“Won’t even face me, huh?” Cole said. “I should have known. You act like we’re friends, but you never talk about yourself. You must have figured it wouldn’t exactly earn my trust to know you’re not mentally stable. Tell me, do any of your other friends know?”
She tried to control her breathing. When she met his gaze, she flinched over the judgment she saw there.
“Oh, wait. Do you even have any friends other than my brother?” he continued in a mocking tone. The scent of whiskey blended with the leather of his jacket. “You never talk about any friends when we’re together...when you’re acting like my friend and making me think of approaching you as more than a friend. You never tell me anything about you. You didn’t even mention Aiden.”
Her head snapped back as though he had struck her.
“You have no right,” she said, her voice ragged as it worked to get past the blazing pain in her chest. “No right to come here and talk to me like this.”
“I have every right to be here, Everly. It’s a public place.” He leaned even closer. “And if you didn’t have anything to hide, you’d talk about it when a friend gives you the chance. What’s the problem? Is Aiden the reason you don’t have any friends? Does he smother you?”
She couldn’t catch her breath. She had to get away.
Had to escape.
Her eyes darted to the side door just a few feet away. It was all she could do not to shove away from Cole and out that door. But even as that instinct railed at her, she thought of her grandpa. If she walked out of this job, they’d have nothing.
“You’ve overstepped yourself,” she said. Her voice somehow sounded calm, though she wanted to scream at him. Her heart squeezed like an ache. “I understand that you no longer wish to work with me, and that’s perfectly fine. I quit.”
She pushed away from the wall and moved to walk past him. He reached out and grabbed her arm.
“Everly—”
Grasping his hand, she twisted it until he staggered to his knees with a yelp of pain.
“You’re right, Cole,” she said in the same level voice. “I don’t have any friends. But I have friendly neighbors, one of whom is a policewoman who teaches self-defense.”
She let him go. “Don’t ever come near me again.”
Then she grabbed the tray she had come for and went back to work.
* * *
The painful wounds that Cole ripped open hadn’t eased by the time Everly collected the payment from her last customers of the night. She’d seen him leave shortly after their confrontation, his gait unsteady. She hoped he hadn’t been lying about not driving.
Once she no longer had to focus on managing her tables, she had no choice but to dwell on their conversation. The memories that she kept so carefully buried now sat at the front of her mind, haunting her. She swept the wood floor beside the bar as other servers handled other side work nearby, but she was barely aware of what she was doing.
How had Cole found out about Aiden? About her hospitalization? Why had he been so cruel in confronting her?
“Well, it wasn’t a stellar Saturday night in the tip department, but I’ve had worse,” Anne said, interrupting her thoughts. “I should be able to spend the next ten days before Christmas making use of all this hard-earned cash.”
“Yeah,” Everly agreed.
“Hey, is everything all right?”
Catching Anne’s gaze, Everly forced a smile. “Sure. Just got a lot on my mind.”
“I hear you.” Anne finished emptying small bowls of bar snacks and collected the bowls in a stack to bring to the back for washing. “Was that Cole Parker I saw you with earlier?”
Everly nodded. She looked at the door leading out to the parking lot, wishing she was done with her tasks so she could get out of there.
“What’s going on there?” Anne asked in a low voice with a conspiratorial smile.
“Nothing. You know I work with his brother, Wyatt, right? So we sometimes talk if he happens to be in the restaurant.”
“Oh.” She made a face, then chuckled. “Well, that isn’t terribly exciting.”
“Not at all.” Everly gave her another smile to keep things more comfortable. Inside, she longed to escape.
Fortunately, it seemed that Anne was satisfied with that explanation. Everly finished her side work and gathered her things, bundling up in preparation for the wicked cold. Since it was late and the restaurant was located downtown, she waited until a few of the other servers were heading out and then walked out to her car with them.
She waved at them as she got behind the wheel of Champ. She turned the ignition and flipped the switch to get the heat started.
Then she burst into tears.
All of the emotion she’d been containing over the past couple of hours flooded out. She dug in her purse for her travel pack of tissues, but didn’t bother wiping her face until she was completely done. Then she took the time to clean her face enough that her grandpa probably wouldn’t notice that she’d been crying if he was still awake when she got home.
Finally, she shifted into reverse and backed up. There was a strange noise as she did so...a loud flapping sound. When she tried to turn the steering wheel, it fought her. Something wasn’t right.
Lovely. A perfect topper to this craptacular night.
She put Champ back into park and then got out. Although the parking lot was well lit, her nerves rattled over being the only person in it. The only other cars were closer to the restaurant. Looking around to make sure there wasn’t someone waiting in the shadows, she decided she was alone. Still, she felt like someone watched her as she looked down and saw that her rear tire was flat.
Yippee, she thought.
Shaking her head over her miserable luck, she reached into the car and turned it off, grabbing the keys so she could unlock the trunk and get the spare. When she closed the door, she chanced to glance down at her front tire.
“What the hell?”
She walked around Champ, fear and anger rising with each passing moment. Once she had gotten all the way around the car, she looked around the parking lot again, holding her coat together at the throat.
