Veda shifted.
“Did Eugene Masterson change?”
Veda’s eyes narrowed.
Hope’s voice rose. “Did Jax Murphy change? Or did I have to send that asshole over the edge of a cliff just to get him to stop fucking with your life?”
Veda’s eyes fell, and she sighed. She had no argument. Hope was right, and there was no way around it.
“Do I think people can feel guilt?” Hope’s voice lowered at the sight of Veda’s surrender. “Yeah. And I think they have no choice but to go overboard with good deeds when that guilt starts eating them alive. But, at the core? No. I don’t think people change. I don’t think they ever change. The philanthropic Brock Nailer of today is the same rapist Brock Nailer on that balcony ten years ago. He just got better at making sure his nice-guy mask was tied on good and tight so he doesn’t run the risk of revealing the true monster underneath. Just like Gage had his mask tied on good and tight before we ripped it off his face for him.”
Veda clenched her fists when her hands began to shake. “You’re right.”
“Always.” Hope snatched up her camera with a scoff and resumed flipping through the photos.
Veda took another moment and then picked up her camera as well.
For another hour they patiently scrutinized camera after camera on the quiet deck, grabbing a new one from Veda’s bag each time. Dante made sure their drinks stayed fresh, giving Veda a pat on the shoulder every time he came by, excited about his new employee.
Just when the last shards of the setting sun disappeared beyond the horizon, and both Hope and Veda were beginning to show the first signs of fatigue—hunched backs, heavy yawns, and hooded eyes—Hope suddenly shot up in her seat.
Her wide hazel eyes were riveted to the screen of her camera.
Veda’s fingers froze over the delete button of her own camera. “What is it?”
Hope didn’t respond, a deep line forming between her eyebrows, eyes shrinking. She remained motionless, speechless. Then, she slowly lifted her eyes to Veda, the gum in her mouth frozen in the corner of her cheek.
“Shit,” Hope said.
“Hope?” Veda set her camera down.
“Shit.”
Veda covered her heart with her hand, her own eyes going just as wide as Hope’s. “You’re scaring me.”
Hope’s fingers tightened around the camera, taking on a soft shake. “What kind of shoes did you say Gage was wearing that night?”
Veda’s teeth began to chatter softly, and she clenched them to get them to stop, trying to ignore the zap of horror that zoomed over every inch of their body. “Why?”
Hope’s gaze fell back to the camera—her hold more unsteady as she peeked back up at Veda. “White with black jigsaw designs… right?”
“Why?” Tears filled Veda’s eyes. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Okay, Veda?” Hope set the camera in her lap, her tone of voice reminding Veda of the tone surgeons used right before telling a patient they were losing both their legs.
Veda’s wide eyes followed the camera as Hope laid it in her lap. She stared at it through the glass tabletop, feeling the beginnings of panic saturating her body.
She didn’t know how she knew what Hope was about to say, but she did.
She knew.
And knowing made it ten times harder to lift her eyes back to Hope’s. Ten times harder to fight the tears that stung them. Ten times harder to fight the tremble in her voice as she managed to speak the terrifying question on the tip of her tongue.
“Hope… What is it?” Veda managed to croak. “What picture did you just see?”
“I don’t want you to freak out.” Hope showed Veda her palms. “Can you promise me that you won’t—?”
“Hope!” Veda screamed, eyes blazing.
It was the first time Veda had ever seen Hope sputter.
And she sputtered for several moments before a long silence fell in.
It lingered.
Unable to stand another second, Veda held her hand out, silently asking for the camera.
Hesitantly, Hope handed it over, licked her lips, and leaned her elbows on the table, pressing her downturned mouth into her fisted hands.
The moment she had the camera and the moment she looked at the photo that had shaken Hope, a sharp gasp shot up Veda’s throat. For several minutes, she shook her head at the picture before her. She motioned to it with stark straight, trembling fingers. She stammered, struggled, and bumbled for the right words.
