a frat party that lacks authenticity at every level. “He’s Lincoln Beckett. The President.” She does a semi eye roll like I’m missing such an obvious point. “And our dads work together. They’ve been friends forever. Lincoln and I used to take baths together.” She giggles again, only this time the sound feels like warning bells. “We’ve basically been betrothed since birth. He just needs to blow off steam, get back at me.”
Nothing about her words matches any of what Lincoln has said to me—or how he’s acted—yet for some ugly reason, it’s easier to believe her theory when it makes so much more sense than Lincoln suddenly liking me after knowing me for three years and barely even having spoken to me in that time.
Maggie’s voice is a quiet whisper at the back of my thoughts, telling me how it’s never okay for a woman to tear down another woman when we have enough obstacles in our way—that when a woman does, it hurts most because it’s always vicious, intentional, and often pragmatic, hitting us the hardest. I’m about to blow her off and focus on the facts, the reality that Lincoln’s never been dishonest with me, but then I catch sight of her necklace and freeze, my breath stolen as I recognize the gold chain and pearl necklace.
Nikki brushes her fingers over the elegant piece of jewelry. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Every year for my birthday, Lincoln gets me a piece of jewelry with a pearl on it.”
I feel nauseated and betrayed and angry and so much—too much. My eyes fill with tears and before they fall in her presence. I turn, catching the attendant’s drawn shoulders and pity smile as I pass through the door she holds open for me.
I pass by the reception, hearing the emcee announcing something over the microphone, my gaze blurry as tears fall so fast I can’t manage to swipe them free before more replace them. My lungs feel tight, my chest as well, and it makes me feel a wave of panic as I try to compare the feeling to how I’d felt in the hospital.
I step through the automatic doors, the cool November air swallowing me, making the trail of tears on my cheeks burn.
The valet attendant looks at me, his actions unhurried as he walks toward me like he’s hoping someone might help me if he goes slowly enough. “Miss?”
“Could you call a cab or Uber or anything?”
Relief washes over his face, his shoulders visibly falling under the red sport coat he’s wearing. “Absolutely. Right this way.” He places a hand on my back and extends an arm, directing me through the few cars still running as people unload their bags, and some get into their cars for dinner. He leads me to a black SUV and opens the back door.
As I slide into the leather seat, my phone rings.
Lincoln.
I ignore it, reaching for my seat belt. I nearly recite my parent’s address before catching myself, dreading each number of Pax and Lincoln’s street address. I need my car, clothes, and school things.
The driver remains still for a moment, his dark eyes watching me in the rearview mirror though he’s already entered the address. “You’re sure?”
Not even a little.
“Yeah.”
My phone rings again, rattling nearly as hard as my heart is.
The driver takes a final glance at me, then puts the SUV in gear, driving forward, past the cement cover. Raindrops splat against the windshield, angry and loud, splintering with each hit, just like my heart.
38
Lincoln
I call her again, my unease growing like a damn tide, pushing me well over my breaking point. I push open the women’s restroom door, surprising the attendant who quickly waves her hands and shakes her head, shooing me back out the door.
“I’m looking for my date,” I tell her.
The woman follows me out into the hallway. “You’re going to need to wait out here.”
I look over her shoulder, craning my neck to see beyond the woman I recognize as the wife of one of my father’s partners. “Her name’s Raegan Lawson. She’s wearing a purple dress. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Looks like a freaking runway model. Can you ask if she’s inside? Call her name?”
The attendant pulls her chin back, her gaze dropping to the polished ivory tiles.
“Did you see her?”
She crosses her arms over her chest, lifting her chin with a universal look that screams at me to fuck off.
“Please,” I ask her, reaching for my wallet. “She’s been gone a while, and I don’t know where she went. She’s not answering her phone.” I grab the largest bill in my wallet.
She takes it, sliding it into her pocket as she lands a glare on me that is as icy as it is haunted. “She left.”
“Left? Left the restroom? When? Did you see which direction she went?”
“She left. Most girls don’t stick around when they learn their date bought another woman jewelry.”
Her words are worse than any blow could deliver, hitting me with a force and might that leave me speechless.
The attendant nods, then slips back into the restroom. The cake hasn’t been cut, and I know Carol is going to throw a shit fit if I’m not there to dance with her, but those thoughts are forgotten as I race down the hall and through the lobby, my valet ticket already in hand as I hit the doors. “Hundred bucks if you can get my car in less than five minutes,” I tell the skinny blond who takes my ticket.
He gives me a single pass, stopping on my watch before turning and sprinting out of sight.
I scroll down to Rae’s name again, hitting ‘send’ for the fifth time. “Come on,” I mutter. “Answer.”
She sends me to voicemail again, that fire in my chest becoming an inferno that burns each security that makes up our relationship. I consider calling for help. Asking Poppy or Arlo or Caleb to check on her and make sure she’s okay while I wait for my car, but before I can consider if it’s a good idea, my truck pulls into view.
