by Claire Raye
Frustrated, I decide to go for a run to burn off some energy. It’s finally stopped raining and the sun is actually out now. Leaving the empty beer bottle on the kitchen counter, I grab my phone and head upstairs to get changed, pulling on some running shorts and an old t-shirt.
I grab my ear pods, flicking through my music selection, looking for something hard and angry enough to match my mood, when my eyes catch on the playlist Sienna shared me with as we were coming into Providence five days ago.
Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I hit play as the music from our road trip now echoes in my ears, my brain flooding with so many memories that I so desperately want to hold on to. Closing the front door behind me, I head down the stairs to the pavement, deliberately turning in the opposite direction to Caleb and Sienna’s house as I start to run.
Pushing my body in a hard sprint, I head up the hill toward Brown, not bothering to stretch or warm up, just wanting to punish myself, push my body to the brink of collapse so I might be able to find a brief minute of peace.
My muscles feel tight and weak, the two weeks of missed practice and football clearly having an effect. But I don’t give a shit, pushing myself even harder as I sprint along the leafy streets, my feet pounding the pavement in a steady thud.
I run through the playlist once, twice and it’s not until I’m halfway through the third time, do I finally stop. I’m drenched in sweat, my chest heaving and my heart pounding behind my rib cage. I feel like I’ve run a loop around Rhode Island, as I finally let myself slow to a walk.
Pushing my wet hair back off my face, I walk back home, again avoiding Sienna’s house, even though I can practically feel the tug of my tether to her, pulling me in that direction.
But I know she doesn’t want to see me, won’t see me until I can fix this clusterfuck my father has created.
And as I head inside my still empty house, walking past the closed door of my father’s office, a room I have always been expressly forbidden from entering, an idea starts to form.
I’ll be back home in a few days, we’ll talk then.
His last words to me echo in my head, reminding me that he’s not here now. That he’ll never know if I go in there.
I pause, my hand on the door handle, a sudden wave of nervousness washing over me as I stand there, wondering what the hell I’m going to find if I go in. What he’ll do if he ever finds out.
“Fuck it,” I say, turning the handle.
Chapter Four
Sienna
I stand under the hot water letting it scald my skin as I replay the day’s events in my head, wondering if I’m losing my fucking mind. I don’t even know what I’m doing here in Providence while everything that should be my future is back in California suffering.
I make a mental list of things to do when I’m done showering, with the first being to follow up on any schoolwork that needs to be completed. When I told my professors I would be missing at least two weeks of school because of my father’s death, they were more than understanding. They even offered for me to take an incomplete and finish the work on my own time. But I don’t plan to do that, because that would mean falling behind a semester, delaying graduation and not finding a job. After listening to Caleb today, that isn’t an option. If anything, I need to graduate sooner and secure a job so neither one of us has to deal with what we’re dealing with right now.
My thoughts wander to Reid and as angry as I am with him, I can’t help but wonder if he’s keeping up with his classes. He has more to lose than me with his scholarship and a part of me feels I should text him and check-in. But we aren’t a couple anymore; we aren’t even friends.
How does something go so wrong so quickly?
I step out of the shower, my thoughts a jumbled mess of Reid and Caleb and how we will ever fix what has been lost. And the realization hits me that we don’t. We don’t ever get to go back to before everything went to shit.
We don’t ever get the bar back. The house that was left to our father mortgage-free is now long gone and whatever friendship we all had has been left to rot and die.
This is who we are now.
And it absolutely kills me. I never thought my emotional pain could be so debilitating, so physically painful, but my heart breaks every time I think of our friendship falling apart. Every time I imagine my life without Reid, it feels like I won’t be able to function, yet somehow, I still manage to. My body is going through the motions, carrying me along, but my heart screams at me to give up.
I find Caleb sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly out the window and the last thing I want to do is create more animosity between us. We’ve always been a united front. You don’t lose your mother at six years old and have a deadbeat of father and not rely on your sibling.
He looks like complete shit and not just because of the beating he took at the hands of Reid’s father. He looks worn out with dark circles under his deep blue eyes, his hair is cut shorter than normal as if he has started doing it himself, and even the muscles that used to be so apparent, have started to fade.
“You okay?” I ask, sitting down next to him and running a comforting hand down his arm.
“What do you think?” he asks, still dressed in his suit and tie from the funeral. The tie is loose at his neck and the shirt is unbuttoned, but he hasn’t made any attempt to change his clothes. “I didn’t want you to have to come home to this. I didn’t want you to have to find out this way.”
“It’s okay. I don’t blame you if that’s what you think.”
“I know, but I was supposed to be the one to save the business, the one to fix everything. You were counting on me to do something great, but I had no idea how deep Dad’s debt ran.”
“We couldn’t have possibly known. He kept us out of everything…”
Caleb laughs but it holds no humor and I know he’s thinking back to all those times when we tried to help, when we tried to get our dad to bring us into the business, to let us look at the books. But he always acted like we were trying to undermine him. What could two high school kids know about running a business? It turns out we knew a hell of a lot more than he did. We both fucking knew not to get involved with Raymond Bowen.
