by Liv Bennett
A sweeping sense of abandonment takes over me. I feel rejected by everyone I know, no roots left in the world, no one to care for, to love. I’m truly alone.
Tara’s shrieks sound like they’re from afar, but I can make them out. “Do the decent thing and pay Clint his money back and return the car.”
I nod, already feeling like I don’t have a right to anything, and go through my purse with shaking hands, find the car keys and leave them on the nightstand. Finding my checkbook, I write him a check for one hundred thousand dollars. I can’t even look up at Clint’s face and see the sheer disappointment and disgust in his eyes.
I step out of the room with my head down, ashamed for my existence, leaving everything behind except for my dirty t-shirt and purse.
Ch 19
Nowhere To Go
Tara’s revelation keeps playing over and over in my head. I’m not part of their family. I’m not part of any family. I have no one. Not even a dead sister. I squeeze my eyes shut to escape it.
“I’m terribly sorry for what happened in there. I feel awful.” Austin’s words drag me back to the present, and my eyes flutter open, glancing around blankly.
I realize I’m in the lobby although I have no idea how I ended up here. “It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I’m sorry I had to involve you in my family drama.” I wince at my choice of words. I have no family, much less a family drama to speak of. The sheer loneliness is overwhelming me.
“Let’s get out of here,” he suggests, and I start bawling my eyes out, the shock finally settling in.
“I don’t have any place to go.” I’m practically homeless.
Austin grasps my hands in his and lowers his face close to mine so I can’t escape his eyes. “Of course, you do. I’m not gonna leave you all by yourself. You’re coming with me. We’ll figure it out together.”
He pulls me toward the exit with a gentle tug, and I follow him out, still shaking with sobs.
Since we drove here in Clint’s Legacy, we climb into a taxi that’s conveniently parked at the front of the hotel. My head is in a thousand places at the same time, and I barely notice when we stop at the gym’s parking lot and get out to change to Austin’s car.
When we drive off again, I can barely look at the road. He could be the person behind Ruby’s death. He may very well be driving me to my own death. At this point, I couldn’t care less. He can chop me into a million pieces if he wants. He has my blessing.
I’m vaguely aware of where we are when he stops his car on Mapleton Avenue where luxurious homes line up side by side. Of course, this is where he lives.
He opens my door and holds his hand out for me. “Come with me.”
My eyes glide over the large outline of the house, nicely trimmed grass on the lawn, the sturdy door, stylish windows, the swing on the porch. The swing! My feet come to a screeching halt. That’s the swing Natasha Royal was in with Austin in the photo with him on his Facebook page.
I keep the realization to myself. Austin is literally my last resort before signing myself up for a bed at the women’s shelter. Blaming him for my sister’s death should be the last thing I consider doing right now.
My sister.
I almost laugh at myself. I don’t have a sister. Even if Ruby was biologically my sister, the way I failed her in her last days on this earth would strip me of the right to call her that.
I follow Austin into the house, into the long hall toward his bedroom. I bump into his back when he suddenly stops at the door to the bathroom.
“I think a long bath will be good for you.” He waits for me to respond, and when he gets nothing, he just runs the water and fills up the bathtub.
The sight of a bathtub doesn’t jolt me as it should. Ruby was found in a bathtub. Austin wants me in a bathtub.
He finds soap, shampoo, and fresh towels from one of the drawers and sets them on the sink for me. “Are you going to be all right?”
No.
“Ashley?”
I look up at his blue eyes that are shimmering with concern. “Please stay with me.” I can endure a lot of things right now, but not being alone.
He nods and reaches for his hoodie I’m wearing, taking it off my shoulders, then pulls my t-shirt over my head. My bra comes off next, my yoga pants, and my panties. At no point does he make me feel awkward about my nudity. Holding my hand, he leads me to the bathtub.
