I began my mindless digitization, checking my email for Roland’s agenda. My heart twisted further. There wasn’t an agenda. I was rudderless on a day when I required direction, required distraction, and required motivation to run away from my frightening thoughts.
This wasn’t his fault. It was my fault.
I wanted to tell him, and yet, I couldn’t. I wanted to hide from him for the rest of my life; I wanted to never enter that office again; I hoped the phone would stay silent forever.
But that phone was going to ring, and I was going to have to answer it. I didn’t know if things were going to be the same between Roland and me. I didn’t know if they should be the same.
It was obvious that he trusted me, that he felt that he needed to tell me what he knew as the truth of our apparently shared past. But I hadn’t told him everything that I knew about that crash. I had no idea if he knew I was involved, but I suspected he didn’t.
It was a lot to wrap my mind around.
But that phone was going to ring. And I was going to have to face him.
“Doing anything for lunch?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin as Sam leaned over my desk, smiling.
“You scared the crap out of me,” I said, covering my heart with my hand.
“You weren’t even doing anything,” she laughed. “You were just staring off into space. Concentrating hard?”
“I guess I was,” I said. What I’d really been thinking about wasn’t the kind of fodder I’d use for conversations when you were just getting to know a coworker.
“Well, you’re probably famished,” she said, then grinned deviously. “Don’t you know that you need to put something greasy down on top of that hangover?”
I winced. “That obvious?” I thought I’d done all I could at home, but there really hadn’t been that much time to scrape off yesterday’s makeup and put on today’s before sprinting back to the office.
“Allow me to introduce you to the cafeteria’s cheeseburgers and fries,” she said, hooking arms with me as I stood up. My stomach gurgled dangerously, that precarious place between nausea and true hunger. Hot junk food would either save me or end me, and at this point, I was willing to take the risk.
The cafeteria was on the lobby level, and acted as, more or less, the watering hole of the entire building. We didn’t have to eat lunch there, but it was convenient, reasonably priced, and good. With my first bite of burger, I decided that I’d been hungrier than I was sick, and with my second bite, I even started to feel human.
Sam chattered on and on about office gossip. I figured she was a lot more connected than I was to the rest of the employees there. I was usually too busy trying not to screw up to keep track of who was sleeping with whom and other little juicy tidbits she loved to fill my head with.
There was a lull in the mostly one-sided conversation as I pondered getting a second burger. Would that undo all the good work the first had done?
“So, everyone’s been talking about how much more pleasant the beast has been to work around,” Sam said, sipping on her smoothie with a wicked twinkle in her eyes.
I frowned. If anyone knew just why he acted the way he did—and looked the way he did—they wouldn’t call him “the beast”. They never even gave him a chance, never willed themselves to look past that scar.
“What’d you do?” she teased. “Myra was never able to get him to come around. Did you kiss the toad and turn him into a prince?”
“Oh my God!” I said, covering my flushing face with my hands. “Seriously, Sam?”
“No harm in asking, is there?” she remarked, her round eyes shining with false innocence. “Unless there’s something to hide, that is.”
“There’s nothing to hide!” I squawked. What a lie that was. There was plenty to hide—just not the kind of secrets Sam thought she was after.
“The lady doth protest too much,” Sam said, arching her eyebrows.
“There’s literally nothing to protest,” I said. “You would understand, if you had to work for him like I do, why I can’t even fathom joking about this.”
“All right, all right,” she laughed, holding her hands up in surrender. “There’s no need to be so touchy about it. I didn’t know you were still so stressed out working for him.”
“My hangover can’t deal with this right now,” I said, which was at least partly true.
“You poor thing,” Sam commiserated, patting my hand. “I hope you had fun last night to make the pain today worth it.”
Did I have fun last night? Absolutely not. I’d probably never be able to drink bourbon again after that performance, forever tainted with my new knowledge about Roland.
Our break rolled to a close, but I couldn’t keep my mind tuned in to Sam’s prattle. It wasn’t the way to go about making friends in this place, but I just couldn’t focus—not when I was thinking about Roland, about what he’d told me, about what I knew.
It didn’t help when I got back and found no phone calls from Roland and still no daily agenda waiting in my email inbox. It was strange. He never failed to send me an agenda, usually endlessly appending it with more meetings and tasks.
In lieu of an agenda, I finished an entire box of documents waiting to be preserved in the cloud. It was the first time I’d completed the requisite box a day since I started working here.
When that was done, there was too much time to think, too little distraction to keep me from the truth: That I was a horrible person who ruined Roland’s future, his happiness, his life.
The air was getting too thick in here. I wanted to leave; I wanted to get out of here. My thoughts jumbled in my own brain, jarring with each other in an infinite loop. I couldn’t control them.
I killed Caro.
I killed my parents.
I killed Roland’s fiancée.
And if Roland ever found out…oh, God. I wished I could tell him. I wished I could tell him it wasn’t what he thought it was, that it wasn’t his fault. He was innocent in all of this, and the person who was guilty for everything was living under a roof he purchased and working at the company he’d fought through tragedy to build and expand. That person was me.
