by Jaimes, Cole
Aidan hasn’t called. Or maybe he has, I don’t know. I’ve been too chicken shit to turn on my damn cell since I arrived at Max’s. Maybe I crossed the line that day at Vaughn’s grave. There’s every chance I went too far and Aidan is through with me. Maybe he’s telling himself that we didn’t have a connection after all, or, if we did, he couldn’t sustain something with a person who is as crazy as I have repeatedly demonstrated myself to be.
I sit in one of the armchairs by the window, overwhelmed with sorrow. I feel sad about everything. Not just my own life, but Vaughn’s, and even Aidan’s. He didn’t want to come back and work at his family’s business. He was off in Hawaii, doing his own thing. He came back because he felt he had to, and who was waiting there for him but little old me, intent on destroying him.
We go to bed early at Max’s, which is fine with me. I’m exhausted by the end of each day, even though it doesn’t feel like I’ve been very productive. I know some point soon I’ll have to look for a job. I’ll have to do something to start generating some income. I don’t want to live off of Max for the rest of my life, after all, but for the moment I’m enjoying the simplicity of life here.
Things seem uncomplicated. Easy. Or at least they do, until Max slips into bed with me on the fourth night of my stay with him. I keep my eyes closed, unsure if this is really happening or if perhaps it’s just a figment of my imagination. Max knows everything that happened at those foster homes. He knows about the time that kid crept into bed with me and tried to feel me up. Surely there’s no way he would try and do the same thing? He lies there for a few long moments, the length of his body near but not touching mine.
“Essie,” he whispers, his voice loud in the dark quiet.
I stir. “Hmm?”
I feel his hand close over mine. “Are you awake?”
“Sort of.” I yawn. “Max?”
“Hey. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to just get into bed with you like this. But…is that okay? Do you want me here?”
It would be nice to have someone next to me. It would be nice to have someone touch me, to make me feel good, help me forget about everything, even if it was just for a short period of time. In the back of my mind, I’ve always known Max has harbored feelings for me. He would treat me respectfully if we were together. The expression on his face when I pull my t-shirt up over my head would be one of desire and adoration. If I were to press his hands up against my breasts, he would be instantly hard. He’d be able to make me feel good. Probably very, very good, and feeling that way would make a change from feeling guttered out and worthless.
I can’t do it, though. To have sex with him right now would be using him, and I’m pretty sure in Max’s head it would be something more than it was. It would be cruel and thoughtless to mislead him, or do something that would wind up hurting him.
“I can’t, Max,” I whisper. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been very open with you about why I’m here with, but—”
“It’s guy trouble,” he says, his voice dipped to a low rumble. “Isn’t it always guy trouble when a girl shows up on your doorstep, nothing more than a duffel bag full of clothes and mascara running down her cheeks?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, Max. I really am sorry. I just…I am just so fucked up right now. I’m poisonous. I’m no good for anybody. I have to be alone.”
He squeezes my hand. “You’re not poison, silly girl. But it’s okay,” he says. “I know you’ve been through the wringer recently. If you want me to go, I will.”
“Maybe you could just…sleep there?” It’s so stupid to ask that of him, but I just need someone close. Max inhales deeply, sighing as he exhales.
“Of course, Ess. It would be my pleasure.” Max relaxes next to me, and we sleep side-by-side. He doesn’t paw at my barely clothed body, and I sleep for the first time since I left Aidan Callahan’s bed. It’s wonderful.
***
I wake up alone the next morning. Max doesn’t return to the house until mid-morning, and I can tell by the shy smile he gives me that maybe asking him to sleep alongside me was a mistake after all. He pours himself a cup of coffee and then sits across from me at the kitchen table. “Listen,” he says. “I woke up feeling non-too-proud of myself. I didn’t mean to be a dick last night. I don’t know what I was thinking—I shouldn’t have done that. But having a warm body next to me throughout the night was admittedly very lovely.”