One foot in, then the next, I lower my body into the warm water and lie my head on the edge of the tub. As I slowly let my body relax into the position, my mind begins to wander toward the dark moments of my childhood, the day I hid in the closet to cry after Tara yelled at me in front of the neighbor’s kids for not tidying up my bed or the time I burned my finger while warming up Ruby’s bottle of milk and Tara just threw a Band-Aid in my face.
I close my eyes and wonder how my life would have been if my mother hadn’t died. Would I have been stronger, more confident, more trusting? Would I have made something of myself other than a twenty-five-year-old virgin with no career or qualifications save for a few years of experience as a server and an office assistant?
Maybe I’d have gone to college, gotten a fancy degree, and become a lawyer or an engineer. Maybe I’d have several friends and would have traveled the world.
Maybe Ruby wouldn’t have felt unloved by her sister. She’d have been more forthcoming about her problems to her parents.
She wouldn’t have died.
Tears roll down my face, dropping down into the bubbly water.
Ch 20
His Past
I hear Austin sigh and open my eyes to see his troubled face through my tears. “I knew Ruby,” he says and adds, “if it’s the Ruby who worked at my father’s restaurant.”
I nod, not feeling like hiding anything from him.
He grabs the shampoo and squirts some on my hair, gently massaging it into my scalp. “She was a hardworking girl, would come in early, leave late, keep the guests happy.”
That was her. Slacking was something she avoided like the plague.
“I overheard her talking about her sister to one of the servers. She was saying what an awesome sister she had.”
A loud sob escapes my mouth. “You’re lying.” I was never a sister to her, much less an awesome one.
“I’m not. They were talking about ice-skating, and she said she learned to ice skate at the age of three or four because you taught her.”
That one isn’t a lie. Tara would leave us at the ice-rink downtown while she went for groceries next door.
“Why didn’t you come to me with what you were doing?” Austin asks, yanking me away from the past memories. “If I knew you were trying to find out what happened to your sister, I’d have helped you.”
I give him a painful smile. “What could you have done?”
“Maybe nothing tangible, but I’d have shared your pain. I’ve been through something similar.”
I stiffen in the water, watching his face, his eyes, the subtle change in his gaze. Instead of explaining more, he reaches for the shower head and runs lukewarm water over my hair, then begins to lather my arms with a soapy washcloth. “Remember I told you about my failed hamburger joint?”
I nod.
“My partner was my best friend and then became my girlfriend. I thought everything was going great. We had our business. We had each other. Then she killed herself.”
“Natasha Royal,” I say calmly.
His blue eyes grow in shock as he bobs his head up and down. He doesn’t ask me how I know about his girlfriend.
“I didn’t see it coming. No one did. I thought she was happy. I blamed myself for not seeing that she had problems. I blamed myself for her death.” His voice cracks and he tries to hide it with a long exhale. “I was beginning to come to terms with it and put the past behind me. Then, Ruby died by suicide. Unexpectedly, like Natasha. I couldn’t help but wonder if her death could be related to Natasha’s.”
His eyes moisten, avoiding mine. Agony i
s written on each line of his beautiful face, and his visible effort to look tough and unaffected makes him look all the more vulnerable, all the more approachable.
An urge to comfort him washes over me despite the glaring possibility that he might be behind the two deaths. My hand moves to his chin, fingers gliding over his lips. When he turns his eyes to me, revealing the magnitude of suffering in those blue orbs, I feel crushed, feeling his bleeding heart like my own.
He wasn’t beginning to come to terms with the loss. His wound is still open, the pain still raw, drawing me to him. My inhibitions vanish, my doubts about him evaporating as if they never existed. Heat grows inside me, moving to my belly, settling between my legs. My nipples tighten, flaring up above the water.
His eyes that were carefully avoiding my body move down to my breasts suddenly, instinctively. Goosebumps erupt on my skin where his eyes glide. He must have noticed the change happening inside me. His eyes darken, the rhythm of his breathing changing.
