If I’d heard you say no, I never would have kept going.
When you made those noises… I thought it was because you liked it.
“There’s something wrong with you,” I wheeze.
“There’s nothing wrong with me, Laurel. I’ve got everything. I’m in control. And unless you want to fuck everything up and cost your boy the millions he’s already dropped on this deal, that smile on his old man’s face, and the Hastings reputation at this delicate transitional time… how about you show some fucking respect. After all, we’re going to be seeing plenty of each other over the next few years, since your boy and I will be working so closely.” He pulls my hand between us, smiling that sick smile down at my ring. “Hell, I’ll be treated like a guest of honor at your wedding for pushing this deal through after all the years of stops and starts. Bet I’ll even score a dance with the bride.” He uses his weight to pin me to the wall, pressing hard enough to make breathing hard and black spots start to fill my vision. Pressing hard enough to grind against my hip. Just like in high school. At my ear, he croons, “Laurel, I gotta admit, I like to see I still affect you the same way.”
Nausea rolls through me, and suddenly I’m afraid of what he’ll do if I get sick on him.
But then he’s backing off, straightening his suit as casually as if he’s just finished lunch. “This thing with you and me isn’t over, Laurel. But we’ll have plenty of time to resolve the tension between us.”
I want to vomit. To cry.
“You make me sick,” I spit instead.
He barely glances back. “Get yourself together. You don’t want to ruin Hastings’s big night.”
And then he leaves me there staring after him, still feeling the clammy spots where he touched me, the tightness in my chest, and the panic in my veins.
I return to the powder room on shaky legs and stare in disbelief at my reflection. This man just broke me down, shattered my world, and dragged me through the ugliest memories of my life… and he left me with barely a hair out of place.
But that’s the way he’s always operated.
I’m the only one who can see the damage.
21
Jack
It’s nearly seven when the elevator doors open into my living room, and Laurel doesn’t even make it a step before I’ve got her wrapped up in my arms, her feet off the floor as I kiss her.
I’ve gotten used to having Laurel in my arms each night, and it nearly killed me when after the dinner she wanted to go home alone. I knew something was off through most of the evening, but she wouldn’t own up to the migraine until I finally convinced her we’d stayed long enough. I wanted to stay with her, but I understood when she told me she just needed to be alone.
It was one night, but I fucking hated the idea of her suffering at home alone.
But tonight she’s back in my arms, and I don’t set her down until we’ve made it all the way to the kitchen, where I’ve ordered in her favorite dishes from around the city.
“What’s all this?” she asks.
“Dinner. We’ll get to it.” Eventually.
She brushes her hands over my shoulders and arms, moves them up to my neck and then to my face as she gives me a smile I don’t quite understand.
I know she’s happy to see me. Christ, she can’t stop touching me and hasn’t even tried to get out of my arms yet. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she wasn’t interested in her feet touching the ground again at all.
“Your head better today?” She still looks tired… and something else.
“It is. Thank you.” She’s rubbing a bit of my hair between her fingers, staring at it so hard it’s like she’s trying to memorize it. Something’s not right, and as I set her down, I have a sense of what it is.
Last night, every time someone brought up the wedding, she seemed to withdraw just a little more. I know what I want for us, but Laurel’s only had a couple of weeks to accept that what happened between us in high school wasn’t what she thought. She’s still getting used to us being together, and I’m ready to fucking marry her tomorrow. I’m pushing her and it’s too soon.
Running my hands over her hips, I shrug. “I know you weren’t feeling great last night, but I got the sense that might not have been all of it.”
She looks shell-shocked, and I swear she stops breathing. “What?”
“We’ve had an unconventional start. I get it. And I get that you maybe aren’t quite as comfortable wearing my ring yet as I am seeing it on your finger.” I fucking love seeing it on her finger. But not if it’s freaking her out. “I guess I’m asking you if it’s too much right now?”
Laurel looks down at her hand for a long minute.
Then, slowly, she shakes her head. Cheeks as ashen as they were the night before, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, she peers up at me, and lead lands in my gut.
This isn’t about the ring.
My hand comes up between us. “Don’t do this.”
Her breath shudders out, but then she steels her spine and sets her shoulders in the stance I’ve seen too many times to count. And with sickening certainty, I know what’s coming next is going to tear my world apart.
“Jack, I’m sorry…”
“What do you want me to say? She broke up with you,” Law states dispassionately, pouring a beer into a frosted mug from his freezer. He steps over his ancient rescue dogs Gretel and Bleu and sets it in front of me. “I’m not trying to be a dick, but it doesn’t take any special twin telepathy to figure out that she doesn’t want to be with you.”
“Fuck you, Law.” I push the beer around, wondering why I let him pour it for me. I didn’t want it. Hell, I didn’t want anything, except an explanation. An explanation that brings to light the enormous misunderstanding that broke us up… so we can clear it up and get back together. Tonight. Now.
Christ, I can’t fucking make sense of what happened.
Again and again I keep running it through my mind, looking for whatever piece I was missing that would explain how we went from everything feeling so perfect I would have sworn we’d found our happily ever after to her telling me we were over.