“But…” Veda finally managed, her voice so low and wobbly it was barely discernible. “But… he bought the sneakers.”
Hope understood, frowning with a soft nod, her eyes filled with more emotion than Veda had ever seen in them.
“His name was—” Veda shot her watery eyes up to Hope, but they fell back to the camera in a flash as her voice broke. “His name was on the purchase order. Linc confirmed it himself.”
Hope let Veda experience the plethora of emotions that were surely flying across her face like a bulldozer. Then Hope’s hands fell from her lips. She reached across the table for Veda.
But Veda couldn’t move.
“V, it looks like…” Hope took a moment. It was obvious what it looked like. It was right there in front of her, staring her in the face, right alongside the terrible truth. “It looks like…”
A powerful heave rolled up Veda’s body like a seismic wave, one that sent bile racing up her throat, making her convulse in her fight to swallow it back. By the skin of her teeth, she managed, dropping the camera, clapping a hand over her mouth as it clattered down onto the table.
“Oh my god…” Veda’s voice went frantic. “Oh my fucking god.”
Hope stood from her chair and leaned over the tabletop, snatching Veda’s hand. The swift action caused Hope to knock the camera with her elbow, sending it flying off the table and clanking to the ground. Neither went to pick it up, Veda too shaken to even complete a breath, and Hope too desperate to comfort her.
“Veda…” Hope kept her voice level as Veda began gasping in each breath. “Veda. You have to calm down. The baby.”
Veda’s tear filled eyes rose to Hope’s, fighting to suck in each breath, the tips of her nails digging into Hope’s palms as she tried to regain control.
Hope raised her eyebrows. “The baby.”
But Veda couldn’t think of the baby. She couldn’t think of herself. She couldn’t think of anything outside of the photo she’d just seen on Jax Murphy’s camera.
His oldest camera of all.
Something seemed to snap in Hope, and she shook Veda softly. “Get the camera. There might be more pictures of ten. There might be a picture of his face.”
When Veda remained in her seat, shaking like a leaf, still unable to move—let alone respond—Hope leaped out of her seat and raced to the camera herself.
And Veda crumbled, slamming her elbows down on the table, burying her face into her hands, and exploding into sobs.
“What did I do?” Veda roared in the next instant, snatching her tear-filled face from her hands and looking down at Hope, who had reclaimed the fallen camera and was crouched down next to Veda’s chair, furiously swiping through the pictures. “Oh my god, Hope, what did I do? What the hell did I do?”
Hope didn’t answer, still swiping, a desperate frown darkening her face more with each photo she perused. When she came up with nothing on that camera, she tossed it away and claimed another one from Veda’s bag, a new drive for the truth making her move quickly and with stark desperation.
But Veda still couldn’t move.
All she could do was cry.
All she could fathom was dread.
All she could feel was pure, unadulterated, breathtaking regret.
Because she’d just laid eyes on the coldest, hardest truth.
She’d just laid eyes on a photo of Jax, Todd, and Gage, ten years ago, sitting on the living room couch the night of the party, smiling for the camera.
; She’d just laid eyes on a photo of Gage, at age sixteen, wearing a pair of gray loafers.
She’d just laid eyes on a photo where the black and white jigsaw puzzle sneakers—the sneakers her number ten had been wearing the night he’d brutalized her—were propped up on the coffee table and crossed at the ankle, with the rest of his body cut out of the shot.
18
Seconds turned to minutes, minutes to what felt like hours, as Veda stood, motionless, in front of Gage’s office door. Every pulse of her pounding heart erupted through her veins. Her chest heaved, and her nails dug into her scrub top, boring into her stomach. She yearned to knock on the gleaming wood door, but couldn’t find the courage to lift her arm. Her chin hit her chest, and her eyes fell shut, eyebrows tensed.
“How do we fix this?” she whispered, eyes fluttering open, drinking in the trembling hand on her stomach, begging for answers from the only person she felt could give them. The person who hadn’t yet fully formed. Who wouldn’t even be blooming if not for the man on the other side of that door. “How do we fix this?”