He’s too respectful to act on his urges. I’m not. I push to my knees, the water splashing with my sudden move. Something seems to click inside him when he runs his eyes down my body that’s wet with water drops. His face hardens as his eyes hungrily take in the sight of my wet breasts, my stomach, the triangle between my legs.
I move toward him, my hands at the back of his head, my fingers pulling his hair, tugging him to me. Our lips part simultaneously, and his large hands come around my waist in a firm hold. I gasp when he closes the distance between us and locks our lips in a fervent, bruising kiss.
I can’t, for the life of me, understand his effect on me, how he can render me mindless, how he can erase all my doubts about him with just a kiss. In his arms, savoring his lips, I can’t think of him plotting the deaths of two young women.
His lips loosen on mine, and he pulls away just enough to speak. “You’re going to catch a cold.” Pushing to his feet, he grabs a towel for me, his eyes staring unabashedly at the curves of my body when I stand.
While I wrap the towel around my torso, he holds out another one for my dripping hair.
“What time is it?” I ask, remembering my work. Keeping my job has never been as important as now.
His eyebrows knit together as he reaches for his phone on the shelf, wondering why I ask. “Almost noon.”
I wince. “I’m late for work.” And I didn’t even let them know.
His frown deepens. “Do you want to work today? We can call and let Max know you’re taking the day off.”
As much as it irritates me to hear Max’s name, I shake my head. “I should go. I can’t slack. I need the job.”
He nods with understanding. He might have life on easy street, but I need every penny I can make. We’re on the opposite side of the money spectrum, and it shows in his surprise at my distress.
The sight of my dirty clothes all over the floor makes me cringe inwardly. Even if they were clean, they wouldn’t be appropriate to wear to work. “Oh, God! I don’t have any clothes to wear.”
His eyes run down my body. “I have a few dresses that might fit you.”
From his mother? His dead girlfriend? Stuff his one-night-stands forgot?
It’s probably all three, but I’m too much of a coward to ask. I follow him into his walk-in closet, and he points to a box in the corner that looks like a lost-and-found box with various women’s clothing. His discomfort gives him away when he goes through the selection of garments of different sizes with me. I pick up a tank top that’s size ten, lifting it up to his face, then another that’s a size zero.
Okay, so he has a past. Who doesn’t?
I try to calm myself, but a pair of white yoga pants catches my attention. They look just like the ones Lena was wearing on the Facebook photo Austin commented on with nice pic.
When I lift the pants, I notice dozens and dozens of lacy panties underneath. Red, hot pink, black, all sheer, some ripped. I can’t help the sudden flare of jealousy in my chest. He ripped several women’s panties off, admired their pussies, fucked them hard. My heart slams against my chest in fury. It worsens when I remember he was online on Tinder the previous night. My cowardice vanishes.
“I don’t think they belong to your mother,” I snide.
He clears his throat and just gives me a shake of his head as a clarification. As disgusted as I feel for having to put on a piece of clothing that belonged to a woman he fucked, I don’t have the luxury of declining his offer. Still, there’s no way I’ll get a used pair of underwear anywhere near me even if they are clean.
Picking up a plain black cotton dress, I drop the towel around my body to the floor and pull the dress down over my head. It has a deep U-shaped neckline and a knee-length hem. Austin helps with the zipper, his eyes growing large when they gaze at my chest. Without the padding of a bra, my nipples peek out like two hard marbles through the flimsy fabric of the dress.
His hand reaches up and slides down the neckline of the dress, fondling a breast, his head moving left and right in disapproval. “You can’t go to work like this.”
I moan with arousal, still worked up with jealousy. “Why? Nobody will care.”
“Yeah right,” he chides, his hand on my breast tightens, his eyes flashing with lust at my challenge. He can’t say more, though, can’t confess his concern about other men. He’s jealous, too. Good.
“Those clothes…are they from the women you fucked?”
His lips curl up into a wicked smile. “Yes.”