I smile. “It was. And I…I’m sorry, too. I think you’re an amazing guy, you know that, right? You were always so good to Vaughn and me when we needed you, and now here you are again, bailing me out. It’s been really great coming here so I can sort my head out. I’m not planning on staying here forever, though. I know I must be an inconvenience.”
“You are not. And I wouldn’t mind if you did stay here forever, anyway.”
“You won’t be saying that when you meet the woman of your dreams, and I’m lurking in your farmhouse like a creeper, cramping your style.”
Max tips his head back and laughs. “Bullshit. Hell will freeze over before I find a woman that wants to come hang out with me on a farm. Girls tend to like nail salons and five star restaurants these days. Not mud up to their elbows and near-constant rain ruining their hair.”
“Nonsense. There are plenty of girls who love the outdoors and rugged, handsome ex-cops with delightful biceps.”
“My biceps are delightful?” He winks, and then he starts flexing, grinning like a moron. “You know there’s someone out there for you too, Ess. You can’t just close yourself off from the world. Whoever you’re hiding from out here must be a complete fucking moron to let you go.”
“It was the smartest move he’s ever made,” I whisper, staring down at the table.
“I don’t believe that for a second. Do you want to talk about it? It helps sometimes. Just to get it out.”
I take a deep breath. Strangely I do want to talk about it. I want it to get better, to go away. Or in the least for it to just make sense somehow. Yet at the same time, I don’t want to say a single thing, because I don’t think I’ll be able to without bursting into tears.
We sit there quietly for a few minutes, me vacillating between wanting to tell him and not. Finally, I open my mouth and begin to speak.
“I had a plan. I had this really solid plan, and I don’t know what happened. Everything just got completely fucked up. I spent the last five years believing that I was working toward something. I thought that if I was diligent and patient, my hard work would pay off. I thought I was doing something for Vaughn. And then I met Aidan, and—”
“Wait a second.” Max holds up one hand. “Aidan? Aidan Callahan?”
I nod, and I’m betting good money I’m looking pretty sullen right now. “I know I should have stayed away from him. I know that now. But, shit. Ever since Vaughn died, time hasn’t really seemed to be flowing properly. So many years have passed, and I’ve just been so fixated on this one goal that I haven’t seen or heard or noticed anything else. It made the pain less bright, being that focused. And then, when I finally found the proof I needed to seriously hurt the Callahan Corporation, it felt so fucking perfect and…and like justice. Does that make any sense whatsoever?”
Max puffs out his cheeks, shaking his head. “God, Essie. Vaughn was a peace-loving guy. Maybe not when he was a kid and he was rebelling against the situation he found himself in, but after for sure. He was calm. He made a decision to be happy every single time he woke up in the morning. He used to give me shit for complaining about things all the time. I’m not gonna pretend I even know for a second what you mean when you say you wanted to seriously hurt the Callahan Corporation, but it all sounds like bad karma to me. Vaughn would have hated that, Ess.”
I don’t like hearing that. Even though I know it’s the truth, I don’t like hearing it. It means I’ve had it so, so wrong for the past five years, and my brother would be ashamed of the person I’ve become. I want to resort to anger as my defense, the same way I’ve been doing for so long now
, but when I go to open my mouth, I find that I’m exhausted. I’m not angry anymore. I’m really not. I’m just hurting and sad, and alone, and nothing seems to make sense anymore. “I just wanted to do what was right for Vaughn,” I whisper. “He did everything for me. I didn’t…I felt useless just getting on with my life, like losing my brother was nothing more than a small bump in the road for me. It wasn’t. It was horrific. It was heart breaking.”
“It happens,” Max says. I think about jumping up out of my chair and slapping him in the face. Max stares me down like he knows he’s risking life and limb saying something like that to me. “It’s life, Essie. I loved Vaughn, too. You weren’t alone in that. I would have burned down half of Chicago for that guy. But just because you lose someone doesn’t mean you can derail yourself so badly that you’re unrecognizable as the person you once were. That’s hiding. That’s refusing to face your loss and accept it.”