“Sienna, you don’t even know the half of it,” he says, his words clipped, the anger dripping from his tongue.
“Then tell me about it,” I say, trying to find sympathy for what has happened, but every time I look at Caleb’s battered and bruised body I think of Reid.
“I want you to go on living in California like this life doesn’t exist, like you don’t have me to worry about.”
I let out a loud huff, narrowing my eyes at him because he can’t possibly believe I don’t care about him or his future.
“That’s never going to happen. If anything, I want you to come back to California with me. There’s nothing left here, you said it yourself.”
Caleb lets out a long sigh, scrubbing a hand across the top of his head. He still hasn’t fully told me how bad things are, but I imagine they will only get worse.
“Dad owes Raymond Bowen over a half a million dollars, Sie,” Caleb blurts out, but it’s only me who’s shocked by the figure. I gasp out loud, my throat burning with bile as I try to even picture what that much money looks like. “He mortgaged the house for over a million and hasn’t paid a penny on it since.”
I want him to stop talking because the more he continues the more dire things become. We are never getting out from under this and the paltry two grand I have in my savings might as well be two dollars. It doesn’t even matter.
But we’re in this together and I can’t let Caleb see I’m faltering. I can’t let him see that I’m leaning on him now more than ever.
“So what’s your plan?” I ask, but I don’t give him a chance to answer, jumping right back in with possible solutions. “Obviously we let the bank take the house, but beyond that, I think we should go to the police. Tell them everything that’s happened—”
“Have you l
ost your fucking mind, Sienna? Go to the police? Look at what Ray did to me when he thought he might still be able to get his money. He’ll hunt us down and kill us.”
“So you’re just going to live your life in perpetual fear? Running from him?” I demand, but my questions don’t require an answer. We both know that.
“What do we say? Raymond Bowen murdered our father and beat the shit out of me?”
“Yes!” I shout, slamming a hand down on the table. “That’s exactly what happened and so now we’re just going to sit here and act like it didn’t happen?”
I’m trying not to misplace my anger. I’m trying not to let my anger with Reid cloud the fact that his family ruined mine, but it all blends together.
“We have no proof,” Caleb asserts and as much as I know he’s right, I want it all to fall in our favor. I don’t know how, but we need a fucking break.
“How do we have no proof? The bar is failing. Scratch that, the bar has failed and Dad mortgaged our house. Everything was going under, so to me that screams Raymond Bowen. He swoops in when people get desperate.”
Everyone in Providence knows his name and the police have been onto him for years, but never able to pin anything on him. He’s good, damn good, and he knows how to fly under the radar. Plus, I’m sure he has a whole group of people whose main job is to do his dirty work and keep his name clean.
“Sienna, I hear you. I get what you’re saying, but our failing business is not proof that Reid’s dad was involved.”
The mention of Reid’s name causes my skin to ignite, stinging and painful, and I swallow hard trying not to give away that there’s far more going on than just me being angry at Reid and his family. It feels like Caleb can see my broken heart, feel it shatter in his own chest and with each word, it makes it harder to lie to him.
“So how are we going to get out of this?” I ask, hoping like hell that Caleb has some sort of realistic solution.
“I don’t have anything,” Caleb admits on a hard exhale. “Up until the day Ray busted into our house, I didn’t think I was a target. I really thought our connection to Reid would save us.”
I would like to think the same thing. We’ve been together since we were little, and Hannah and Raymond Bowen fed us and clothed us when they knew our parents couldn’t. They were never warm or welcoming, but that was their nature. But we’re all adults now and money is money. Ray didn’t get where he is today by giving his kid’s friends a pass on their debt.
A debt so large I can barely fathom it.
“I think we should talk to Reid,” Caleb prompts, staring straight at me as he waits for a response. It almost feels like he’s baiting me, like he’s using Reid’s name to get a rise out of me and it’s working.
With each mention of his name the knot in my stomach tightens, pulling harder and making me feel like I could cry at the drop of a hat.
I miss him.
I hate that my heart can’t forget him, that it remembers everything about him and pulls those memories into my dreams. They haunt me with times of when we finally found each other, whether I’m awake or I’m sleep, Reid consumes my thoughts.
The doorbell rings and both Caleb and I whip around to look at each other. Who would’ve thought a ringing doorbell could elicit the kind of fear I see in Caleb’s eyes. As brave as he likes to act, I know he’s falling apart on the inside. We have to find a solution to this.
“I’ll get it,” I tell him, my hand flicking back at the chair telling him to sit down.
“Check before opening the door,” he says, and as much as I try to hide my fear, my hand shakes when I pull the curtain to the side, peeking out onto the porch.
There’s a delivery driver standing there, a large package in his arms wrapped in white paper and it takes me a few seconds to assure myself that this guy isn’t dangerous.
“Can I help you?” I ask opening the door just a crack.
“I have a floral delivery for Sienna Parker,” he says, glancing at the tag attached to make sure he has the right name.