I hiss under my breath, my teeth clenching. Jealousy and arousal sit like a scorching ball between my legs. I can’t set them apart. I can’t deny their existence.
His face comes closer to mine, lips nearly touching. His hot breath tickles my skin. “Are you jealous that I fucked other women?”
Why past tense?
I can’t answer him. He doesn’t need me to speak to know I’m clearly bothered by it. I keep my mouth shut, but he won’t tolerate my silence. He leaves my breast and moves his hand up to circle his fingers around my neck, tipping my head back to have me look him straight in his eyes that blaze with lust. “Answer me!”
I press my lips harder into a tight line. He won’t get the answer he wants to hear. His fingers tighten around my neck, just enough to show me his displeasure without hurting me.
“Are you jealous?” he hisses through clenched teeth.
“Did you fuck Lena, too?”
He grins, enjoying the fire of lust and jealousy he’s setting off inside me.
I picture Lena on his bed, naked, him lusting after her. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” He releases my neck and wraps his big arms around my body, pulling me into a reassuring hug. I realize how tense I am when his hold forces me to let loose. He won’t let go until I cool off. I give up and rest my head against his chest, listening to his furious heartbeats.
“I have a past that I’m not proud of,” he says almost in a whisper above my head. “After Natasha’s death, I lost it. The pain was too hard to deal with. I drank, did drugs, fucked girls whose names I don’t remember. I was a mess. I’m better now. Working helps. I work to exhaustion when the pain gets too hard to deal with. Some days are better than others.” He pauses when his voice starts trembling. “You help too.”
“I do?” I throw my head back to get a glimpse of his face.
He offers me a bittersweet smile and a nod. “You’re a beautiful distraction.”
“You’re a distraction, too.” I pull away. “I need to get to work.”
He finds a blue scarf in the lost-and-found box and wraps it neatly around my neck. I laugh at his effort to conceal my chest and watch him as he hurries to slide into a pair of black slacks and a crisp, blue shirt. As soon as he’s fully clothed, my fingers itch to strip him naked. The muscles of his arms and chest strain against the fabric of the shirt, the outline of his Adonis torso clearly visible.
I dash out of the bedroom before my desire gets the best of me. He grabs a laptop on our way o
ut.
“I don’t want to lose my job,” I mumble as I climb into the car.
He reaches for my knee to give it a squeeze. “You won’t. It’s not because of me. We’re short on employees. Max doesn’t have the luxury of firing you.”
How effortlessly he can put my mind at ease is astonishing. A quick pat on the knee, a heart-stopping wink, and I’m already grinning. Wouldn’t he make a great therapist? All the sexually frustrated women of Boulder would line up at his office door. He’d be booked months in advance.
He starts the engine and eases onto the street. “The investigation you’re supposed to run on your sister… Did you find out anything useful?” His voice is casual, and his eyes aren’t revealing anything malevolent.
A part of me wants to share the bomb Kelly Somerville dropped this morning, the other part is still cautious because of his potential involvement.
I listen to my cautious part. “Nothing, really. I’ve only been here a few days anyway.”
“Did you rule out any foul play in her death?”
That’s basically the whole reason why I’m in Boulder. “What do you mean?”
“Were there any signs of trauma to her body, or any other signs that it could be a homicide? Did the detectives actually rule out the possibility that it could be homicide staged as a suicide?”
“Yes and no,” I admit with guilt. “Her death certificate was signed by an EMT, but we pushed for an autopsy, which came out clean and only confirmed the original conclusion on the death certificate.” My hand flies to my chest when I remember the medical examination report that stated no traces of alcohol or drugs were found in Ruby’s body. That’s obviously wrong since she took the abortion pill hours before she was found dead in her bathtub. If that information was missing, there must be more…
“Everything all right?”
Austin’s touch on my shoulder startles me. “Yeah.”
“So, they ruled out homicide?” he asks.