Club Abbott: The Fight (Club Abbott Series, #4)

by Hazel Kelly

  Club Abbott

  Part 4

  The Fight

  Hazel Kelly

  © 2016 Hazel Kelly

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, copied, or stored in any form or by any means without permission of the author. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  All characters in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, brands, organizations, places, and situations is purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1: Carrie

  At least I didn’t throw up again.

  Not that I was any less embarrassed when I woke up on the floor.

  At first everything was dark and silent, as if I were dead but still conscious. Then I heard Ben’s voice saying my name over and over.

  When I opened my eyes, his handsome face was full of concern and he was holding me in his arms.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I blinked and sat up, waiting for the blood to travel back up to my head. I stared at my shoes and took a deep breath.

  He helped me up.

  Even though I didn’t want to, I looked at his mom again. Just to be sure. But there was no question. I’d recognize her face- and probably her hairless pussy- anywhere. Then I looked back at Simon. He was just standing there, a pained expression on his face.

  Like everybody else.

  “Show’s over folks,” Ben said, stepping between me and the couple who’d caused my shock. “Look at me, Carrie.”

  “I have to go.” I turned around and walked towards the door, wishing I had the strength to run. Even so, my pace was one Ben struggled to keep up with. When I reached the lobby, I smacked the button for the elevator harder than I needed to and stared at the numbered lights above the door as they moved down to the ground floor.

  “Carrie.”

  I couldn’t even look at him. I didn’t want to associate him with any of the feelings I was having at that moment.

  When the door opened, I stepped on and faced forward, thinking if I were an ice queen about it, he might take the hint and go away.

  He grabbed my arm. “Carrie.”

  I pulled away.

  “Can we talk about this?”

  I shook my head. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “All I want is for you to be okay-”

  “I’m fine,” I snapped.

  “You’re obviously not fine-”

  The doors opened and I took off towards our room, grateful that I’d packed my things before breakfast so it wouldn’t take long for me to make my escape. Just being in the same building as those traitors was enough to cause bile to creep up my throat.

  So much for that lovely meal.

  “You shouldn’t be running around like this,” he said as I swiped the keycard. “You just fainted. You need to sit down.”

  “What I need is to get out of here.” I walked across the room to where my small suitcase was lying open by the window.

  “Please, Carrie.”

  His voice pinched my heart so much it almost made me want to stop moving. It would be so easy to just slump to my knees and curl up into a ball.

  But if I stayed, I might say something I’d regret- or ugly cry in front of him- and I didn’t want the only person who made me forget my pain to see how intense it really was.

  I lifted my toiletry bag into my suitcase and pushed it down. Then I flapped the lid closed, zipped it up, and grabbed the handle. When I turned around, Ben was standing with his feet shoulder width apart.

  “Stop,” he said. “Just put your bag down for two seconds and-”

  “Get out of my way, Ben.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s upset right now about what just happened,” he said. “I’m upset, too. I’m fucking livid to be honest and-”

  I went to walk around him and he grabbed me by the shoulders.

  I wiggled free. “No offense, but I don’t really feel like hearing about how upset you are right now.” I walked backwards towards the hall. “Whatever kind of comforting you need is something I’m not in a position to give you.” I turned around and opened the door.

  He pushed it closed with his hand. “Carrie, please.”

  I stared at the crack in the door with my jaw clenched.

  “Look at me.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to.”

  “Why?”

  “Just open the fucking door and let me go,” I said. “Please.”

  He sighed and pulled the door open.

  I marched down the hallway and pushed the elevator button again.

  When the doors opened, he tried to follow me on. “Don’t,” I said, raising a hand between us.

  He stayed in the hall, respecting my wishes even though I could tell he didn’t want to.

  “This isn’t over, Carrie,” he said as the doors made him disappear.

  When the elevator started to descend, I took a deep breath and fell back against the railings.

  I closed my eyes and hoped it wouldn’t stop when it reached the ground floor. I hoped it would just keep going straight through the center of the Earth and all the way to China. And when the doors opened, I would start over with a clean slate. And if I ever fell in love again, it would be with a nice man who didn’t know how shit my luck was and whose mother was a kindly old rice farmer instead of a leggy homewrecker.

  And I would live happily ever after in some remote village where people had shown each other nothing but respect for centuries, and while it wouldn’t be the most exciting life, I would never hurt like this again.

  And neither would my beautiful mixed babies.

  Of course, as my luck would have it, the doors opened on the ground floor.

  I kept my head down and walked straight outside, realizing only once I reached the sidewalk that I’d left my coat in the room. I stopped so abruptly I caused a bumper to bumper collision with two people behind me.

  “Sorry,” I said, getting out of the way. I moved to the edge of the sidewalk and looked back at the hotel, feeling sick at how I’d treated Ben.