We’d been laughing… making plans… she wanted to celebrate… too many questions about a wedding that wasn’t supposed to exist?
Then… Jack, this just isn’t what I want.
She’d thought it might be. Tried to convince herself it was. But when everyone started asking her about a wedding with the potential to be real… she’d realized she didn’t want it. She didn’t want any of it.
One night. That’s how long it took for everything to change. Because the way she’d been looking at me before that… I would have sworn it was real. I would have sworn it was love.
Law shrugs, shaking his head. “Look, you’re not used to women giving you your walking papers. Your ego is stung. And you want a big, strong shoulder to cry on.” He pats his shoulder in offering, and I imagine any other time I’d be laughing at his suggestion.
Now? I can’t even manage a smile.
“This isn’t about ego, Law. It’s about Laurel.”
I rub a hand down my face, more tired than I’ve ever been in my life. But if tonight’s anything like the last five, I’ll be lucky if I sleep at all. Every time I close my eyes, I see Laurel. Laurel at six with the prettiest dark hair I’d ever seen. Laurel at twelve, sitting beneath the oak in her back yard, her eyes closed, listening to her new iPod. Laurel at seventeen, looking up at me with that breathless smile a second before I kissed her. Laurel, days later, with so much hurt and betrayal in her eyes, I wouldn’t stop thinking about it for a year.
Laurel these past months. My Laurel.
“Jack, man, what do you say every time I end a relationship? Time to take your own advice and get back on the horse.”
I look up at one of my oldest friends. “That advice is shit.”
He laughs. “Eh, it works pretty well, actually.” Hunching his lanky frame, he shoves his hands in his pockets. “I know you wer
e having fun, but this was Laurel, man. The girl you’ve spent ninety-nine percent of your life butting heads with. It’s not like you thought she was the one.”
The look I give him has his casual expression turning troubled.
“Laurel? You thought she was the one? I don’t get it.”
Christ, I’m tired. “What’s not to get, Law? I’ve been half in love with her since we were six fucking years old.”
Rubbing the back of his neck, he looks away.
“I was all in. If I’d had my way, that ring on her finger never would have come off.”
I need to get out of here. I need to—hell, go home and talk myself out of calling her sixteen times before the night’s through.
“Hey, thanks for the beer, but I’m going to take off.”
I’m nearly at the front door when the knob turns and Laurel’s parents bustle in.
“Jack, darling!” I’m pulled into a warm hug and clapped solidly on the back by two of the last people I want to see. They’ve always been good to me, but over the last weeks I’ve realized that maybe they haven’t been so good to Laurel.
“Jack, good to see you, son.”
They don’t know about Laurel and me. They don’t know that we were really together or that now we’ve broken up, and the last thing I want to do is tell them. Drawing on the manners hammered into me since birth, I thank David.
“Tell me you’re staying for dinner,” Beverly chimes in, holding up the carryout handle bags they’ve brought.
“I’m afraid not. I need to get home.”
“Nonsense,” David says. “You’ll break Beverly’s heart if you don’t at least join us for a drink.”
Law grips my shoulder. “One drink. I’ve already poured you a beer.”
There’s some debate about what constitutes a real drink, and in the end, I can’t care less and simply accept the glass pushed into my hand by Laurel’s dad.
Bourbon.
Immediately I think about Laurel in my lap the week before, painting my drink across her lips, down her neck… lower. She was happy that night and it wasn’t just sex. We’d been making plans for a weekend in Door County in the fall.
A week ago she was mine… and then… what?
“Heard about that deal you just landed. That’s quite a win.”
“Thank you, David.”
“You know we shared a table with the Anderson family at the Cliff Holland Benefit for years. Nice to see Donald is doing well.”
Probably not worth mentioning what a douche I think the guy is.
“Wait, DJ Anderson?” Law asks, setting his glass on the table between us. “That’s the guy you’re partnered with on this development?”
His face is pulled into a frown, and when he looks at me, the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end.
“Yeah, why?”
He turns to his mother. “Isn’t that the guy Laurel dated back in high school?”
“What?” I cough out. She acted like they’d never met before. They both did.
She’d been laughing… leaning into my touch… making plans… talking about a future… she was mine… and then she met Don… and she got a headache… and the next day…
Beverly lets out a sigh, shaking her head. “I’d hardly call it dating. He took her out once. As I recall, he’d been interested in more, but Laurel—well, you remember how prickly she was in high school. I’m not sure she handled that situation with the grace we would have hoped for.” She looks over her glass to David. “Do you remember how embarrassed we were over her behavior at the benefit? We actually had to force her to dance with him. Can you imagine?”
I don’t have to. I remember the stricken look in her eyes from that night.
I’d asked her what happened.
I’d known it was worse than she’d been willing to admit, but I let it go when she wouldn’t talk to me. I never even got the guy’s name.
Goddamn it.
I want to ask them why the fuck they would ever make their daughter dance with anyone she didn’t want to? How they could still be sitting here tsking the behavior of the girl I’d found falling apart that night?