Of course, no answer came. Just silence. Just the maddening thoughts that had plagued her all night and well into the morning.
What have you done?
You’ve destroyed him for no reason.
Fix it.
But Veda didn’t know how to fix it. More frustrated by that fact with every second that passed, she lifted her hand to knock, if only to distract herself from the guilt eating her alive.
“Yes?” His voice crept under the doorsill, laced with frustration. Probably because his receptionist, who always seemed to be on a bathroom break, hadn’t called him to give him a heads up that someone was on the other side of the door.
The deep bass of his voice entered Veda’s body and made her stomach do a one-eighty. Placing her hand on the handle, she hesitated, hoping the cool steel would float into her body and calm the inferno raging inside.
It didn’t.
She twisted the handle. The door creaked as she stepped inside. When she caught sight of Gage, leaning forward in his desk chair and frowning at his computer screen, she froze. His black suit jacket was slung over the back of his office chair, leaving him in a white button-down and purple tie.
He looked up, his brown eyes meeting hers across the room. They hardened the instant he saw her.
The adrenaline surging through her veins picked up speed until she could actually hear her breath.
The pen hanging lazily from his fingers was suddenly seized under a fist so tight it was a wonder it didn’t split in half.
Veda tightened her fists as well.
His face underwent a plethora of responses at the sight of her. Lips tightening and then curling. Eyes shifting and then focusing. Nostrils flaring and then relaxing.
Seeing this, Veda found herself on the verge of fury.
Not at him.
But herself.
What have you done to him?
Her eyes left his when the culpability of her actions made them burn. They darted across the office, looking for any distraction. She drank in the small living area in the far corner of the room. The brown leather couches hummed against the sunlight wafting in from the window. Her eyes followed the shards of light it sent booming across the gleaming wood floors, realizing the man before her had once sent a similar light blasting through her body every time he looked at her, touched her, kissed her…
And she’d destroyed it.
What have you done?
Unable to help herself, her eyes reclaimed his.
His brown orbs caught hers, chest rising and falling slowly. Steadily. Too steadily. Clearly fighting to maintain control.
Veda leaned back on the door, knees shaking so badly she worried she might collapse. The door gave under her weight, causing her to stumble backward until it clicked closed. She swallowed thickly as the wood cooled the back of her arms, centering her.
“I—” Her voice broke.
What have you done?
“I—” When her voice went again, she lowered her eyes, realizing she’d never complete a single sentence while watching his face go through the array of emotions it was right then. Most of them angry. Pushing away from the door, she slowly made her way across the office, fingers playing together. “I was signing out for lunch and… and I realized I forgot about the fourth write-up you have for me.”
She risked a look at him.
His eyes went up in flames when their gazes locked. The pen in his hand was surviving by the skin of its teeth, the plastic body bent, mere seconds from coming apart. A lump moved down his throat as she grew closer.
He’d gotten a fresh haircut, she noticed, the feathery strands shorter than she’d ever seen them, allowing the strong lines of his face to take center stage, highlighting the subtle hints of anger with new potency.
She stopped a foot away from his desk. Not out of fear, but because she’d come in range of his spicy scent. The scent that had once righted her world with just one sniff. That had washed away the darkness on too many occasions to count. Whose power she’d once denied with a fury before she’d finally accepted how much she wanted it.
How much she’d needed it.
What the hell have you done, Veda?
Gage held her eyes, one hand still annihilating the pen and the other lifting to caress his shadowed jaw. It rolled under his touch. His eyes fell, and he sat forward, snatching his desk drawer open while clearing his throat, hesitating for a long moment before coming back up with a sheet of paper.
Lifting his eyes back to hers, he set the paper on top of the desk. Then he spared the life of the pen that had been under attack, tossing it on top.