All four of her tires had been slashed.
Chapter 15
Cole went to his favorite nightclub after leaving Prix Fixe. He’d avoided going out since his accident, but what the hell. He wasn’t driving.
He wasn’t interested in being alone, either. Fortunately, some of his teammates were there. Marshall wasn’t one of them. In his alcohol-influenced mindset, Cole decided this was a good thing. He was likely to punch his friend.
Damn Rebecca, anyway.
He slowed down his drinking at the club, knowing there were probably at least five members of the paparazzi in the vicinity. The team had rules about the manner in which players conducted themselves while off the field. He wasn’t interested in paying a fine for getting in the news over public lewdness or drunken misconduct.
His teammates caught him up on the news in their lives and around the ball club. They discussed everything from trade rumors and changes in management to purchases of ridiculously overpriced vehicles. By unspoken agreement, they didn’t talk about women.
Many women approached the table, though. That was customary. A couple of the guys hit the dance floor a time or two, but they all mainly stuck to their corner booth.
Eventually, Cole had to go. He’d initially chartered the car for two hours and was only able to extend it another four because the driver had another fare to pick up after that. By the time he was in the back seat of the car and headed home, he had largely sobered up. His head hurt and his tongue felt swollen. He drank a bottle of water available in the car’s mini bar, but it didn’t help much.
To avoid thinking about the evening, he talked with the driver. The conversation was a lot of nonsense, but it kept his mind occupied. He planned to go from the car to his bed. No thinking.
But before he went to his room, he stopped in the kitchen for more water. H
e reached into the fridge and pulled out a bottle. When his gaze moved to the sink and the two champagne flutes sitting beside it, he thought of how shocked and pleased Everly had looked earlier that day when they toasted her success. He remembered how happy it made him to have produced that reaction in her.
Then he remembered her expression when he mentioned Aiden’s name. She looked like he had stabbed her in the chest.
Walking into the family room, he grabbed his iPad. He sat with it and his bottle of water at the island in the kitchen and did what he should have done before confronting Everly. He did a search for her name and the name Aiden.
It didn’t take long for him to find several news articles dated in early September eight years earlier. Pulling the first one up, he started to read.
“Marietta, GA – Tragedy greeted a north-Atlanta family yesterday when twenty-two year old Aiden Wallace shot and killed himself in his family’s home. The news shocked the close community, who knew Wallace as a talented pitcher with aspirations to enter the major leagues. Early reports indicate the recent Georgia Tech graduate suffered from depression after a season-ending injury his senior year resulted in him not being drafted...”
Cole pushed the iPad away from him. He felt sick. He rushed over to the sink and took deep breaths just in case.
Had Rebecca known all of this when she fed him the jealousy-inducing poison that he so easily ingested? She thought he and Everly were dating and suspected he’d jump to the conclusion that Aiden was a love interest of Everly’s. Sadly, even though he wasn’t dating Everly, that was exactly what he’d done.
Because he had started having feelings for her, he finally admitted. And Rebecca made him feel like a fool for doing so.
He thought again of Everly at the restaurant. He thought about how her face lit up when she saw him, then paled when he started hurling accusations at her. He could only imagine the pain he’d brought to her that evening.
Dear God, what had he done?
When his nausea settled, he forced himself to return to the island and his iPad. After what he’d said to Everly in his ignorance, he at least owed her the time and mettle it took to learn the facts about her past. He once again pulled up the articles and, beginning with the earliest one, he read all of them until as recent as he could find.
What he read would stick with him forever.
“Wallace was found by his fourteen-year-old sister, Everly, when she returned home from school...”
“Officials report that Aiden Wallace was still alive when his sister found him...”
“The siblings were reportedly very close, sharing the love of baseball...”
“...died in her arms...”
“...hospitalized for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder...”
The articles about Aiden’s suicide stopped about two weeks after they started. Cole found one dated two years later in August with Everly Wallace as a keyword, so he pulled it up.
“Atlanta, GA – The Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide mourns the passing of one of its most committed Atlanta-area supporters, Victoria Stowe Wallace. Wallace (43) went into cardiac arrest in her Atlanta home yesterday morning. Her daughter, Everly (16), administered CPR and called 911, but Wallace died on the scene. Wallace was one of the top supporters of the SPTS following the suicide death of her own son, Aiden Wallace. She also supported the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH), advocating for more services targeting young adults in their early twenties. Wallace is survived by her daughter and her husband, Mason Wallace, who was out of the country and unavailable for comment.”
Cole once again turned off his iPad. He stared into nothingness, trying to wrap his head around what he’d read and what he knew about Everly. Essentially, she’d led a pretty normal life until the age of fourteen. Then everything changed.
He rose and tossed his empty water bottle into the recycle container. His gaze once again touched on the champagne flutes before he headed to his bedroom.
He went to bed feeling like the lowest human being on the face of the earth. It was a long time before he fell asleep.
