by Kylie Walker
“She’s helping me with your case.”
“Fuck!” It suddenly dawned on me that Abby had read the file and oh God…did she watch the video? I looked at Chase and it was like he read my mind, or just my expression.
“She didn’t want to watch the video. I didn’t think it was necessary. I’m kind of glad she didn’t now. What the hell happened between the two of you?”
I was saved by the return of the object of my…Jesus, I’m really not sure what she is the object of any longer. I haven’t really felt anything remotely like what I feel for Abby for anyone else, and after nine years, I was suddenly faced with the fact those feelings hadn’t diminished at all.
I was staring at her again as she approached the table. I glanced at Joze who was now glaring at me. I guess the bestie knows what a ball-less wonder I am now too. Sadly, instead of feeling sorry for myself or angry, I was glad Abby had her. Everyone needs a best friend who has their back.
“So, who is going to tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Chase let it go,” Joze told him. “Go get me another coke.”
I’d never seen Chase take orders from a woman. He’s not sexist in the least, but he’s very opinionated and set in his ways. He grew up rich with a female nanny who he manipulated. He had a female tutor who also allowed him to get away with murder, and a mother who doted on him and two older sisters. He had every one of them wrapped around his little finger and nobody ever told Chase what to do. They asked him, nicely. But there must be something very different about the exotic beauty because he was on his feet before she had all the words out of her mouth. He looked at Abby and said, “You want another glass of wine?” Abby looked at the half glass in front of her and shook her head.
“Get me a Jack and Coke, light on the coke.” Chase raised an eyebrow and once again looked at his lady who nodded. I had to suppress a smile as he nodded back before asking me,
“You okay with your beer Will?”
I’d only taken a sip of it so far. My stomach felt a little queasy.
“I’m good,” I told him. He hurried off to do what he was told and I was left with the ladies, both of whom were scowling at me now. I tried the smile that usually got me out of trouble and said, “So Abby, Chase tells me you work for his firm?” She only scowled deeper so I looked at Joze and said, “What about you, Joze? Are you an attorney too?”
She nodded and picked up her wine glass. She drank what was left in it and when she sat it back down on the table explained, “I work for a private firm in the village. What do you do, Will?”
I wanted to kiss her simply for trying to make conversation with me until Chase got back. I had so much I wanted to say to Abby but this wasn’t the time or place. “I own an investment group on Wall Street.” Abby rolled her eyes. It reminded me of how hard-headed she could be and what a little spit-fire she was when she got riled up. That made my cock swell once again. I shifted in my seat making sure it was under the table as she asked, “How do you know Chase?”
For the next ten minutes, Joze and I made small talk while Abby stared daggers through me. I couldn’t understand her nerve. She was pissed off at me? She was the one who stood by while her father kicked me out of her life and then refused to take my calls for weeks afterwards. She even returned the gift and the card I sent her for her eighteenth birthday. We were supposed to celebrate that together.
Crazy as it seems, every year on that day, I have a hard time getting out of bed. I still have the gift. It’s still wrapped and I keep it in the dresser next to my bed. I used to imagine us getting back together and me giving it to her during those rare times when I didn’t force myself to be angry with her so I didn’t have to feel the pain. I am really surprised she’s not married by now. I expected her daddy to have her married off to a doctor and living in a house in the suburbs with 2.2 kids.
“Here you are beautiful,” Chase said, sitting the drink in front of Joze. She smiled at him with her pretty dimples winking out, and thanked him. He sat Abby’s in front of her and she picked it up and we all watched in amazement as she drank every last drop without pausing. She sat the glass down and said, “I’m going to get another drink. Anyone want anything?”
“Abby…” Her friend reached out to her as she stood up. Abby pulled away and smiled.
