Claiming Cari

by Megyn Ward

  Turning on her, I take a step forward, the small, cruel part of me liking the way she shrinks away from me in her seat. That night isn’t something I want to think about, but I force myself to replay walking in on the two of them. Patrick, obviously drunk, pants yanked down around his ass. Lisa on her knees in front of him. Her cheap, pink lipstick smeared all over his—

  “Patrick didn’t force you to do anything—you’re lying.” I turn around to look at James. “I was there. I saw her—” I squeeze my fingers around my keys again and take a deep breath. “What happened between her and Patrick was consensual, trust me.”

  “I was forced to perform sex acts by my employer. I was told that if I didn’t, I’d be fired,” Lisa squawks like a parrot from her seat behind me.

  My employer? “Patrick isn’t your employer,” I say, shaking my head. “He doesn’t own Gilroy’s. He doesn’t even work there—he just started helping around the bar because his uncle wants to spend more time at home.”

  “His uncle signed the bar over to him—as well as the rest of the family holdings—five months ago.” The smile on James’s face grows wider as realization dawns. “He didn’t tell you.”

  No. he didn’t tell me.

  “Now, why wouldn’t he tell you—his best friend—about something as monumental as becoming a multi-millionaire?”

  A millionaire? I can’t speak, so I just shake my head because I don’t know. I don’t know why Patrick wouldn’t tell me something like that.

  “Maybe because he knows what a gold-digging slut you are and he didn’t want to be your latest victim,” Trevor pipes up behind me. “You know who did know, though?”

  I don’t have to hear him say her name to know who he’s talking about.

  “Sara,” James says grinning at me like he just won the lottery. “He told Sara Howard all about it. Even after they broke up... he hadn’t even fucked you yet, and he knew what a money-grubbing cooz you are.”

  I never took anything for either of them. Nothing but shit and more grief than I care to remember. That Patrick might think I did, that he hid something as important as being given his family’s business because he thinks I’m just a whore who uses guys for their money is more than I can take. I need to get out of here. Now.

  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with me,” I say quietly, just wanting it to be over.

  “Oh,” James says, finally standing. “Not one fucking thing.” He comes out from behind his desk to stand in front of me. “I just wanted to see your face when you found out that I’m going to ruin your do-gooder boyfriend and that he sees you for the cocksucking slut you really are. No...” He leans back on his desk, reminding me of what he was doing on it the last time I was here. “The tape of me fucking you like a dog is another matter, altogether.”

  “A tape you made without my consent,” I remind him.

  “Prove it.” He smiles at me. “You can’t—you can’t even prove that it’s me... matter of fact, the night it was made I was escorting a model friend of mine to a gallery opening, remember? That was the night you went out with Everett Chase.”

  The mention of Chase breaks me a little. Reminds me why I’m even here. Seeing the tape James has of us isn’t going to change anyone’s opinion of me because he’s right. Patrick thinks I’m a whore anyway. The only reason I’m still here is because of Chase. He’s a good man, and I can’t let James ruin him because he made the mistake of asking me out.

  “And you’re going to release the tape if I don’t... what?” At this point, I don’t even care.

  James looks me up and down, his lewd gaze feeling like a million cockroaches crawling over my skin. “Whatever I want.” His gaze settles on my breasts, his tongue snaking out to lick his lips. “With whoever I want. Whenever I want.”

  “Why?” I say, finally drawing his attention, asking the question that’s been bothering me since I saw that video. “You made that video months ago—while we were still together. So, why now?”

  “Because a dirty little cunt like you doesn’t leave someone like me,” he hisses in my face a split second before I feel his hand slide under the hem of my paint-splattered T-shirt. “And a do-gooder asshole like him doesn’t get to have what I don’t. So, why don’t you get down on your knees and thank me for not showing him what a slut you are.”

