Betwixt Two Hearts (Crossroads Collection)

by Amanda Tru

  Bailey sighed. Clearly, sacrificing for someone else wasn’t new behavior for Camden any more than Dekker’s selfishness was new behavior for him.

  Who did she want to be? Did she want to be the spoiled princess who lived life for the purpose of fun and enjoyment at the expense of all else? Or did she want to be the person who was willing to sacrifice for someone else, getting life’s greatest joy out of serving others?

  Maybe Dekker wasn’t the one who had changed in the past six weeks. Had she really worn blinders all this time, not realizing who the man was she claimed to love? Could you really be in love with someone you didn’t even like?

  I love the way he made me feel.

  I don’t love him.

  Dekker parked the car in their apartment’s garage, and they both got out. Bailey got her suitcase while Dekker led the way into the place she and Dekker had called home for over a year now. Dekker turned on the lights and began rummaging around in the freezer for ice cream. Bailey set her suitcase down in the middle of the floor and turned a full circle. All of her familiar things were right where she’d left them. Yet it didn’t feel the same. It was like she no longer belonged in her own house or felt comfortable in her own skin.

  Her gaze found its way to where Dekker wolfed down a bowl of ice cream while on his phone, talking to a friend about how great rock climbing would be tomorrow.

  She didn’t belong here.

  As if the world she’d seen in black and white was suddenly painted with color, she realized the truth of what Camden had been telling her all along. Attraction and chemistry weren’t enough. Dekker wasn’t a good person, at least not good according to her current values. He was plenty good according to his own values. She didn’t admire him, and he didn’t challenge her to be a better person.

  Dekker was selfish and superficial. He always had been, but her feelings had completely blinded her. With the Hutchins family, she’d just experienced a depth of emotion that made everything that came out of Dekker’s mouth seem silly and shallow. The plane rides, the new boats, the parties, the fun—all of that existed on a level that didn’t really matter in the long run.

  All of Bailey’s jumbled thoughts led to one inescapable question.

  What did matter?

  She walked over to Dekker and pulled on his sleeve. He shot her an irritated look. He hated when she interrupted him.

  “I need to talk to you,” she whispered.

  He held up a finger indicating that he’d talk to her in a minute, even as he laughed into the phone at something his friend was saying.

  She tugged on his sleeve again. “I need to talk to you now!” she insisted.

  He stood from his stool and turned his back on her.

  Bailey went into the bedroom, found an empty box, and began emptying her clothes from the closet.

  “What is it?” Dekker demanded, finally appearing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes flashing angrily.

  “You’re never going to marry me, are you?” Bailey asked, continuing to put clothes in the box.

  Dekker’s face twisted comically. “What are you talking about? What’s gotten into you, Bailey?”

  “I just want to know. Do you ever plan on marrying me?” Her voice sounded strained and upset, even to her own ears.

  Dekker held his hands out as if trying to literally push the situation back down. “Hold on, Bailey. Where is this coming from? As far as I know, we are having a good time together. We talked about marriage, but we both decided that we didn’t need a signed document defining our love or relationship.”

  “You decided, Dekker, not me.” Bailey speared him with her gaze, pouring out all of the frustration from the past two years that she’d kept carefully hidden behind the fun and butterflies. “I always hoped for something more, yet I believed your flowery words. Now I realize all of that fancy, post-modern talk sounds pretty and means absolutely nothing. You’re not planning to marry me, and I now think that is actually a good thing since you don’t really love me.”

  Dekker’s hair flipped angrily across his forehead as he spoke. “Bailey, I’m lost. What happened? We’ve always had the best chemistry. How can you say that I don’t love you?”

  “Nothing about your actions says you love me,” Bailey insisted. “As soon as we arrived home, you got on your phone. And that was after you went out on a Valentine’s date with your parents and not me. This entire weekend is about you, not me, and definitely not us. I can’t do this Dekker. I’m leaving. I’ll come by to pack my things up tomorrow and have them moved to storage.”

  “Is that it then? You’re not even going to give me a chance?” Dekker came close, his hand outstretched. “Come on, Bailey, we’ve had fights before. Just stay the night. We’ll talk it out, and things will be better tomorrow. Don’t throw all we have away. Two years, Bailey. Don’t toss out two years.”

  Bailey looked at him and recognized his tactics. He was trying to charm her away from the cliff. If he had his way, he’d be kissing her within five minutes and then all would be forgotten as he showed her that he loved her.

  But that wasn’t love, and she refused to be manipulated any longer. Even her physical attraction to him now seemed greatly diminished, overpowered by her strong disgust for who he was on the inside.

  “Not this time, Dekker,” Bailey said firmly, yet she felt a tinge of guilt. Dekker hadn’t shared her experiences of the past few weeks. He didn’t know her thought processes. To him, Bailey’s change of heart probably seemed very sudden and crazy.

  “I’m sorry,” she continued sincerely, wanting him to understand her decision and know that this wasn’t a fickle tantrum she’d wish to undo tomorrow. She would not be back. “I admit that I’m not the same woman who left Seattle in December. I feel like my eyes have been opened to myself, to you, to our life together, to what love actually is, to my values and priorities. Everything has changed for me. I feel bad about the two years, but not in the way you think. Two years is an awfully long time to be wrong.”