“I’m fine, Joze. I’m just thirsty. I’ll be right back.” As she walked away, she stumbled slightly. Chase waited until she was out of earshot and said, “She’s not a drinker.” I hadn’t taken my eyes off her. When she had almost reached the bar one of the frat boys who had been standing near our table earlier said something to her. I saw her look at him first with surprise…and then she looked at me and back at him. Suddenly the surprise turned to seduction and she was touching his chest. I felt my blood begin to boil and told myself she was just trying to get to me.
The bitch of it was she was doing a damned good job of it. I didn’t have any right to be jealous, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to rip the guy’s head off and carry her out of there over my shoulder like a caveman.
“Chase, I should go.” I should have gone already. What the hell was I thinking?
Chase looked at Joze and then they both looked at me. It had already been close to an hour since I arrived. Neither of them tried talking me out of it. Instead they both nodded and Chase said, “I’m sorry man, maybe we can have lunch tomorrow?”
“Sure, call me. Joze it was a pleasure.”
She gave me what looked like a genuine smile and said, “Take care, Will.”
When I turned back around toward the bar Abby wasn’t there any longer. I quickly scanned the crowd and the dance floor. That was when I saw her in the arms of one of the hormone-charged twenty-one year olds. The kid still had acne, for fuck’s sake.
Was she really still so mad at me or that drunk from three drinks? Four…I noticed she had an almost empty glass in her hand. How the hell she got it so quickly I didn’t know. The queue at the bar was beyond a joke.
As I watched her standing there, I wondered if she ate before she came. Then I wondered why I cared. I started toward the door again but frat boy slid one of his hands down the back of her sexy dress and grabbed her ass. I told myself to let it go even as I was walking across the dance floor toward them. I was almost there when I saw Chase. He stepped between me and them seconds before pimple face went in for the kiss.
I saw Abby turn her head to the side, but that didn’t discourage him. His lips were all over her face and from the looks of it he was trying to suck it off. Meanwhile she was pushing against him with her hands and he wasn’t letting her go. I took all of this in within seconds and then I pushed my best friend aside, grabbed pimple face by the back of his shirt and disengaged him from Abby. I saw her kind of fall over to the side and breathed a sigh of relief when Chase caught her. Then I hauled pimple face to the door and threw him outside…literally. He was dazed and it took him a second to stumble back up to his feet.
“What’s going on here?” The bouncer who was at the door when I came in was hovering over me.
“He was trying to force himself on a lady.”
The big guy looked down at the kid who was barely five foot nine in his boots. “That true?”
“No! I was dancing with a woman and this big ape came over and picked me up and threw me out here.”
“Do I need to call the cops and get this sorted out?” the big guy asked, sounding bored rather than vaguely interested.
I smiled and said, “Sure, I’ll wait. Have them tell Chief Patterson it’s Will Sheridan. I own Sheridan Investment group and use a lot of his off-duty guys as security.”
The big guy pulled out his phone and suddenly pimple face said, “You know what, man? This place is fucked up. I’m leaving. Call whoever you want.” He turned to go and the bouncer looked at me. I shrugged. He didn’t want to mess with the kid any more than I did. He let him go.
“Will, is everything okay?” I looked over and saw Chase step out the door.
“I’m okay. How is Abby?”
“Drunk. She’ll be puking all night long.”
“She had four drinks.”
“Abby’s not a drinker. She drinks wine usually. Tonight she had a glass of wine and three strong whiskeys. She was also working almost right up until it was time for us to leave tonight. I’d be willing to bet she didn’t eat.”
“Damn it. This is my fault.”
“Listen, Will, you know I’m not one to interfere in other people’s business, but if Abby is going to keep working with me on this case, I need to know what happened between you two.”
I sighed and decided to give him the short side of the story. “Abby and I were in love, I thought. A few weeks after we graduated from high school, Abby’s dad offered me fifty grand to disappear from her life.”
“What did you do?”
“I left.”
