by Avery Flynn
Panic flared in his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t put that well,” he said, his words coming out in the same frantic speed as his heartbeat. “But this is the only way to make everyone see past where I’ve come from and to where I’m going. I have to make this deal.”
She looked him dead in the eye. “You know, no one judges you for your working-class roots as harshly as you do yourself.”
Heat blasted through his body. How many times had he heard the taunts at school, the whispers in the boardrooms? But when was the last time that happened? a small voice inside him asked. He pushed the doubt aside. Throughout his life there’d been one thing motivating him and moving him forward—proving everyone wrong. He wouldn’t let go of that now. He couldn’t. Without that fire, who was he?
Everly continued, pressing against that wound of his that never seemed to heal. “Your parents may have started you on that self-loathing route—and God wouldn’t I love to tell them to go fuck themselves for doing that to a child—but you’re continuing to march down it of your own volition. At some point in time you have to take responsibility for the path you’ve chosen. You can’t blame all of it on where you’ve come from.”
“That’s bullshit. You don’t know anything about me. And for someone who talks the talk, how much are you really walking the walk? Care to share more about your daddy issues with the class?” he asked, his snarly voice loud enough to make the waiter passing by on his way back to the kitchen flinch. Dammit. Cool it down, Jacobson. Causing another scene is not going to help anything. Heart still racing but his voice lower, he continued. “Everly, I—”
“Don’t bother,” she interrupted as she pushed past him. “Whatever you’re gonna say next doesn’t matter anyhow. We’re done here. Only until it’s not fun anymore, remember our agreement? Well, this isn’t my definition of fun.”
Stunned, he didn’t have a response beyond saying her name as she walked out of his life. Once again, she’d done the unexpected. This turn of events, though, was a steel knife through the chest. He wanted to scream, to rant, to rave, but he couldn’t. The lessons he’d learned came rushing to the forefront—never let anyone see your emotions because it gave them too much power. So while the caveman inside him screamed at him to fight, he did the opposite. He swallowed the razor blades and stayed frozen to his spot. Her footsteps hesitated for the briefest of moments, but when he made no move, she went on without him while he listened to the distinctive click-clack of her heels as she marched across the marble floor.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tyler spent the next four days almost exclusively at his office. That meant his back ached from sleeping on the couch, he was out of fresh clothes kept in his executive bathroom, and he hadn’t shaved in days. He’d reached out to every member of the Ferranti Hotel group’s board who was in Harbor City and did his best to smooth things over. It hadn’t worked. Oh, they hadn’t said that outright, and his pitch meeting was still scheduled in three weeks, but he knew a polite brush-off when he experienced one. He smelled like shit. He looked like shit. He felt like shit. So it was pretty much the trifecta of shit in his life.
So why was he sitting at his desk scrolling through old text messages from Everly? Because that was as close to fun as his life got anymore. God, he was fucking pathetic. Just as he was about to put the phone down and continue the exercise in futility known as putting together a hotel expansion presentation that wasn’t going to go anywhere, it vibrated in his hand.
EVERLY: No need to hide out any longer. I left my keys with the super.
What the fuck? Where in the hell was she going? Hiding out? He’d been working his ass off. There was a difference. Anyway, why would he hide? She was the one who’d told him to fuck off. He stood up so quickly that he sent his desk chair flying back behind him and it thunked against his credenza.
“That can’t have been good news,” a familiar deep voice said.
Sawyer Carlyle stood in his open office doorway, holding a white paper bag. It had been a rough few years between them. At first, there’d been only a cold silence with Tyler plotting to make the other man’s life as difficult as possible. However, his heart was never really in it and cracks in the ice had started to form when Sawyer fell for his now-wife, Clover. Something about seeing the other man so completely at a loss about what was going on in his life thanks to the whirlwind that was Clover had brought the two of them back together. By the time Hudson Carlyle had made a public declaration for Tyler’s friend Frankie Hartigan’s little sister, Felicia, he and Sawyer had started to rebuild their friendship. Now? They weren’t in each other’s pockets, as Mrs. Hartigan had said repeatedly when he and Frankie were growing up, but they were friends again and it felt good—just not right now, when it felt like an iron hand was squeezing his lungs shut.
“She’s leaving,” Tyler said, his attention dropping again to the phone screen.
“Who’s leaving?”
“Everly.” He grabbed his chair and flopped back into it.
“The gallery owner?” Sawyer asked, walking over to the pair of chairs in front of Tyler’s desk and sitting down, setting the bag on the floor between them. “Yeah, Hudson said she was opening up a new place on Aucoin Avenue.”
What the fuck? Why was he just hearing this now? “She can’t.”
Sawyer snorted. “Oh yeah, why’s that?”
“Because she signed a lease with me.” That sounded lame even to him.
“One that according to Hudson you let go to a month-to-month without any notice requirements.” Sawyer shook his head. “Rookie mistake, Jacobson.”
No shit. And one he couldn’t fix at the moment—if ever. God, this fucking sucked. And to top it off, the happily-in-love jerk in front of him just sat there grinning like a man about to enjoy ice cream and beer for breakfast. The rat bastard. If they really weren’t friends again, Tyler would be showing his smug ass the door.