  “There’s someone else, isn’t there?” Dekker gritted out fiercely. “You wouldn’t do this if you didn’t already have someone else. It’s that Camden guy you work with, isn’t it? I knew there was something strange going on.”

  Bailey struggled to find words to explain. She couldn’t honestly deny that she had feelings for Camden, and yet that had nothing to do with this situation. “I haven’t cheated on you, Dekker. Whether or not I have feelings for someone else is no longer your business. I have never acted on feelings for anyone but you. Now I realize that we no longer share the same values. I don’t like the way you took advantage of that elderly man and bought your new boat. I don’t like the way you treat me. It’s my feelings for you, and who you are as a person, that are the issues here, and those have nothing to do with anyone but you.”

  “Fine. Go then.” Dekker reached for an empty box and threw it on the bed with the others. “I won’t beg you to say. You’ll be the one begging to come back to me tomorrow. You can have your high and mighty values and your stupid dreams about a paper tying me to you in the prison of marriage, but when it comes right down to it, you’re nothing without me. You’ll soon figure out that you miss the free handout you’ve had for the last two years. I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you, Bailey, and you’re not going to like life very much without a sugar daddy to pay your way.”

  Dekker’s words pierced her heart, and she knew she needed to leave now. She’d get her things later. She walked past him into the living room, picked up her suitcase and walked to the door.

  “Goodbye, Dekker,” she said simply. Then she left.

  She made it down to the apartment parking lot before reality caught up with her in the form of pouring rain. She didn’t even have a car with which to leave. In December, when Dekker had objected to paying parking fees on a car she wouldn’t be using, she’d leased her car to a friend for three months.

  Lacking any other option, Bailey pulled her ho
od up and began walking, wanting to get as much distance as possible from her former boyfriend. Her tears joined the rain as the past six weeks came rushing over her in a wave. As it retreated, the riptide pulled her back under, washing her with wave upon wave of overwhelming emotion.

  Conversations with Camden replayed themselves in her mind. She remembered how he’d accused her of not knowing what love really was, and he’d been right. She couldn’t recall ever feeling the kind of love Camden had described, either romantically or otherwise. The only hints she’d had of it had been in the last few weeks under the Hutchins’ roof. They knew how to love each other, and even Bailey had been included in both witnessing and receiving the love of people who truly cared for her with no ulterior motive.

  If Camden was right about love, was he right about everything else, too? Was his method of making matches far superior to hers? The dates she’d arranged for the contest flashed in front of her mind as if on a movie screen, and Bailey felt embarrassed. She should have paid better attention to matching people with similar core values and put less emphasis on chemistry. She’d likely made matches that mirrored her own relationship with Dekker, and clearly, that didn’t lead to happily ever after all.

  Shame washed over her. She was ashamed of the way she’d handled other people’s love lives, but more than that, she was ashamed of her own. She now saw herself for who she truly was.

  She was not a good person.

  Until today, she’d agreed with Dekker’s view on everything, at least on the superficial level. She had lived just as selfishly as he, only caring about people to the extent that they benefitted her. She’d seen nothing wrong with her life and had instead felt proud of all of the money, prestige, and things she’d gained with Dekker.

  Nothing had changed. That is, nothing but her. It wasn’t as if her life was suddenly wrong. It had always been wrong. She’s been blind to the truth, assuming that the goal in life was to be happy with love as her god. If she did something and labeled it with the word “love,” then it had to be right. The problem was in her definition of love. She’d never bothered to check with love’s original author.

  She’d created her own god based on what she thought he should be like. She’d assumed she already knew and didn’t bother trying to know someone who existed independent of her beliefs. She now realized that God’s existence and His attributes did not depend on her perception. It was up to her to know Him as He was, not as she wished Him to be.

  Right before Camden had left her to break the news of Marissa’s passing to Israel, he’d asked her to pray. She’d sat in the chair in the office and tried to pray, but she couldn’t find the words to say. Standing, she’d walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows and gazed out at the city lit up in its night time glory, and yet she still couldn’t pray. Of course, she’d prayed before, tossing a petition up to heaven in a desperate time of need. Yet, this was different. It was as if she’d been talking into a phone, thinking there was no one actually on the other end. Now she couldn’t escape the suspicion that someone really was on the line with her, listening to what she said. The biggest problem was that she didn’t know who that Someone was.

  As she walked, her misery only grew as she encountered herself, in all her faults and sins. She wasn’t good enough. She couldn’t save herself, and she’d spent her life ignoring the only One who could.

  Dear, God, she cried. I’ve lived life on my own terms and not yours!

  But beyond that, she didn’t know what to do to get herself out of the quicksand where she found herself trapped.

  Somewhere in her tortuous thoughts, she’d come to her senses long enough to take out her phone, open the app, and order an Uber. When the designated vehicle pulled up to the intersection where she stood, she climbed inside, completely miserable and fully soaked. Thankfully, the driver didn’t press her with questions but compassionately asked if she had friends at the address she’d given.