  After all, I didn’t know how much he knew.

  What if he thought my behavior was just because of Simon?

  I don’t know how good a look Ben got at him when we were in the grocery store that day. I assumed he recognized him, but I couldn’t be sure. Then again, if he had any doubt, he probably could’ve inferred it was him from my classy reaction.

  But as far as his mom, I didn’t know anything except that they’d had a falling out recently. Did he know they were dating? Surely not. I couldn’t believe he would put me in that situation if he knew Simon would be there… if he knew what his mother had done.

  Even the most devoted prankster would know there was nothing funny about that situation.

  I turned and continued down the sidewalk, wondering if I was having some sort of breakdown.

  I mean, what if I’d only fainted because Ben’s mom looked like the woman I caught spread legged under my husband to be? What if it wasn’t her? Maybe she was just another leggy blonde. They were a dime a dozen in this city.

  Didn’t that happen all the time? People getting it wrong when they tried to identify whodunit?

  It was surprisingly common last I heard.

  The police lay out six pictures and the witness has to pick out who it was that snatched the woman’s purse or stabbed the junkie or fucked the fiancé. And people got it wrong again and again.

  Because humans were fallible, fallible enough to cheat and fallible enough that their eyes played tricks on them.

  Yet those thin lips were so familiar- as was the tone of her voice when she’d sai
d Ben’s name.

  But most of all, it was the way she looked at me. Like she’d seen me before, too.

  Like she wasn’t happy to be seeing me again.

  No.

  There was no question.

  Ben’s mom was Simon’s slut.

  Chapter 2: Ben

  If we’d been anywhere else, I would’ve punched that motherfucker right in the face.

  But when Carrie fainted, I forgot about everything else around me. She went down like a sack of potatoes, her legs buckling under her like they had the night before- except that had been a happy occasion, an amusing occasion. Whereas this had been anything but.

  I didn’t want to believe it, didn’t even want to consider the possibility.

  But Carrie’s face said it all.

  She knew my mother, and she was clearly not happy to see her.

  And while I wracked my brain for other explanations for why she might’ve reacted the way she did, I knew the truth in my gut.

  My mother was the other woman

  I went back to the room and splashed some cold water on my face. I was too warm and full and tired to deal with this shit, but it had to be dealt with.

  Unfortunately, I had no idea what to do.

  I sat on the queen bed and put my head in my hands.

  What the fuck was my mom thinking? How could she show up here with that guy? I wasn’t even over the fact that she’d fucked the help in Dubai, and now I find out she’s as much of a homewrecking cougar as she ever was?!

  Did she know what she’d done? Did she have no respect for the love between two people at all, regardless of whether it was her relationship or not?

  I raised my head and looked at the unmade bed, messy from Carrie and I rolling around in it this morning.

  Everything had been so perfect then. We didn’t have a care in the world. After we had sex, we laid pretzeled around each other like horny kids. I was in heaven admiring her big brown eyes and her dimples, relishing the heat of her body against mine.

  It was everything I wanted.

  And it went up in smoke in an instant.

  I clenched my jaw, trying to figure out what to do, but it was difficult because it wasn’t exactly my mess. Yeah, I was in deep shit, but I hadn’t ended up there because of my own mistakes so it was hard to figure out how to repair the situation.

  It was also hard to believe this wasn’t all my mom’s fault. Again.

  As if ruining my relationship with my dad for twenty years wasn’t a serious enough crime.

  Now she’d scared off the first woman I’d cared about in years, the first woman who I actually enjoyed thinking about even when she wasn’t right in front of me.

  It was bullshit. It really was.

  And not knowing how to fix it made me feel totally inadequate.

  I reached for the nightstand between the beds and picked up the snowflake Carrie had made.

  I smiled when I remembered how her face was full of concentration as she made one tiny cut at a time. She must’ve spent twenty minutes taking nicks out of the folded paper- twenty minutes I used as an excuse to watch her… her delicate fingers, her pursed lips, her neck as she cocked her head at it like it was a puzzle to be solved.

  In those few minutes, the feelings I suspected I had for her were only further confirmed.

  There was no one’s face I enjoyed looking at more, no one’s smile I was more addicted to, and no one I was more interested in impressing.

  And now she’d fled to a place where I couldn’t see her, where she wasn’t smiling, and where she was probably as far away from impressed as she’d ever been.

  I tried to imagine what must’ve gone through her head when she saw my mom again, presumably for the first time since she caught her with her fiancé.

  After all, that was the story, right?

  She hadn’t just found some texts and a stray blonde hair or been tipped off by her friends like I was with Nadia.

  She’d actually walked in on them having sex.

  My gag reflex wretched at the thought of my mom desecrating her bed like that, with her legs spread under that flaky excuse for a man.