  He’s all but admitting that he somehow knew that Patrick and I started sleeping together. I want to ask him if it was Sara. If she’s the one who’s been feeding him information, but I don’t because it doesn’t matter. Even if he admitted it, I’d have no way to prove it.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” I say, just as James’s hand closed over my breast. “How about you go fuck yourself.” I take a deep breath and shove my keys into his face. I’ve never had to use the can of mace Patrick attached to them when I started opening and closing the gallery by myself, but I use it now.

  I spray it right into James’s face.

  The second the spray hits his eyes, he screams and tries to shove me away from him, but his hand is trapped under my shirt, anchoring him to me. I keep spraying, even when I feel a heavy-handed fist crash into the side of my face while another one grabs me by my hair and yanks me back. I fling my arm out, raking my nails across James’s face right before I hear my shirt rip and I hit the ground with a hard bounce that rattles my joints in their sockets.

  There’s a thick, caustic chemical cloud floating above me. Trevor and Lisa are both coughing and gagging, but Trevor is howling, clawing at his bleeding face where my nails ripped it open, his eyes already beginning to blister.

  “You fucking bitch,” he screams at me, taking a stumbling lurch in my direction. “You’re dead. Do you hear me? I’m going to—”

  I tune him out and scramble for the door, reaching up to slap at its handle. It swings open, and I crawl out before turning quickly to pull it shut behind me. Leaning against the door, I press my face against it for a second, listening to the chaos behind it.

  I’m dizzy. My face hurts. My eyes feel like they’re on fire and I think I’m bleeding, but I don’t care. I feel like I just won the Boston Marathon. Elated and exhausted and ready to do it all over again.

  I hear someone clear their voice and I finally open my eyes to a small cluster of people gathered in the reception area on James’s floor. They’re all looking at me, talking behind their hands. Some of them look alarmed. Some of them look like the sound of James screaming like a little bitch is music to their ears.

  I can totally relate.

  I scramble to my feet and grab my bag off Janine’s desk, knocking her desk phone to the floor. Behind me, James’s office door flies open, and the three of them tumble out, still coughing and choking. “Cari,” James screams, “I’m going to kill you.”

  I don’t say anything, I just keep moving. I decide to take the stairs because there’s no way I can wait for the elevator with what’s happening behind me. Just as I turn toward the stairs, the elevator doors slide open. I stand there, feeling suddenly like this is all some sort of dream.

  Patrick is in the elevator. At least I think it’s Patrick. It looks like Patrick—but he has a baseball bat and the sort of look that, if I didn’t know him, would scare the shit out of me.

  “What—” I start to ask him what he’s doing here, but he barely glances in my direction before he aims his glare at something behind me. I don’t even have to look to know he’s zeroed in on James.

  He steps clear of the car and into the reception area, feet planted while he tracks James movements behind me like he’s prey. Like he’s here to rip out his throat with his bare teeth. I look down at the bat he has in his hand, gripped so tight it looks like he’s choking it to death.

  “No,” I shout, pushing the flat of my hands against his chest, shoving him backward. I drop my keys, but I don’t stop. I keep pushing until we’re in the elevator. He’s glaring down at me, a mixture of surprise and rage—like he’s surprised I’m here. Angry that I stopped him from doing w
hat he came here to do. In the reception area behind us, people start to cough as the chemical cloud I unleashed in James’s office starts to drift into the open area.

  “Move,” he growls in my face, trying to shove me out of the way so he can do what he came here to do.

  “Please, Patrick—” My voice breaks on a sob. I suddenly don’t feel like I’ve won the Boston Marathon. I feel like my ex-boyfriend just beat me up and tried to blackmail me. “please, just take me home.”

  He finally looks at me, really looks at me.

  Shifting his gaze, he stares at James over my shoulder. “She just saved your fucking life,” Patrick says to him, just as the elevator doors slide closed.

  Three

  Patrick

  The past hour has been a blur.

  The last thing I remember clearly is Tess telling me that Cari went to see James on her own. That he sent her a video of the two of them having sex. That he was going to show it to me unless she came to his office. Alone.