It was me. I did everything. I deserved to be hated, to be cast out, to never belong anywhere ever again.
I couldn’t stay here; I couldn’t continue to accept Roland’s kindness. It was misplaced. It was based on a lie. And if the truth ever came out, if he ever realized whom he’d taken under his wing, that I was the cause of all of his nightmares…
I didn’t think I could handle the consequences, as much as I deserved them. I wasn’t brave enough to face that.
Eyeing the clock, I chanced a glance at the camera mounted high on the wall, toward the ceiling. Was Roland watching me now, trying to figure out how I was coping with the truth he thought he’d told me? Surely not. Surely there were much more important things the president of a busy company needed to attend to.
It wasn’t yet four thirty, but I couldn’t do this any longer. The digitizing would get done, but just not this afternoon. I simply grabbed my wallet and left my purse, almost as if I were just stepping out for a quick errand, slipping my car keys into my jacket pocket. If I held my arm against my side, I could muffle their jangle.
I tried not to walk too fast; I tried not to give anyone more fodder for gossip. I only gave Sam a cursory smile as I waited for the elevator, not the extended goodbye I’d usually exchange.
If I got in trouble, I could just say I felt ill. I didn’t think Roland would call me out on my early exit. He would probably assume it was because of what he’d told me about my parents. I cringed, as the elevator opened and I stepped in. Then he’d feel guilty for causing me this ongoing extended suffering. I should’ve just stuck it out for the rest of the hour. I was weak. However, the magnitude of this new information was too much for me. I needed…something, and right now the only something I could come up with was to slink on home early and remove myself from this place.
&nb
sp; As the elevator door shut and the box began its lurch down to the lobby, I exhaled heavily and removed my car keys from my pocket. Wallet, phone, keys. That’s all I really needed. My purse would be fine at the office overnight. I was the most dangerous person there, after all.
The elevator door rolled open again, and I almost jumped out until I realized that I was still several floors above the lobby.
Then, I jumped backward.
“Well, well, well,” Dan said, grinning as he stepped into the suddenly too small elevator. “Look who’s playing hooky.”
“I’m not playing hooky,” I protested as the door rolled shut once again, making the space even more claustrophobic. Couldn’t I just make a clean escape?
“Oh, no?” he asked, his handsome face the very picture of innocence. “Where are you going? Errand for my brother?”
“Yes, that’s it,” I said, a little too eagerly. “An errand for Roland.”
“On a first name basis with him already?” Dan asked, stroking his beard. “It took years for Myra to get on that level.”
I swallowed hard. We’d only gotten to that first name basis because tragedy had linked our pasts together. There wasn’t any other magic to it. We were only on a first name basis because of something terrible I’d done.
The elevator saw fit to have mercy on me and admit another person into the car who peppered Dan with small talk all the way to the lobby. I edged past them and attempted to walk across the lobby like a normal person when all I wanted to do was sprint to my car. I just wanted to bury myself in my bed, sleep to forget all of my horrible thoughts, plop my ass down in front of some mindless television, even drink on top of this lingering hangover. It didn’t matter. I needed something to keep me from thinking about what I’d done, or I would go crazy.
“Beauty.”
I had to stifle a loud groan, as I turned around on the sidewalk just beyond the entrance to the building. Dan had followed me outside. What did he want? Couldn’t he see that I was about to lose my shit?
“I happen to know that my brother canceled all of his conference calls today and told me, personally, that he was sick and wouldn’t be coming in to work,” Dan said, looking like a gleeful child.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked, fighting against the rising tide of my anger. “What are you looking for here? An apology? You want me to beg for your pardon?”
“Relax,” he said, laughing. The sound of that laughter was so rich that it almost instantly disarmed me. “I just wanted to know if you were playing hooky or not so I wouldn’t feel bad doing it myself. Some days, I don’t care what my paycheck is, I just don’t want to be there.”
“Fine,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air. “You caught me. Guilty as charged. I’ve got a shit hangover, and I just want to go home and take a nap. Call it whatever you want. That’s what I’m doing. I did everything that I was supposed to do. There’s not really anything left if I’m not running around the office, doing things for Roland.”
“You had me at hangover,” Dan said, shaking his head. “You’re not playing hooky. You’re taking half a day because you’re feeling ill. A hangover is a serious sickness, Beauty. It requires the proper care—usually more drinks to soften the edge.”
I chuckled in spite of myself. “Do you take a lot of sick days complaining of headache, nausea, and general malaise?”
“I’d say it’s my most common affliction,” he confessed. “So, how about it? Can I take you out to get a hair of the dog or three? I’d consider it a humanitarian mission.”
I snorted. “Hair of the dog isn’t usually my style,” I said. “I usually take more of a junk food and naps approach.”
“We all approach it differently,” Dan allowed. “What about later? Once you’ve overcome your consequences, can I take you to dinner? Or do you have a crockpot meal waiting for you, threatening to burn your apartment down?”
“No, no slow cooker waiting for me,” I guffawed. “I wish. But drunk me wasn’t that interested in hungover me last night.”