Veda stumbled as she stepped closer on trembling knees. Closer to his aroma. Closer to the danger zone that surrounded him like a force field. Her thighs pressed into the edge of the desk, and she seized the pen, only momentarily embarrassed at how badly it shook under her hold.
Gage stared at her quivering hand, then slowly lifted his eyes to hers.
Veda caught his gaze, held it, and then lowered her eyes to the write-up, signing her name.
You don’t deserve him.
She set the pen down with a deep breath.
You’ve destroyed him for no good reason.
She met his gaze.
You’re not worthy of breathing the same air.
Her voice came so softly she barely heard it. “And…” She went back into her pocket. Taking a deep breath, she came up with an oval halo engagement ring between her thumb and forefinger.
His gaze fell to the ring, teeth clenching as it gleamed in his vision. He fell back in his chair, bracing his elbows on the arms and exposing his heaving chest. He exhaled so heavily Veda almost expected a line of steam to leave his flared nostrils. A deep crimson glow climbed his cheeks, following the muscle rolling under his jaw, and he pressed the pads of his fingers against his lips, slowly lifting his heated eyes back up to hers.
Silence.
Veda set the ring—which quaked just as furiously under her fingers as the pen had a moment earlier—on top of her write-up.
Gage’s eyes followed that ring, every step of the way, cracking his knuckles on one hand while continuing to massage his full lips with the other. His cold gaze stayed with the ring once she’d set it down, eyes bulging, lips flattening, every bone in his body so taut he appeared seconds from shattering to pieces.
And Veda couldn’t let another inch of him shatter. Not anymore. Not after she’d single-handedly broken the best parts of him to pieces. If there were any way to salvage what little light was left, she’d fight to the death to do it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered the only words she could think of.
His eyes flew back up to hers, alight.
If her goal had been to rescue whatever good was left in him, she appeared to have failed miserably. She had half a mind to take a healthy step away from that desk. Away from the death glare he’d just blasted her with. The manic gleam i
n his eye. The veins that pulsed in his neck. The quiet chuckle that flared his nostrils even wider but didn’t quite make it to his lips—getting trapped somewhere inside his stiffened chest.
He sneered. “You’re sorry.”
Veda clapped her hands down on the desk, and the words came cascading out of her, desperate to be spoken and made real before he acted on the fury that was visibly eating him alive. “I’m so sorry.”
The three words with the power to defuse almost any situation appeared to do nothing but rattle him more. “You’re sorry.”
She jolted at his tone, slamming her eyes closed when his entire face moved to a cringe, her voice pleading as she continued spilling her heart.
“I shouldn’t have—” She drew in a rapid breath. “I shouldn’t have called you out in front of your employees. I shouldn’t have said what I said about your parents. I shouldn’t have ended things the way I did, Gage, and I’m so, so, so sorry.” She became entranced by his tongue as he rested it on his bottom lip as if willing himself not to spew the venomous words that begged for release.
He nodded.
He let a long silence fall.
“You’re sorry,” he repeated her again, voice trembling.
Veda’s eyes searched his. She sank her nails into the wood desk. She gnawed her bottom lip, tears stinging her eyes.
She nodded.
And Gage flew out of his seat, standing so rapidly it forced his chair to roll back and hit the wall. His bulky arm lifted and then flew back down, taking everything in its path off the desk—the pencil holder, the telephone, and the keyboard—which didn’t fly across the room with the same ferocity as the pencil holder and phone, holding on by the chord connected to the monitor. It clattered down over the edge of the desk, swinging by the chord.
“You’re sorry!” He circled the desk in one long stride. “No, Veda, I’m sorry!”
She gasped, stumbling backward, tripping over her feet.
Gage was around the desk like a rocket, face beet red, arrow sharp fingers jamming into his chest so hard he seemed seconds from breaking a rib.
“I’m sorry!” he screamed again.
Veda continued staggering back in slow steps, fists clenched, stomach in a million knots.
Yearn (Revenge Book 4) Page 14