Chapter 5
ABBY
I swear to God, my head feels like it is going to explode. I can’t open my eyes. It feels like they’re taped shut. My mouth tastes like vomit and cotton. Jesus, what did I do? I tried to remember how I got home last night. Problem was, the last thing I remembered was flirting with a bunch of young college guys. God please tell me I didn’t bring a guy home with me.
With my eyes still closed, I slapped at the mattress on either side of me. There was no one there but me. I pulled one eye about halfway open. I saw the NY Yankees poster on the far wall and breathed a sigh of relief, at least I was in my own bed. Why can’t I remember what I did though? I only had three drinks…maybe four. Shit. But four drinks, really? Maybe that college guy slipped me something when I wasn’t looking? My eyes shot open at the troubling thought, and once again, I groped around until I found my phone. When I sat up, though, I screamed.
The door to the bedroom was open and Will was standing in the doorway looking frantic and so freaking gorgeous. Oh my God. This is not my place! How did I end up here?
“Are you okay?”
He started to come closer. That was when I realized that I wasn’t only not in my own bed, I was nude. Literally bare-assed naked and in the one man’s bed I’d never dreamed of occupying. Not even for a handful of minutes.
“Don’t fucking move! Stay where you are!” I shrieked. Thankfully, he stopped in his tracks and raised an eyebrow when I pulled the comforter up under my neck. Was that because he’d already seen everything there was to see last night? Who was I kidding? He must have done something. Except...my pussy wasn’t tender. There was no ache there at all—weird. “What am I doing here?” I demanded, tired, confused, and getting downright pissed off.
“Calm down, Abby. I can explain.”
“You better and you better explain fast,” I snarled.
“Can I sit?”
He indicated the chair a few feet from the bed. When I looked at it, my eyes caught the Yankee’s poster once again. It made me want to cry. I suddenly remembered a conversation we’d had at sixteen. We were both die hard Yankees fans and every time we got a chance we’d watch the games on television together. Dad hadn’t gotten too upset over Will yet at that point so he was still allowed to come to our house and hang out sometimes on the weekends. That particular weekend was the first time Will brought up a future together.
“When we’re old and married we’re going to keep a Yankee’s poster on the wall to remind us to never grow up. I don’t want to be like our parents. I don’t ever want to forget how to play.”
“Me neither,” I had told him, snuggling into his side and thinking I was the luckiest girl on the planet to be with someone as sensitive as him. I agreed with pretty much anything Will said back then. I already knew I loved him and I never wanted to lose him. Just the memory of how I’d been made me want to gag at my younger self and her naiveté.
“Good,” he’d said back in the day, and I can remember closing my eyes in delight as he’d pressed his lips to the side of my throat to dot a kiss there. “Because I want to play with you. Forever.”
Will worked at a grocery store back then bagging groceries. He gave a lot of the money he made to his mom to help her out with the bills, but even though I told him not to, he always used his tips to buy me presents. One day not long after that conversation he showed up on my doorstep with a framed Yankee poster. He’d bought himself one just like it. “When we get married and have our own place, we’ll hang them side by side on the north wall of our bedroom.”
“Why the north wall?” I’d asked him.
“Because north is up and that’s where you and I are going Abby, up, up, up. We won’t stop until the whole world is in our hands.” I’d had tears in my eyes then too. Mostly it was because I loved him so much that my chest hurt and I didn’t know how to express it. He was always so much better with words than me. That day I’d grabbed him and pulled him into the foyer of our large home and I’d kissed him right there. Dad walked in on us and that was the beginning of his campaign to keep Will away from me. It had been the beginning of the end, I just hadn’t known it then.
I’d hung the poster in my room at home until I went away to college. I had forgotten all about it by the time I graduated and moved out of the dorm rooms and into my own place. When the movers brought my things over and I saw it that day I’d fallen apart. When I pulled myself together I hung it up on the north wall of my bedroom to remind myself to keep moving up, up, up…even without Will.
“Abby? Can I sit?” Will. Will is still in the room. Damn it. While I’m fucking naked!