  I remember Con grabbing the bat in my hand, trying to keep me from carrying it out the door, but I don’t remember taking it from behind the bar. I remember calling Sara and telling her that I need to get into her father’s building and asked what floor Cari’s ex worked on but I don’t remember if I told her why.

  I remember parking my truck next to Cari’s car—the mixture of rage and relief I felt when I saw it—but I don’t remember the elevator ride to the 22nd floor. I remember that I was there to beat James to death. Whether he hurt Cari or not—I was going to kill him. I remember the only thing that stopped me was seeing her face, red and welted, inches from mine. Feeling her hands on my chest.

  Please take me home.

  We’re in the elevator, taking the express route to the parking garage. As soon as the doors slide closed behind her, Cari moves away from me to stand on the far side of the car. I look at her, huddled against the cold steel wall, face battered. Shirt tore up the middle. Eyes red and irritated from the mace she got James in the face with.

  I’m angry. So fucking angry that I’m considering shoving her out of the elevator when we get to the parking garage and taking the express back up to James office so I can do what I came here to do.

  But I’m also proud of her. She doesn’t need me to protect her. She doesn’t need anyone. She fucked James up all by herself. I open my mouth to say it but what comes out is something else entirely. “It was stupid, coming here alone,” I say, the words tumbling out, hard and angry.

  Across the car, she sighs, “I know,” she says, wincing a bit before pressing the tip of her finger to the corner of her mouth while her other hand clutches at her shirt to keep it closed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I say because I can’t seem to stop being an asshole to her. I take a deep breath and try again, “If you’d come to me I could’ve—”

  “Tell you what exactly?” She turns to face me, shoulders slumped against the wall of the elevator. “That my ex-boyfriend made a sex tape of us? That he manipulated the time stamp somehow to make it look like the tape was made on Saturday night. That it was Chase, I was fucking and not him?” She looks away, her gaze landing somewhere over my shoulder. “I couldn’t tell you any of that, Patrick because you never would’ve believed me.”

  “What?” I say, taking a step toward her. I don’t even care. Not about the sex tape and not about the lawsuit. Not right now. Right now, all I want to do is hold her. “Why would you think—” She puts her hand up between us, her eyes narrow into a glare aimed right at me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the money?” She presses her hand against my chest to keep me away.

  “What money?” I say, the alarm bells going off in my head loosening the grip I have on the bat.

  “Save it, Patrick,” she says, turning away from me to straighten herself from her slump just as the elevator gives a slight jerk. “James was all too happy to tell me everything. I know you own Gilroy’s. The term multi-millionaire was used so I can only assume that a college dive bar isn’t the only thing you own... and that was a rhetorical question.”

  “Cari—”

  She shoots me the kind of look a wounded animal gives you when you reach out to try and help them. Like they know damn well you have no intention of helping. That you’re just going to hurt them all over again. “I know why you didn’t tell me you had money,” she says, just as the doors slide open. I expect to be met by security or maybe the police, but there’s no one here. The parking garage is deserted. I don’t expect it to stay that way for long though. We left a hell of a mess upstairs. “But contrary to popular belief, I don’t fuck for money.”

  She walks out of the elevator, leaving me feeling sucker-punched. “I don’t—”

  “Tell me you don’t own Gilroy’s,” she whirls on me, face hard, her black-eye rapidly swelling shut. “Tell me that your uncle didn’t sign over everything he owned to you five months ago. Tell me you didn’t tell Sara but not me. Go ahead—tell me.”

  “That’s...” I say quietly. My heart feels like it’s trying to hammer its way out of my chest. “That’s not why I didn’t tell you.”

  Her face crumples a bit before she manages to smooth it out again. “Okay...” she makes this weird sound, caught somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “Okay... can we leave before the cops get here, please? My car keys are somewhere upstairs, and I’d like to go home and call my mom before the police show up to arrest me for felony assault.”

  I lead her to my truck, parked a few spaces away from hers and open the door for her. “Cari.” I say her name because I know I’m supposed to say something. I should say something, but I don’t know what. She doesn’t even look at me.