I open the door fully, holding it open while the guy hands me a clipboard indicating to sign at the bottom before he hands me the oversized package. He doesn’t make any attempt at pleasantries, just walking away once he has the signature.
The package is bulky and heavy, and its size makes it difficult to carry. Instead of carrying it into the kitchen, I set it down on the floor in the entryway to the house. Pulling back the white paper, it reveals an oversized bouquet of at least three-dozen pale pink peonies in a large rose gold vase. The bouquet is massive and over the top, but stunningly beautiful.
Tears well up in my eyes before I even have the chance to read the card. There’s no way someone sent these as a condolence for the loss of our father. These can only be from one person.
I open the card and all it says is, “I miss you.” I crumble it up, shoving it into the back pocket of my jeans just as Caleb walks into the room.
“Holy shit. Who sent those?” he asks, as I pick the vase up and walk into the kitchen.
I avoid the question, trying to come up with something to say, but I fall short and admit it. “It was Reid. Sending his condolences.”
“That’s a pretty impressive bunch of flowers and not something people usually send for funerals,” Caleb says, shooting me a sideways glance, his words somewhat accusatory.
“I imagine he has a lot of guilt,” I reply, my words soft as I try to play things cool, but inside it feels like I’m being ripped apart. Torn in two directions and my mind and my heart don’t know who to side with.
“I imagine it’s more than that,” Caleb says, and it takes everything in me not to breakdown and cry on his shoulder.
Chapter Five
Reid
It’s almost midnight and I’m sitting in the dark, halfway through a bottle of my dad’s whiskey when a knock at the front door sounds. At first, I’m not sure if I’ve heard right, because who the hell would be knocking on my door at this hour. But then it happens again and I freeze, my mind immediately coming into focus, neurons firing, blood pounding, as I picture Sienna on the other side of that door, here to thank me for the flowers.
Or to apologize for pushing me away.
To say she misses me.
To tell me she forgives me because she knows I knew nothing about this.
I put my glass down and push off the couch, stumbling a little because it’s the first time I’ve been vertical since I started in on this bottle. I have no idea what the hell I’m drinking, only that it came from my dad’s private stash in his office so it must be good.
And expensive.
But fuck him.
I walk through the living room to the front door, the house in darkness. I don’t bother flipping on the outside light, just open the front door to find the step…empty.
“What the fuck?” I mutter, wondering if I really did imagine someone knocking on my door just now.
I scrub a hand down my face, before refocusing, my eyes scanning the darkened front yard for any signs of life. But there’s nothing out there, nothing but the empty street and the muted streetlights. Nothing.
“Shit,” I murmur, closing the door.
“Reid.”
I freeze at my name, my heart pounding in my chest as I see something move in the shadows, hear the unmistakable sound of someone walking up the front steps. I open the front door to find Caleb, standing on the porch, his arm still in that sling and his face still bruised and battered.
“Caleb,” I say, fighting to hide the disappointment that it’s him and not his sister as I open the door wider. “What…fuck, what are you doing here?”
Caleb glances behind me before looking back at me. “He’s not here is he?” he asks nervously. “I mean I’ve been watching the place for the last thirty minutes, but your dad, he’s…”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t know where he is. It’s just me.”
Caleb nods once. “Can I come in?”
�
�Of course,” I say, stepping back as he walks through the front door.
I close it behind him, briefly meeting his gaze before turning and walking into the living room. I hear Caleb follow behind me as I pause to grab another glass from the drink cart. I motion over to the sofas before pouring him a generous shot of whiskey.
“Thanks,” he says, as he takes it from me.
I nod and we both sit down on opposite sofas, facing each other with the coffee table between us. Neither of us says anything, the silence of the empty house surrounding us both as I throw my glass back, swallowing hard. Caleb does the same and without asking, I grab the bottle and refill his and then mine.
“How are you feeling?” I eventually ask.
He exhales, taking a sip of his whiskey this time as he sits back on the couch. “Okay, better.”
I nod, my eyes on my glass and the amber liquid inside. “How’s Sienna?” It hurts just to say her name, to have to ask about her like this because I can’t just go and see her or call her. Because I’m not allowed to touch her anymore. As brief as our relationship was over those six days, it doesn’t diminish how important it was or how much it meant to me. Still means to me. We have a lifetime of friendship together, years of longing and want that both of us tried to deny, but which was finally given a chance to turn into something incredible.
And now that it’s gone…the pain is fucking unbearable. I miss her so much. Miss everything about her. The ache in my chest a constant reminder that she’s not here, that she’s no longer mine.
Caleb shrugs. “She’s pissed, but…well, I think she really liked those flowers you sent.”
I nod, not saying anything, wishing I could ask him more.
“I was wondering if…I mean, did you two—”
“Caleb,” I say, cutting him off. I don’t want to talk about Sienna with him, can’t fucking talk about her with him like this, not when she’s shutting me out the way she is.
“Yeah?”
I finally lift my eyes to find him watching me, his steady gaze not giving away anything as it meets mine and he nurses his glass in his good hand. I take a deep breath before letting it out in a long slow exhale.