“Yeah, sit. Tell me how I ended up naked in your bed.” Where were my friends when this guy was seducing me? I never dreamed Joze wouldn’t have my back, or even Chase for that matter.
He moved fluidly across the room, slinking towards me with a grace I didn’t want to appreciate. He was still built like an athlete, tall and muscular with no visible fat at all on his body. Back in high school when he played baseball, his body had been covered with lean muscle. Now those muscles were well-defined and the tight t-shirt he wore today made me wonder if this man had any clothes that didn’t fit like a second skin. “What do you remember from last night?” he asked me, a concerned note to his treacherous voice—even that was sexy. Christ, was there no part of him that wasn’t perfectly attuned to a woman’s ovaries?
“I was out having a good time with my friends and you showed up and ruined it.” My irritation at finding his devious self-attraction was aimed purely his way.
He gave me a patient look. It pissed me off. I felt like he was trying to patronize me. “I’m sorry about that. I promise I had no idea you’d be there.”
“Oh, I believe you. I mean for nine years you’ve done an incredible job of avoiding me.”
“Abby, that’s not true. Your father…”
“Really Will? Stop blaming my father. What kind of man is so easily pushed around?” Something dark passed behind his green eyes. That zinger had hit its mark. Let him be pissed off. I didn’t care. Why should I? He was the one who left me!
“Let’s leave that alone for a minute and talk about last night. I was on my way out when I saw you on the dance floor with one of those college guys. He had his hands all over you and you looked like you were way too drunk to give consent for that. I got into a...” he pulled a face, “minor scuffle with him. By the time Chase and I got back inside to check on you, Joze had you in the bathroom. You were throwing up and crying. We were all worried that guy had slipped you something. It just seemed like more than drunk.”
“So the three of you took a vote to decide who had to take me home and you lost?” My tone was dripping with sarcasm. I had to eat my own words and they were bitter, when seconds later Will said, “No. Joze wasn’t hearing of anyone taking you home but her. We put you both into an Uber, and Chase and I hadn’t even made it to our own cars yet when he got a call from Joze’s phone. It was the Uber driver. Joze was having a seizure. Chase’s number was the last one called in her phone. He called to say he was dropping her and her “drunk fri
end” off at the hospital. Which was unbelievably kind of him. If he hadn’t we wouldn’t know where either of you were. Chase and I met you there. He didn’t want to leave Joze alone and there was no way I was putting you in a cab and sending you home alone either. I have no idea where you live, so I brought you here.”
I felt like the room was spinning. Joze hasn’t had a seizure in over a year!
She’d grown up with a seizure disorder and because her parents believed in “holistic” healing, they refused to put her on anything that would “chemically alter” her brain functions. She told me that she’d nearly died and when she was old enough to consent, she started taking the meds. She didn’t like the way they made her feel but having seizures scared her. Once she started her career as an attorney one of her biggest fears was having a seizure in the center of a courtroom in the middle of a case.
I tried to remember if she was drinking last night. She usually doesn’t because she can’t take her meds when she drinks. But, I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems that I hadn’t even noticed…or I can’t remember. Either scenario makes me the biggest asshole friend on the planet. I threw back the covers, saw the look on Will’s face, remembered I was naked and pulled them back over me.
“Can you go out so I can get dressed, please? I have to go see Joze and make sure she’s okay.”
“I just talked to Chase. She’s going to be fine. They’re not sure why she had the seizure but Chase said the doctor said something about stress…” That was the point where I lost it. I’m a horrible, ugly, asshole friend.
Chapter 6
WILL
Abby was crying. Not just crying, sobbing uncontrollably. I didn’t have any experience with crying women. My mother has always been as tough as nails. I never saw her cry…not once in my life. Any other women I saw cry were in my periphery.
Usually when I was with a woman I was doing something with her that made her crazy with lust, or at least left her smiling from ear to ear…but crying was unheard of. What the fuck am I supposed to do?