I have a feeling I already know, but I have to ask anyway. “Why didn’t she want to go out with him again?”
22
Laurel
The sulk is real and I’m wallowing hard. It’s been four days since I ended things with Jack, but my heart hurts like I’m still standing in front of him, looking into his storm-tossed gray eyes filled with shock and hurt and anger and about a million other things I can’t for one second blame him for feeling.
I know I made the right choice.
I had to protect him, and I had to protect me.
But even so… each breath I take feels wrong. Like for the first time in my life, everything had fallen into place exactly as it should. Then one brush with DJ Anderson and suddenly that perfect life, so filled with potential, is shattered, and no matter how I look at the broken pieces, it feels like nothing will ever fit right again.
It hurts. So much.
And I can’t stomach the idea of calling up one of my girlfriends to come and eat a gallon of Chubby Hubby with me. Even the few people who actually knew the truth about my relationship with Jack can’t hear about this. No one can. Because what if they said something?
Millions. That’s what Jack would lose if he found out about DJ.
My stomach cramps, and I wipe at my tears with the hem of one of the T-shirts Jack left over here, then click play on the remote.
I’m watching movies from when we were kids. I’ve already been through the ghost hunt and how fast Jack could solve a Rubik’s Cube. This one is Law and Jack at ten years old. We’d just seen Small Soldiers, and the boys were flying through a maze of action figures in our backyard. I’m about to leap over some kind of obstacle we’d set up and Jack drops what he’s doing to make sure I can make it. I laugh, watching as mini versions of me and Law start bellowing in unison. Him about Jack ruining the scene, me because “I can do it myself.”
It’s not the first time I’ve seen instances of Jack looking out for me, and me reading it as him not giving me enough credit. He was just trying to be nice. Sometimes. Mostly, Jack gave as good as he got.
Why am I doing this to myself?
If I have any hope of my eyes being smaller than golf balls when I go to work tomorrow, I have to stop.
And yet already I’m thinking about calling up Law to get into his old photos. There probably won’t be much of Jack with me, but maybe all I need is to see him. Maybe all I want is to look at his face through all those years, and finally see more than what I’d let myself back then.
Knock, knock, knock.
My heart skips a beat then races faster even as dread spools through my belly.
I know that bossy knock. I know there’s only one man who would show up unannounced at ten thirty on a Wednesday night… and somehow get around my security door.
I’m out of bed and halfway through the living room when I hear his voice through the door. “I know you’re in there. Damn it, Laurel. Open up.”
“Jack, what in—?” I barely have the door unlocked before he’s storming through it.
My breath catches at the sight of his stubble-rough face and wild eyes. This isn’t the reasonable man I’ve spent half my life sparring with. He isn’t the passionate lover I tried so hard not to fall for. And he isn’t that portrait of confusion and hurt from the night I ended what was without question the best thing I’d ever had in my life.
He’s livid.
“DJ,” he bites out, his eyes blazing with betrayal. Pain.
The air punches from my lungs as I take a step back. “He told you?”
Why would he do that? It doesn’t make sense. Yes, he wanted to hurt me. But telling Jack would lose him whatever leverage he’d thought he had.
He wanted that deal with Jack. He wanted the development project too.
And so far as I can tell, no one knows Jack and I hav
e broken up.
“No, he didn’t fucking tell me, but you sure as hell should have.” He spears a hand through hair that looks like he’s been working it over for days, shakes his head hard, and grits his teeth through a desolate curse. When his eyes come back up, roving over me, they’re haunted. Agonized. “Did he hurt you? Not in high school. I’m talking about now.”
It strikes me that Jack already knows. There’s nothing I can do to protect him from this, and the only thing I have is the truth.
“Mostly, he just scared me.” I barely recognize my own voice, it sounds so small. So weak. And I don’t realize until Jack’s eyes narrow, following the movement of my hand covering my arm, what I’ve given away.
“Mostly.” He stares. The muscles in his neck bob up and down. And then he steps into me, and with a touch so tender and gentle it brings tears to my eyes, moves my hand away and pushes the sleeve of his T-shirt up my arm.
The bruise is faded to a mottled yellow brown, but the sight of DJ’s mark still on my skin makes me sick.
Jack slowly falls to his knees in front of me, pressing his forehead to my belly as his arms wrap around me.
“Christ, I’m so fucking sorry.”
The walls I’ve been trying to hold in place crumble around me, and then I’m on the floor with him, tears spilling down my cheeks.
“I knew something was wrong. One look at your face and I knew it. But I was so caught up in signing the papers, so caught up in my own shit… I didn’t see what was right in front of my face.”
I can’t stand the idea of Jack blaming himself when nothing could be further from the truth. “I didn’t want you to know.”
He breathes against my shoulder, holding me close. “But now I do.”
I don’t know how long we stay like that, just holding each other, not saying a word. Eventually, we end up on the floor with me curled up between Jack’s legs, his back against the base of the couch.
His fingers sift through my hair, and I tuck my head against his chest. I could stay like this with him forever, but I know it won’t last.
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