“I never wanted to accept it!”
“I know. And that was the problem, baby girl. Vaughn’s gone. He left us five years ago, and the world has been a sorrier place for it. I feel that loss every day. You’ve refused to let it into your heart. You’ve held it at arm’s reach this entire time. You decided it was easier to hold onto revenge and hatred instead, letting that into your heart, no matter how badly it hurt or cut against you. And it doesn’t feel good, does it?”
I want to curl up into a ball and die right now, but this is it. Max is saying all of the things I know deep down inside myself, and now, finally, I need to hear them. Damn it. I’m literally shaking with nerves, but what he’s saying is the truth. Slowly, I nod, and I suddenly can’t seem to keep my back straight. I sag in on myself, a loud, pained sob ripping free from my throat. “Oh god. God, Max, how did I let it get this far? How did I get this bad?”
Max slips around the side of the table and takes me into his arms, strong hands rubbing up and down my back. “Shhh, it’s okay, baby girl. It’s okay. Get it out.”
I cry, and it’s not the same kind of crying I normally indulge myself in. At home, when I cry, it’s usually from frustration and anger. Now, I’m crying because my brother is gone and I won’t ever get to see his face again. And I’m crying because I fell in love with a beautiful man, and I hurt him.
Later, long after I’ve stopped crying and it’s gone dark outside, Max tells me to turn on my cellphone and read the news. It’s all over the Internet. Even the newspapers are running articles left, right and center: Billion-dollar Chicago corporation under investigation for fraud.
Photos of Aidan are plastered over national business websites and blogs, and my insides feel like they’re about to fall out of my body. What the hell? I didn’t do it. I couldn’t. I still have all of the paperwork I took from work with me here now, so there’s no way anyone could have gone through my desks and discovered the information. So what the hell?
This is all I’m thinking as I scroll through the reports online. It’s all here, and it makes absolutely no sense.
Chapter Ten
Aidan
“I must say, Mr. Callahan, this information was very discreetly hidden amongst your company’s accounting records. It’s highly irregular that you have brought it to our attention yourself. Most CEOs in your position, well, they would certainly have been looking the other way and hoping no one else noticed the misappropriation of funds, that’s for sure. This situation is going to cause problems for the corporation and no doubt about it.”
I keep staring at the investigator’s bald spot. The glare from the strip lights are bouncing off the naked area of skin almost offensively. I had no idea people could sweat from the tops of their heads. “Yes. Well,” I say. “I wanted to do things right. I didn’t want there to be any confusion. It was important that the Callahan Corporation be seen to be acting within the bounds of the law. At least now, anyway.”
“According to your findings, you estimate that a little over four million dollars was siphoned from the corporations accounts. Is that correct?”
“It is.” I thought I was going to throw up when Preacher’s people came back to us with that figure. I have absolutely no idea how Alex got away with squirreling such a huge amount of cash into another bank account. Four million dollars is not a small figure; even amongst the vast well of cash that flows through the corporation every day, it should have been noticed. It must have been. Makes me wonder if Dad might have known about it. He was a stern, hard man, but he thought the sun shone out of my brother’s ass. Would he have confronted him about it if he had noticed? I don’t even know. The investigator, Cliff Royston, mops his paper napkin against his chin, and I see a flash of indecision flicker across his face as the napkin rises higher, heading toward the top of his head.
I hate this. I hate business meetings at the best of times, but right now it feels like I’ve been called into the principal’s office at school and I’m about to get detention for life. If this had happened on my watch, detention could well have been prison.
Ever since I came back to Chicago and agreed to take over the business, I’ve also despised being in the public eye. The paparazzi. The guarded double takes. The whispering behind hands everywhere I went. Having to purposefully put myself in the spotlight when I announced what had happened was perhaps one of the most unpleasant experiences I’ve ever had the misfortune of going through, but it was important. I needed to do it.