“Thank fuck,” I say, reaching for another bill and opening the door. I shove the money into his hand, closing the door before he can say anything and tear out of the driveway.
I blow through a yellow light that turns red when I’m halfway through and speed up, cutting across double yellow lines to pass the cars in front of me, waving through each obstacle like it’s the field, and they’re keeping me from the end zone—keeping me from her.
Raegan’s in the driveway, wearing a pair of jeans and a gray sweatshirt that looks two-toned with half of it soaked from the rain, shoving things into her trunk. I pull in, barely turning my engine off before hopping out of my truck, the door still open as I cross to her.
“Don’t,” she says.
“We need to talk.” I glance at the contents of her trunk, which is nearly filled. She’s trying to pack it all, preventing her from having to return. I know this, just like I know she sleeps on her stomach and doesn’t talk until she drinks a full cup of coffee in the morning, and that she can’t recite a joke because she laughs too hard before the punchline.
“No. We needed to be honest, and you weren’t. I don’t have the time or the heart space to do this.”
“Rae, it wasn’t what you’re thinking.”
She stops. Her hair is soaked and sticking to her face, and her makeup has been washed off, her eyes and cheeks both red. “So, you didn’t give her the pearl necklace that was in your truck?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
/>
“Jesus,” she drops her head back, her hands going to her head. “Of course, it means something. It means something to her, and it means you guys have a history far greater than what you tried to pass off as nothing.” She reaches for her trunk, slamming it shut and keeping her hands on it. “And it means something to me.”
“I’d bought it months ago, and I was late for her stupid birthday, and I didn’t even think about it, Rae. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. I couldn’t return it and there was no way I was going to give you a gift I’d bought for her.”
She sighs. “Why couldn’t you just be honest and admit you like her. That you’ve liked her for years?”
“Because it didn’t matter. She didn’t matter. Don’t you understand? None of it matters anymore because you’re the only one I care about. I love you, Raegan.”
She shakes her head, her brow creased. “Don’t. Don’t say that. Not now. Not after I find out about this.” She blows out a breath, tears falling in wide paths down her cheeks.
“Can we just talk about this? Let’s go inside, and I’ll tell you every last detail.”
She shakes her head in short bursts, her tears falling faster as she leans back on her car, arms folded across her chest. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Not right now. I need some time and space.”
“Rae,” I say, taking a step closer to her, wanting to hold her, to assure her of everything I know is true—of the clarity I found in telling my dad words I’ve needed to tell him for a decade. She twists, taking steps toward the front of her car.
“I can’t. After what my dad did, I don’t know what to think or what to believe, and I’m sorry. I don’t want you to have to clean up and make up for his mistakes, but I just can’t do this right now.”
I nod. “You can stay here. We don’t have to talk—”
She shakes her head again. “I need to go.”
Pax pulls into the driveway, his music too loud, but I don’t look at him. My world is split in two parts: Raegan and not Raegan, and right now she’s the only thing I care about. “Please. I know you’re upset. I know I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry—I’m so damn sorry. If I could take it all back, I would. I’d take back that lost time after you got hurt. I’d take back trying to convince myself we could only be friends. I’d take back every fucking moment of knowing her if it meant you’d understand how much I care about you, how much it kills me when you’re away.”
Her lips are parted, her attention on me. “For how long? How long are you going to be interested in me before someone else catches your attention? How long until another girl is doing your laundry or wearing a necklace you bought them? You scare the hell out of me because you wouldn’t leave just a bruise, you’d leave a crater.” She slips into her car before I can assure her how many cards she holds, how Nikki could make me consider wanting to try, but it was her who committed me to the fact.
“What’s going on?” Pax looks at me, his gaze critical and unsteady, tugging at the very thread of our friendship. I know I need to tell him the truth—be honest with him finally and tell him I’ve fallen in love with his sister—and if this was anyone else, I’d stop and try to ensure this final thread doesn’t break since he’s the closest thing I’ve known to family in the past decade, but I can’t because my heart is already out of my body and speeding out of sight.
“I have to go.”
“Stay away from her,” he warns, stalking toward me as I rush to my truck. “Don’t!” he yells.
“I can’t,” I tell him, wrenching my door open.
“The fuck you can’t.” He grabs a handful of my tuxedo, trying to haul me back.
I shake him off with one vicious pull that knocks him unsteady. “Don’t do this, man.”
He comes at me again, anger contorting his face into a stranger. “Stay away from her.”
“I can’t,” I tell him, shaking my head. “Don’t you understand? I can’t. I wish I could.”
“She’s not a short-term addiction,” he yells. “She’s my fucking sister.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know she deserves better than me? More than me? I know.”
Paxton’s chest heaves with heavy breaths. “You’re the one causing this mess. Just stay away from her. Time apart. That’s what you need.”