  “Just take me home, Patrick,” she says before sliding into my truck and shutting the door between us.

  Four

  Cari

  When we walk into Gilroy’s, Tess takes one look at my face and loses her mind.

  “Tell me you killed him,” she seethes at Patrick. “Tell me that dirty motherfucker died a horrible, bloody death and that he shit his pants when you—”

  “Simmer down, Half-pint, we have an audience,” Conner says quietly, jerking his head toward the bar. Declan is behind it, tending to the dozen or so day-drinkers sitting around it.

  They’re all staring at us.

  “Give them a round on the house and then shut it down,” Patrick says over my head. “We’ll be back down to sort through the rest later.” Declan nods before shooting a withering glare at the groaning patrons in front of him. As soon as he looks at them, they shut up. I want to ask what we have to sort through but I’m herded upstairs before I get the chance.

  Patrick leads me to the couch and tells me to sit before heading to the kitchen where he starts rifling through the freezer while Tess heads to the bathroom. I hear her rooting around in the cabinets under the sink. They both come back at the same time—Patrick with an ice pack and Tess with the first-aid kit. Before either of them can make a move, Conner stops them.

  “First things first,” he says, looking at me. “Give me a dollar.”

  “A dollar?” I look at Patrick. It’s a reflex that I instantly hate myself for. I refocus on Conner. “I—what—”

  “Get your wallet out and give me whatever folding money you have,” Conner says, jerking his chin at my bag. “Chop, chop, Legs—we’re wasting time.”

  Because I don’t know what’s going on and I’m too tired to figure it out, I do what he says. “All I have is a ten,” I say, handing him the bill.

  He takes it and puts it in his pocket. “That’ll do,” he says, talking past me. “Okay, we need to document the assault,” he says, not sounding at all like the Conner I know. Before I can open my mouth, he looks at me, studying my face for a second. “Is that something we can do here or do we need to go the hospital for a more extensive exam?”

  When I don’t answer right away, Tess hunkers down in front of me, tipping her face so she can look into mine. “He’s asking
you if James raped—”

  “I know what he’s asking me,” I say, cutting Tess off before she can finish. “And no, he didn’t get the chance.”

  Conner nods before looking at Patrick. “How about you?” he says, dropping his gaze to the bat in his cousin’s hand. “We need to destroy evidence?”

  “No,” Patrick shakes his head, looking at me. “She fucked him up before I got there,” he says, tossing the bat onto the dining room table. His voice sounds strange. Thick, like it’s strangling him.

  Conner looks at me again, his mouth curved into a lop-sided grin. “Way to go, Legs,” he says, sounding more like himself, but it didn’t last. “Okay, I figure we’ve got a few hours, at best, before we get a visit from Boston’s finest, so we need to get in gear. Tess and Patrick are going to take you into the bathroom and take some pictures.”

  “What?” I shoot a look at Patrick. He doesn’t look any happier about it than I am. “No. I just want to—”

  “We need a paper grocery bag, a pair of tongs, magic marker and a stapler,” he says to Patrick, ignoring me completely.

  “Got it,” Patrick says, moving into the kitchen to fill Conner’s wish list, collecting all four items in short order.

  “Great, Tess will collect your clothes. Patrick will document.” He gives me a look like he doesn’t understand why I’m not moving already. “You can get cleaned up afterward,” he says, motioning for me to get up. Because I don’t know what else to do and because I’m still too tired to argue, I stand up and follow Tess and Patrick into the bathroom.

  “Stand on the towel,” Tess says, shutting the door behind us, before pulling out her phone. I do what she says and pose as directed while she takes pictures of my face, shirt, and hair. I shoot a look at Patrick who’s standing behind me. He’s leaning against the bathroom sink, phone out, aimed in our direction.

  He’s filming us.

  “Is it me or has Conner seen one too many episodes of Law & Order?” I say, and Tess cracks a smile. Behind me, Patrick makes a sound that might be a laugh. “What am I missing?” I say because I seem to be missing a lot lately when it comes to the Gilroys.