  No wonder she fainted.

  It was probably the closest her body could get to actually disappearing, which is exactly what I would’ve wanted to do if I were her.

  But my mom’s bad decisions- and her ex’s bad decisions- weren’t mine. They had nothing to do with me.

  Could she see that?

  Could she see anything through the blind panic she felt when she saw them?

  Before this happened, I was convinced this was only the beginning with her.

  My mind was filled to the brim with clever things I might do to keep winning her affection and prove that my feelings weren’t pretend, that they never had been.

  But this was a major setback, and now I wasn’t sure if she would even give me a chance to get close to her again.

  I tossed the snowflake back on the table and lay back on the bed, putting my hands under my head.

  Where the hell was there to go from here?

  Obviously, my mom was going to have to stop seeing that guy for a start. He couldn’t be around. And while I couldn’t avoid her forever, I certainly didn’t want that dickless coward in my life- or hers.

  But what if it was serious? No. It couldn’t be. How could two cheaters ever have a relationship of any substance?

  Still, I hoped he was just a disposable boy toy as far as she was concerned because I didn’t want an argument when I asked her to cut ties.

  Maybe she didn’t even know about his previous engagement?

  That would be some consolation, wouldn’t it?

  I took a deep breath and clenched my jaw, trying to determine if I would feel better or worse if I’d broken his nose.

  Unfortunately, better seemed to be the winning answer, which only made me feel worse in the moment.

  Of course, after what he did to Carrie he’d be getting off lightly if he found himself with two broken arms and a case of chronic jock itch.

  I sighed.

  If only I didn’t care about her so much. That would keep everything nice and clean. I could apologize for the untimely introduction, we could call off the game, and we could both put our work hats on and forget about everything that happened in this hotel room.

  Then I’d be able to sleep at night and continue avoiding my mom while she went about making her bad decisions that didn’t concern me.

  Unfortunately, they did concern me.

  Because Carrie wasn’t just some girl I spent the night with.

  She was so much more, and every bone in my body was telling me not to give up on what we had, what we could have.

  If only my mom and her ex had disappeared instead of her. If only she would’ve slowed down for two seconds.

  Maybe I should’ve grabbed her, held her, not let her go.

  But I didn’t want her to stay with me because I forced her to.

  I wanted her to stay because she wanted to.

  And she didn’t.

  So what choice did I have?

  She couldn’t even look at me. That alone made me hurt so bad I decided it was better for both of us if I just let her have what she wanted.

  Space. And Time.

  Even if those were the last two things on Earth I wanted coming between us.

  A moment later, there was a knock at the door.

  Chapter 3: Carrie

  At first I thought I would go straight home, but when I realized that all I wanted to do was crawl in bed, I felt sick all over again.

  How could I lay there and not think of her? Of them? How could the most comfortable place in my apartment be so suddenly tainted all over again?

  And by the mother of a man I was dangerously close to falling for?!

  If this wasn’t proof that falling in love was the last fucking thing I needed right now, then I didn’t know what was.

  Clearly the universe was conspiring to do one of two things.


  Either it was determined to mock my genuine efforts at being open minded, or it was trying to protect me.

  I mean, what better way to put me off moving forward with Ben than to have his mom be the closest thing to a real life villain that I’d ever encountered?

  Ugh.

  Just the thought of her flat ass on my sheets made me so angry I wanted to punch something.

  Or run a marathon. Or swim across the Gulf of Mexico. But that was out of the question. I could barely manage the adrenaline fueled heartbeat pounding in my chest as it was.

  I needed to calm down. But I didn’t want to be alone because I knew from experience that the only thing darker than my reality was the reality I imagined when no one else was around.

  And it was that need to be comforted by someone who wouldn’t judge me that led me to the 54a bus stop.

  When I arrived, Woody was doing a dramatic rendition of The Highwayman.

  I leaned against the wall a few feet away from his waving arms and watched as passersby perked up their ears to catch snippets of his performance.

  Turns out it was a fitting poem for how I was feeling. It was about a woman who was in love with a man- who just happened to be a bandit. Anyway, he visited her often under cover of darkness and their love was sexy and true… until some idiot ruined everything.

  It sounded strangely autobiographical as Woody was reciting it, except for the fact that they die in the end. But apparently, to this day in the winter time, “when the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,” he still comes riding and knocks at her door.

  And I admit I took comfort in the ending and hoped it was a sign that Ben and I might still get together in another time and place- or perhaps after death. Cause I sure as hell didn’t see how things were going to work out in this life when his mom was fucking my ex.

  When Woody finished, he bowed and waited for the people at the bus stop to come to their senses and chuck some change in his flat cap.

  “That was lovely,” I said when he was done collecting his meager spoils.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I got it from that poetry book you gave me.”