“How do you know this?” After all, that kind of intel was usually his bread and butter.
“Because my little brother is all sorts of pissed at you because of Everly, and he felt like yammering while I was working out this morning,” Sawyer said. “So tell me, what in the hell did you do to her?”
Act like an asshole. “Nothing.”
Sawyer lifted an eyebrow. “Really?”
“She did it to m-me,” he sputtered, remembering the ice in her eyes when she told him it wasn’t fun anymore, so different from the fiery avenging-angel look she’d had going while handing Irena her ass—if it hadn’t been for the fact that Everly had fallen right into the other woman’s trap, it would have been a sight to behold. Instead it had been like watching everything he’d worked for implode. “She caused a huge scene at the gala and more than likely sank the Ferranti Hotel group deal, and then she told me that she didn’t want to see me anymore.”
“So she broke up with you,” Sawyer said, distilling Tyler’s hell into six one-syllable words.
“We weren’t going out.” He shoved his phone away so it was half-hidden under a stack of papers. “It was just fun.”
Sawyer nodded. “Sounds like it.”
“Fuck you.”
Sawyer just laughed in response. “Can’t imagine why a girl would go running from you when you’re such a nice, cheerful guy.”
Tyler all but growled at his friend, but the other man didn’t even flinch, which just amped up Tyler’s already raging temperament that had his blood pressure jacked sky-high. “She had a great deal in my building. Any other person in Harbor City would have jumped at the chance to keep it. Why can’t she ever do what’s expected?”
“Because then you wouldn’t be moping around your office instead of at our previously scheduled lunch.”
“Shit.” He glared at his laptop screen and the calendar reminder in the top right-hand corner alerting him that his lunch was supposed to start forty-five minutes ago. “I missed that?”
“You did. Lucky for you…” Sawyer grabbed the white bag next to his c
hair and plopped it on Tyler’s desk. The smell of bacon and cheese and an unholy amount of greasy goodness wafted out from it. “Vito’s has takeout. I drank your shake on the way over.”
Tyler didn’t miss appointments. He certainly didn’t miss ones for lunch at the best diner in Harbor City. He thought he’d been coping well with the whole Everly thing. He was wrong. Obviously. “I’m so fucked.”
“Pretty much,” Sawyer agreed. “But not on the Ferranti deal, from what I heard.”
Tyler froze in the middle of pulling out the aluminum-foil-wrapped burger from the bag. “What?”
“Yeah, word is the old man stuck up for you at the board meeting. Something about brilliant ideas and fiery commitment.”
That didn’t make sense. Alberto was firmly Team Everly on anything and everything. If she was pissed at him, Alberto should be, too. Why couldn’t these people make sense? Or, more likely, what had being with Everly done to his ability to know what moves everyone was about to make before they made them?
“Why would he do that?” he asked, taking the burger the rest of the way out and unwrapping it on his desk as he tried to unravel the riddle.
Sawyer shrugged and settled back into the chair. “Because he probably saw the same thing I’m looking at.”
Tyler glanced down at his lunch. “A double bacon cheeseburger with extra mayo?”
“Jesus, you’re dumb.” Sawyer leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and giving Tyler a you’re-a-complete-moron look. “An idiot in love and going about everything in exactly the wrong way.”
And he thought Sawyer might actually be onto something. Instead, he was just busting his balls. “Fuck off.”
The other man took the curse in stride. “I’ll take that as confirmation, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll go after Everly.”
Yeah, right. Even if she were the kind of woman he wanted in his life, which she wasn’t (uh-huh, whatever you say, buddy), Everly had absolutely no interest in him. “She made it pretty clear she doesn’t want to see me. Anyway, the hotel pitch meeting is next week, and I have to finalize this presentation.”
Sawyer muttered something that sounded a lot like “clueless asswipe” under his breath and stood up. “For a smart guy, you sure are a moron sometimes.”
Tyler, the burger stopped halfway to his mouth, watched his friend stroll to the door. “You’re not eating with me?”
Pausing in the office doorway, Sawyer looked back at him. “After your no-show, I made a lunch date with my wife. Amazing how being around a woman you love will make your schedule open up and make you become more flexible. You should try it sometime.”
“Oh yeah, and next thing you know I’ll be fixing up flea market finds.”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, buddy,” he said. “Especially if it involves watching my wife paint in a bikini—not that you’ll ever get to see that vision.”
With a sickeningly sweet smile stapled to his face, Sawyer offered a quick wave and walked out of Tyler’s office, leaving him to stew about what in the hell was going on with his life and what he needed—not wanted—to do next.
…
The new Black Hearts Art Gallery was relocating in a month to the former industrial building that some investor had renovated into a kind of art mecca with several galleries sharing the street level and the next three floors housing art studios. Above that there were typical Harbor City small apartments at outrageous rental prices. She hated it, but she was determined to sign the lease. It wasn’t the space’s fault it didn’t come with an infuriatingly sexy know-it-all. Now it was her apartment’s turn. Yeah. There was nothing in the world as fun as unpacking hastily packed boxes that weren’t even labeled because she’d been too pissed to remember the basics of moving.