  Bailey nodded through her tears, providing the driver with enough to keep silent.

  He pulled to the curb of a house, and Bailey felt a moment of hesitation. Maybe she should have gone to a hotel. However, she felt so desperate for relief that she couldn’t imagine a long night without it. She’d instead come to the one person she knew could help and wouldn’t turn her away.

  The hour was late, and she hated just showing up on the doorstep. Nevertheless, she did it anyway. Standing hunched in the rain, she bravely pressed the button to ring the doorbell.

  The door opened, and a beautiful, dark-haired woman looked at Bailey with eyes wide in surprise and concern. “Bailey, what are you doing here? Come in! Come in!”

  She eagerly reached for Bailey, pulling her into the house out of the rain and shutting the door behind her.

  Bailey’s broken words brimming with emotion drew the other woman up short.

  “Help me, Elise,” she cried hoarsely “I’m so very lost!”

  The business line rang, and Camden looked up from the computer, irritated that a call had made it through. He had purposely buried the phone number on the website. If clients needed assistance, they first had to jump through options to send an email or even, in extreme cases, do an online chat during business hours. Finding the actual phone number to talk to a live person was purposely difficult. Fortunately, his methods were effective, and they didn’t receive too many calls. Usually, they were able to successfully handle any customer service issues with one of the other avenues.

  “Betwixt Two Hearts, how may I help you?” Camden answered formally. As much as he didn’t like interruptions, he really should give props to anyone dedicated enough to locate the number.

  “Detective Drisklay. Boston Police Department. Get me your boss.”

  Startled by the demanding, gravelly voice that sounded straight out of a Godfather movie, Camden responded. “Umm… ok. You’re in luck. I am the boss. How can I help?”

  Impatience drew out a distinctive Boston accent as the man shot back, “Look, kid. This is grown-up stuff. Get me your boss. Better yet, get me your boss’s boss. Not your kid brother. Not your uncle. I need to talk to the big guy. I’m working on a murder investigation.”

  Murder investigation?

  Camden swallowed, trying to balance the lightning bolt of horror with the sudden burst of anger at Drisklay’s insults. With a calm to be proud of, he responded. “I’m the guy you need to talk to. I’m Camden Hutchins, co-owner of Betwixt Two Hearts, website designer, and operator in charge of data, delivery, security, customer service, and everything in between.”

  The other line was silent other than the sound of Drisklay taking a drink. Finally, he replied, “You memorize that entire speech or do you have it written out?”

  Camden gritted his teeth. “I’m the one you want to talk to. How can I help?”

  A two-second silence was quickly followed with more words that lashed out as if seeking their own victim. “I’m investigating a woman who was murdered while meeting a so-called ‘date’ she found on your website.”

  Camden’s breath caught. This was bad. Really bad. If Bailey found out…

  “What is the client’s name?” Camden asked briskly. Drisklay didn’t seem to want to waste time with an emotional response and protests of how the website couldn’t possibly be involved. Instead, Camden sat up straight with fingers poised over the keyboard.

  “Rebekah Harrison from Boston. Your guy apparently met her for the date on Valentine’s Day, kidnapped her, then dumped the body thirty miles away.”

  Camden winced. Drisklay really could have done without the details.

  Finding the profile, he clicked on it and brought up a blonde woman in her twenties who smiled beautifully as she looked up at him from the computer screen. She looked nice. Young. Innocent. Camden felt nauseated to think that that smile no longer existed on earth.

  “It looks like she signed up a while ago. She had pretty narrow specifications, and a match wasn’t found until right before Valentine’s Day.”

>   “What were her narrow specifications?” Drisklay asked.

  “She was a Christian,” Camden’s heart twisted a little more. “She wanted someone to be just as dedicated as she was.”

  Drisklay let out a scoff that almost sounded like he was choking on spoiled food. “So dedicated Christians are now kidnapping and murdering their Valentine’s Day dates?”

  Camden barely managed to hold his tongue, somehow knowing that if he said anything in defense of Christianity, it would only add fuel to Drisklay’s hatred.

  Just stay on task.

  Finding the profile of the man she’d been matched with, Camden clicked on it, bringing up the info on a man named John Paul.

  “It’s a fake account,” Camden said, shock running through him.

  “Figures,” Drisklay said flatly.

  “My security measures labeled it as fake and terminated it forty-eight hours after it was created, which happened to be the afternoon of Valentine’s Day. I’m guessing it was too late for Rebekah to see the notification.”

  “So, you flagged it as fake. What else did you do then? What can you tell me about where it originated?”

  Camden breathed deeply, wondering what he should do. If he revealed all the information he could glean, that put himself at risk. But a woman was dead. If he could help find her killer, wouldn’t it be worth it?

  “Just give me a minute,” Camden muttered, clicking through a few more screens.

  Clearing his throat, Camden explained. “I have the IP address where the account was created. Unfortunately, it traces back to the Copley Square branch of the Boston Library. A single user in a public place won’t be easy to track down.”