“Then it’s a date,” he said, clapping his hands.
“Not a date,” I corrected, shaking my head. “Dinner. The last part of the cure. A meal. Whatever. But not a date.”
“You can call it whatever you want,” he said, those bright blue eyes sparkling even more than usual. “In fact, you know what I’m going to call it?”
“What?”
“I’m going to call it the dinner you better not try to flake out on later or else I’ll tell my brother you were skipping work.”
“I think most people would call that blackmail,” I said in mock shock, putting my hands on my hips and raising my eyebrows. “Are you attempting to blackmail me? All I’m doing is taking half of a sick day to nurse this rotten…illness.”
“I’m doing what I think is essential in getting you to go out for a night on the town with me,” Dan said, that wide grin even brighter nestled in his neatly trimmed beard. “I hate the word ‘no,’ Beauty. Please don’t tell me no. I really like you. Seattle’s new to you, and I want to show you the best parts of it before my brother ruins this city for you by being a dick to you all the time.”
“He’s not that bad,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “I mean, after that first day, I don’t think anything would worry me anymore.”
“Even so. Promise me you’ll call once you wake up from that nap of yours,” he said. “Don’t flake out, Beauty. I’m a good time. I can promise you that.”
I pretended to ponder it for a long count to sixty, just to fuck with him, but my mind had been made up. Talking to Dan these past few minutes had been a godsend. He distracted me so effectively from all things Roland and my terrible past that part of me wished I could just forgo that nap and spend the rest of the day with Dan. I didn’t want to come off as overeager, though, so I needed to play it cool.
“Fine,” I said, flipping my hair a little. “I guess I’ll talk to you later about our little blackmail date.”
“You’re making me the happiest man in the world,” Dan said, waving, as I walked toward the parking lot.
That made me the most nervous girl in the world.
Chapter 10
Back at the apartment, I tried to lie down for my nap, but my anxiety had blossomed fully inside of me, filling me with uncertainty.
Dan was so handsome he could get anyone he wanted. Instead, he’d picked me. Ever since that evening in the parking lot when he’d asked me for dinner, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that he’d want anything to do with me. Could it really all stem from that night at the bar when Dan had found me? Could that initial attraction have lasted that long? It seemed to me that a man like Dan would be less single-minded than that. He could have anyone.
I was a nobody.
And it didn’t help that if Roland had asked his brother to find me so he could give me a job out of pity, then Dan knew about the wreck. About my parents. It was pressure I didn’t want or need.
I should’ve just gone out with Dan right there and then, after he’d chased me from the building, to try and save myself some of this crushing anxiety. If I’d done that, there wouldn’t have been time to lie around in my apartment and think about all the reasons why him asking me out were so improbable.
I wouldn’t have had to think at all.
I took a couple more aspirin, washing them down with some orange juice I seriously considered putting vodka in, and tried for a nap on the couch. Maybe a change of scenery from the bedroom would help.
I jammed my head under a pillow, wrapping myself fully in a blanket, like a cocoon, against the muted light from outside. For such a rainy place as Seattle, it was surprising just how bright an overcast sky could be.
My breathing slowed, my mind started to clear, and I slipped into a dream, jumbled with faces and words, people I’d never seen before, people I’d never see again.
Roland on the side of the road, handsome and whole, with a beautiful woman, angry but in love, knowing that th
is fight would pass, that they only fought because they cared so much about each other.
Dan with his hands on my hips, guiding me against him, his erection pressing against the meat of my thigh, hurting in just the right way.
Caro’s face lit up in a sudden moonlight that wasn’t moonlight at all, but a pair of cars stopped on the side of a country road, spinning into a terrible weightlessness, and then an even more horrible nothing.
My eyes popped open. The light outside was a little less bright, and the hair stuck against my damp forehead. I’d gotten too hot in my cocoon of avoidance…that was all. My past had been on my brain, and that’s why it had haunted my dreams.
The thought wasn’t lost on me that it had been a long time since I’d dreamed of the wreck. Sometimes I was in the car with Caro, and other times I was watching from above, like a camera filming a scene in an action movie. Once, I’d been standing alongside my parents, watching that car come spinning in.
I wondered whether I would ever—with my new knowledge of the situation—go to sleep and find myself inside the car with Roland and Mina. Had either of them known what was about to hit them? Did they see it coming, like Caro, or had they just blacked out, like me?
I took another shower to wash the unpleasant aftereffects of my dream off, then had another drink of juice…this time, with vodka. My hangover had all but vanished, and I was working on eliminating my nerves for my impending date with Dan.
The more steps I took—another screwdriver, drying my hair, perusing my closet, putting on makeup—the more I looked forward to calling him. I was eager to get back to that place of distraction where I wasn’t thinking about what Roland had told me or what I’d done to cause him such heartache. I wanted Dan’s audacious flirtations and more booze and something else to join that cheeseburger from lunch in my stomach.
I laid out a couple of dresses that Roland had deemed too provocative for the office, figuring that at least one of them would probably be provocative enough for a date, and picked up my phone.
Dan answered on the first ring like an eager little boy.
LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance Page 47