I yell, the sound a pain my soul can’t translate into words that has Paxton staring at me. “Can’t you see that’s what I’ve been doing? What I’ve been trying to do all fucking year? You’re like a brother to me, and so I tried. I tried staying away from her out of respect for you, but I can’t anymore. I just can’t. You can hate me, you can bench me, you can do whatever the hell you need to, but I’ve got to do this for me. For her because I know she needs me just as badly as I fucking need her.”
He swings his head, looking to where her car was parked and then back at me. “This has been going on all year?” The anger in his voice ebbs with the addition of confusion and what I think is a note of realization.
I nod once. “I’ve tried my damndest to stay away from her. I swear to you, I tried so fucking hard to stay away from her and forget it all because I knew it could fuck things up between you and me—because you’re the closest thing to a brother I have, but I can’t do it anymore. I can’t fucking think when she’s not around—I can’t even breathe.”
Paxton sighs heavily, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I knew something was up, I just…” Another heavy sigh. “How the fuck am I supposed to take this? She’s my sister. If you mess with her, I’m going to hate you. And if she fucks things up, I’m going to be pissed at her. You guys have me in a lose-lose situation where I’m fucked no matter what happens.”
I nod. “I know. I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry you’re in this position, but I have to go. I fucked up again, and I have talk to her.”
Reluctance has him dropping his head back again, rolling his shoulders like it might help ease the idea of me being with his sister. “No,” he says. “I forbid it.”
39
Raegan
The skies are growing dark, the rain hitting my windshield like a strategic attack, making it difficult to see even with my wipers on full blast. My sweatshirt drips, a constant plop, plop, plop against my floorboards, and my jeans are so wet they’re plastered uncomfortably to my skin, cutting into me and wrapping me in a familiar coldness. My knee aches, and I question if it’s psychosomatic or if I’m channeling my mom? If my knee hurt earlier?
Thoughts and reason are at war, each objection met with an assurance, and each guarantee met with a new resistance that rolls down my cheeks and makes my nose grow stuffy and my head throb.
I press the ‘call’ button on my steering wheel. “Call Poppy,” I say.
Her phone rings twice. “If you’re calling me to brag about delicious wedding cake and more delicious sex, I’m hanging up.”
My throat grows tight as I try to laugh, but it makes me cough, the sensation too familiar, reminding me even more of those days following the accident.
“Rae?” she says, her voice changing in an instant, concern and dread deepening her voice and canceling the cheer. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you mind if I stay with you?”
“What? Yes. I mean no. Come over, or I can meet you.”
I pull in a shaky breath, wiping my eyes because the rain has everything blurred without the addition of my tears. “I’m like fifteen minutes out.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t know if I’m just sabotaging things or if I’m finally facing reality. Do you remember Nikki?”
“Yeah…”
“She was there tonight. Apparently, Lincoln’s dad and her dad are business partners, and they’ve known each other forever. Like taking baths and family vacations together, forever. And she cornered me in the bathroom. I know she was trying to get to me. She was trying to get into my head and make me doubt things because she likes him. Because as girls, we have a way of finding the
greatest vulnerabilities and then picking at them like a loose thread, and she didn’t delay in ripping that thread. He gave her a necklace.”
“A necklace?”
“A pearl necklace.”
“She told you he did?”
I shake my head, though she can’t see me. “I know he bought it. I saw it in his truck weeks ago, and he admitted to it.”
“What?” She sounds as angry and confused as I do, and I can picture my best friend pushing both hands into her red hair like she does when she’s stunned. “Why? Why would he do that?”
“She said he gets her a piece of jewelry with a pearl every year for her birthday.”
Poppy releases a gentle growl. “Okay. It’s all right. He’s a guy. Guys are dense. To him, it probably means next to nothing. He probably doesn’t realize it even means anything to her.”
“It’s jewelry, and so, if that is the case, then the necklace he gave me means nothing.” My admission is quiet, a painful reality I’ve been trying to ignore since I recognized the offending piece of jewelry.
She sighs heavily. “I don’t know. I feel like after everything you guys have been through—after all, that he’s done to prove his feelings—this has to be a mistake. I think you’re right. I think she was trying to get under your skin, and she hit you right where you’re the weakest because you still refuse to believe you’re good enough for him, which you are. He chose you. He wants you, and she knows that, and she was bitter. Come over. We’ll order pizza and share a good cry, and then I’m going to make you write ‘I’m good enough’ twelve thousand times or until Lincoln comes over, whichever comes first. My money’s on Lincoln, though.”
“There are so many things against us.”
“I know. I get it. I understand how debilitating that fear is. How scary the idea of taking a bullet to the heart is, but you have to stop being your own worst enemy.”
My thoughts dash to another night, the first night Lincoln kissed me when he’d lit a cigarette and I’d told him he was creating an obstacle for himself, and he’d said it was because he was at least able to have a say in the matter.