Kiki sliced through the duct tape (it was the only kind Everly had had in her old apartment) holding a large box closed to reveal kitchen stuff. Great. It was just the reminder she needed of what had gotten her here.
“Forget that one. I’ll get to it later.”
Kiki carried the box the six steps to the other room and left it sitting on the three feet of counter space (total) in the galley kitchen.
“So you know I’m gonna kick your former downstairs neighbor’s ass, right?” Kiki said as she made her way through the maze of boxes in the living room/dining room/bedroom combination.
“He has a name.” And his head up his ass.
Kiki scoffed. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s Dead Man.”
She couldn’t lie; the image of Kiki going after Tyler made her smile in that deep, dark, fuck-you-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on kind of way. It was the first thing to knock the been-hit-by-a-crosstown-bus look off her face since she’d used every ounce of pride and Riverside bluster to walk out of the gala as if her heart hadn’t just been put through a garbage disposal.
“Thanks for the offer,” she said as she shoved another book onto the shelves the moving guys had put next to the single window. “But I made the call to end things, not him.”
“Why are you being so nice about this?” Kiki sliced open another box, this time revealing the shoes Everly had just thrown in there. Her friend looked around the sparse surroundings. “Where do you want these?”
“There’s a shoe rack hanging on the inside of the closet door.” She’d sacrifice space for her winter coats for her babies. “Anyway, I can be cool about it because”—she was too numb to feel anything but the occasional flash of anger or sadness—”none of it mattered. I’ve told you eighty billion times already that it was just for fun.”
“And that’s why you had to hotfoot it out of his building where you had twice the space for almost the same price?” Kiki asked as she loaded a fourth pair of black shoes onto the shoe rack.
Okay, that hadn’t been her most brilliant moment, but she’d needed space away from Tyler more than she needed space in her apartment. “I was month to month, and this place is in the heart of the art district for the same price. How could I not grab it? Gotta think with your head not your heart.”
At least, that’s what she was telling herself. Repeatedly. Day and night. Maybe even in her sleep.
Kiki crunched the now empty box and added it to the pile the super would cart away tomorrow. “Solid life advice there.”
Yeah, if only she could follow the wise words she spouted. Needing to move and to change the direction of this conversation before she confessed that she hadn’t stopped thinking about Tyler since the gala—sometimes it was fantasies about laughing as he groveled at her feet and sometimes it was banging him against the wall after he’d sufficiently groveled—Everly stood up, pressed her palms to her lower back, and arched. God, that felt good. Hauling boxes sucked. Then, she took the four steps over to her bed where her purse sat in the middle. She grabbed her wallet from the bag and fished out the check she’d written this morning thanks to the return of her outrageous security deposit from her old super.
“Well, the good news is that because of the move, I can finally give you this.” She handed over the check to Kiki. “It’s everything I owe you for the catering you’ve been doing at the shows.”
Kiki took the check, looked at the figure written on it, and immediately tried to hand it back. “You know there’s no time limit on this. With the move, I know things have to be tight right now.”
“Friends don’t take advantage of each other.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. “You helped when I needed it, and now I can finally pay you back. That was our agreement, and I’m sticking to it.”
“You’re good people, Everly,” Kiki said. “That asshole didn’t deserve you. Especially not with the crap he pulled about that Irena chick. That was a ginormous load of crap.”
“True.” Of course, that didn’t make the hole in her chest close up any faster.
“You know you matter, right?” Kiki enveloped her in a hug, squeezing tight before letting her go. “To the people who count, you matter, and we’d fight right beside
you even if it meant causing a scene in the middle of some crazy Harbor City high-society event because you’re worth fighting for.”
Everly pressed her lips together and fought to make her chin stop trembling. “That’s the nicest, most unhinged pep talk anyone’s ever given me. I just wish I didn’t need it.” Cue the waterworks. Damn, she hated not being able to stop the tears and for having tears for him. “I fell for him. I knew I shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean to but…” The rest of the words wouldn’t come.
“Oh honey,” Kiki said, hugging her again.
Everly just let the tears that she’d been holding onto for the past four days fall. It wasn’t a pretty cry. Her nose ran. Her face went flush. It was an ugly cry over a man she never should have been with anyway. One who thought she didn’t matter because she was a Riverside woman through and through.
“So much for just being about fun,” she said, once she could finally form words again. “I fell for him. I thought he was different. I made the exact same mistake my mom made even though Nunni warned me almost every day growing up to watch out for men like Tyler.”
“I’m gonna kill him.” Kiki grabbed the open bottle of wine sitting on the end table still wrapped in plastic next to the couch and poured a good measure into a red plastic cup and handed it to Everly. “For you, I’d wear orange.”
“But if you go to jail, who would cater my next gallery show and provide the horrible wine?” she asked as she downed a gulp of the wine that may not taste great but it had alcohol in it and that would make things temporarily better.
“Shit.” Kiki poured herself some wine. “Looks like we have to let him stay breathing.” She held up her glass. “Up with good friends and down with assholes.”