Seven days passed after Essie told me what she had discovered, and the waiting was killing me. I didn’t want to wake up one morning and be on the back foot when the news was released. I decided then and there that it would be better if I pulled the trigger myself. It would be preferable if I was in control of how it happened, and how the information was presented. Another three days passed by while our public relations team did their best to put together a press packet at such short notice, and I began to realize that Essie wasn’t going to spill the details of her findings to the press. In my heart, I never really thought she was going to, but I had already set the wheels in motion. It needed to happen.
Royston talks about what will happen next. He talks about how the company coming forward has been regarded as a gesture of good faith, and he says it’s unlikely the corporation’s funds will be frozen while they carry out their comprehensive audits.
This is fantastic news. It means the merger everyone has been focused on over here for so long can still go ahead, and it means that people will still be getting paid, too. That’s what I’ve been most concerned about.
Royston leaves, and I close the blinds on my office window, and I sit there in the dark, brooding. As far as I can tell, the company is going to be okay. My face is everywhere and I can’t even grab a coffee in the morning without twelve people asking me if the business is about to go down the toilet, but it’s all okay. I can handle it. I can handle all of it. What I can’t handle is not knowing where Essie is.
I can’t eat or sleep or fucking think straight without constantly wondering if she’s okay. It’s driving me insane. Preacher thinks I literally am insane for wanting to know where she is. He thinks I should be thanking my lucky fucking stars that she’s nowhere to be seen right now.
It’s been two weeks and even though I’m trying valiantly not to lose my shit over this, it’s getting increasingly harder. She’s pretty much vanished off the face of the earth.
I’ve started running. I used to run occasionally when I was living in Hawaii. Nothing major. Just some early morning jaunts down the beach, barefoot, in my board shorts. I’m far more serious about it now, if only because it’s the only thing capable of clearing my mind.
I have to run hard for a solid fifteen minutes before I begin to feel my muscles warm and loosen, but when I do finally get to that point everything just falls away. No Callahan Corporation nightmare. No Essie. No nothing. I guess it’s the closest I can get to surfing right now.
Today it’s raining so heavily you can barely see your own hand in front of your face, though, so running’s out. I need t
o leave. I need to escape, so I snatch up my car keys and I head down to the parking garage instead. I don’t know where to go so I just get in and drive. There’s something nice about that—just driving. When you’re cruising, it almost feels as though you can carry on like that forever, that you don’t need to turn back if you don’t really feel like it. Just keep on driving until you run out of gas, and there you go. You’ve reached your destination.
And that does sound truly tempting right now.
I just want to go back to my old life. As I drive, I let myself imagine all the possibilities, all the things I could do: go back to Hawaii. Teach surfing again. Hell, travel to South Africa, Australia, Fiji. Switzerland or Norway. Anywhere. Take up mountain biking. Become a free diver. Learn how to fly a plane. I’d be damn good at flying a plane.
There are so many possibilities. Even if things go smoothly with this audit and we manage to figure out how to fix things with the business, I could still take a six-month leave of absence if I really wanted to. The thing is, I don’t really want to go to any of those places or do any of those things if Essie isn’t by my side. I try to envision my future and I just can’t if she’s not in it. It’s troubling. I’ve never felt this way about someone before, and it’s just my luck that I’d fall for the one person more broken and more weighed down with baggage than me.
I’d be okay if I knew she was okay. Yes, I’m mad at her for what she’s done, but I was also kind of waiting for it. I knew she was up to something from the moment she walked into my office. That doesn’t make what she did okay, but I know her, and I knew what I was getting into. That must make me a moron, I’m sure, but still.
I’m about an hour and a half outside the city limits when I get off the freeway to get gas. I fill up the tank and buy a bottle of water and some peanuts. Instead of getting back on the freeway, I go past the on ramp and drive down a potholed two-lane road, past diners and discount food stores, past boarded up buildings and an overflowing Wal-Mart parking lot.