* * *
His cell phone buzzed on the nightstand, waking him at seven in the morning. Since he’d only been asleep for about four hours, he issued a string of curses as he reached for the phone and glared at the Caller ID with one bleary eye. Cursing again, he hit the answer button.
“What the hell, Wyatt?”
“No, I think the correct question is, ‘What the hell, Cole?’”
“It’s seven in the morning, for Christ’s sake.”
“Why isn’t Everly working with you anymore?”
Cole groaned. He needed a whole bucket of caffeine to deal with this so early in the morning. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, sitting up and rubbing a hand over his face to try and wake up. “I’m going to fix it.”
“She seemed pretty damn certain when I talked to her.”
Frowning, Cole looked again at the clock. “When did you talk to her? We only discussed...her employment...last evening.”
“Yeah, well, all four of her tires were slashed last night. Since Rowan was stuck at the restaurant doing inventory, he called me to pick Everly up and drive her home.”
Cole clutched the phone and shot out of bed. Fury roared through him.
“That bitch,” he hissed.
“Jesus, Cole. You need to—”
“Not Everly. Rebecca. She had to be the one to slash the tires.”
“The woman you were dating earlier this year?”
“Yes.” Cole kicked an upholstered chair in the sitting area of his room. “Goddamn it. I could kill her right now.”
“Cole, what the hell is going on? Is this woman a danger to Everly? How did she know where Everly works?”
The question made Cole go still. Just how much did Rebecca know about Everly? Did she know where she lived?
“Rebecca was pissed at me yesterday because I refused to get back together with her. I didn’t know that she was aware of Everly until last night. She mentioned that she’s been out to my house, but I didn’t think—”
“If this crazy woman slashed Everly’s tires, we need to inform the police.”
“Wyatt, we’ll need proof before we go making a legal deal out of this. Is the parking lot monitored by cameras?”
There was a sigh on the other end of the phone. “Not the part where Everly parked.”
“I’m sure Rowan called the police last night. Have they found any evidence pointing to who did it?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” Cole said, running a hand through his hair. “Look, Rebecca was pissed off and jealous. She thought Everly and I were in a relationship. Now that she knows things are truly over between us, she’ll go in search of her next victim and leave us alone.”
“You’d better frickin’ hope so.”
Cole walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. “I need you to text me Everly’s address.”
“Why?”
“Because I owe her four new tires and one hell of an apology.”
Chapter 16
One of the great things about living in the city was that nothing was terribly far away. Everly only had to walk a little over two miles to Gerald’s Auto Body to pick up Champ on Sunday morning. Although the shop wasn’t normally open on Sundays, the owner, Gerald Barnaby, had offered to come in after church so she could get her car. Since she took Champ exclusively to Gerald’s for servicing, she was a regular in the shop. Gerald’s offer was another nice thing about living where she did.
The weather cooperated for her trek, bringing sunshine and a warm front. It was in the low fifties as she made her way to Gerald’s around noon, but it would warm up to the sixties later in the day. She was grateful for that. They were predicting rain with possible ice the next day and snow again within the week. Newscasters were making a big deal about all of the unseasonable snow they’d been getting, wondering if they might actually have
a white Christmas.
She used the walk to help clear her mind. Her night had been restless, filled with images of Cole lashing at her. Filled with anger and resentment. Filled with painful memories that she struggled to put behind her.
In the end, she hadn’t slept more than a few hours. She felt it now in her grainy eyes and tense shoulders. The beautiful day couldn’t ease her exhaustion, but it did put her in a better frame of mind.
When she got to the shop, she saw Champ up on the lift inside the garage. All but one tire had already been replaced. Gerald was working industriously on the fourth.
“Hi there, Mr. B,” she said as she walked up.
“Howdy, Ms. Everly,” he replied, pausing in the process of removing a lug nut. A smile lit up his dark, creased face. Sunlight shone on his bald head, revealing a light coat of sweat. Wiping a hand on his dark coveralls, he shook her hand. “Sho’ is a shame, what them vandals did to ol’ Champ here.”
“I know,” she agreed. An expensive shame, she silently added. So much for splurging at Bath and Body Works for Christmas.
“Don’t make no sense,” Gerald said, shaking his head. “Well, I’ll have ‘im ready for you in a few minutes.”
“Thanks so much, Mr. B.”
She walked over to the small waiting area that doubled as Gerald’s office. It smelled like coffee, motor oil, and Glade air freshener. Settling into a plastic seat, she pulled out her phone. She had a text from Wyatt.
How r u? Got Champ?
She typed back, Not yet. At shop. Soon, tho.
A few seconds later, his reply chimed in. K. Keep us posted.
For a brief moment, she thought he meant him and Cole. Then she realized he meant him and Rowan. Why was that so deflating? She didn’t ever want to hear from Cole again after what he’d said and done.
Right?
“We’re all set, Ms. Everly,” Gerald said a few minutes later as he walked into the office. “Fortunately, we had the tires in stock. I’m gonna give you the all-seasons for the price of the standard radials. Can’t have you drivin’ on snow and ice without all-seasons.”
The XOXO New Adult Collection: 16 Full Length New Adult Stories Page 40